Search

Individuals have demonstrated an attraction toward foreignness, which, arguably, constitutes a central reason to travel. Drawing on research from social and evolutionary psychology, the authors provide the first investigation of tourism xenophilia (TXI), which we define as individuals' attraction toward the perceived foreignness of destinations. Across three studies, the authors conceptualize, develop, and apply a reliable, valid, and parsimonious TXI scale. The results show that TXI explains several important tourist and resident behaviors, such as willingness to engage with locals, willingness to stay at a bed-and-breakfast, intention to try local food, resident hospitality, support for immigration policies, and travel to foreign destinations. The authors also empirically investigate three key antecedents of TXI: promotion focus, boredom proneness, and mind-wandering. Finally, implications for academics and practitioners are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People often demonstrate a home country bias toward their own nation over other nations. This bias is an important determinant of their behavior. Drawing on seminal research from marketing and psychology, the authors provide the first investigation of the tourism ethnocentrism (TE) phenomenon that captures tourists' and residents' motivation to support the domestic tourism economy. The research reported herein develops the parsimonious, reliable, and valid TE scale, and provides an empirical test thereof. The results show that TE is an important means to investigate both tourists' and residents' behavior. It drives tourists' willingness to engage in and recommend domestic tourism, as well as residents' support for domestic tourism development. The results further reveal that higher levels of tourists' "perceived self-efficacy to contribute to the domestic economy" and lower levels of "perceived economy support of others" strengthen TE's effect. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors advocate for a new paradigm in scale development practices to increase the impact of tourism research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central research topic in tourism management concerns tourists’ choice of specific destinations. The present article reviews and advances the extant literature on destination image. From this review, we suggest that individuals have a multitude of destination associations, the total imagery that relates to the destination, and label this concept destination imagery. Individuals also hold an overall image used as a heuristic or a mental shortcut, which is labeled destination image. The concepts of destination imagery and destination image are distinct, yet they have often been conflated within the literature. The article further provides an extensive review of the literature with regard to the definitions, dimensionality, antecedents, and outcomes of the focal concepts as well as geographical scope of destination imagery and image studies and methodologies. This review has led to a novel understanding and delimitation of the focal concepts within the imagery–image duality model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few industries are as inherently international as the hotel industry. This article sets out to investigate the impact of internationalization on performance in the hotel industry. Building on the theory of organizational learning the authors test several hypotheses regarding the shape of the internationalization-performance relationship as well as the impact of four moderating variables. In line with the research aim and the underlying dynamism of organizational learning theory, these hypotheses are tested using a dynamic Bayesian model. The results indicate that internationalization has a U-shaped impact on hotel performance, moderated by cultural distance, regulations and restrictions and the level of development congruence. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for practice and provide directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a comprehensive review of frontier studies in the tourism literature. We discuss the main advantages and disadvantages of the various frontier approaches, in particular, the nonparametric and parametric frontier approaches. The study further differentiates between micro and macro applications of these approaches, summarizing and critically reviewing the characteristics of the existing studies. We also conduct a meta-analysis to create an overview of the efficiency results of frontier applications. This allows for an investigation of the impact of frontier methodology on tourism research. The present review also highlights the limitations of existing studies and suggests an agenda for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a prolonged period of growth, driven, in part, by an increasing number of affluent consumers, the international tourism industry is now suffering the effects of a weaker world economy. These tougher market conditions have, in turn, led to increasing competition. As a result, countries, their tourism industries, and tourism businesses seek to improve the performance of the tourism industry and its constituents by vigorously promoting themselves to international tourists, cutting costs, and identifying synergies in their tourism endeavors. In seeking to improve the tourism industry, the determinants that affect tourism performance are of key interest to the stakeholders. A key obstacle toward improving performance is the multitude of determinants that can affect tourism performance. The literature has yet to provide concrete insights into the determinants of tourism performance and their relative importance. The present study addresses this important gap. We identify and rank the determinants of tourism performance. We also provide performance measures of international tourism destinations. The results are derived using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and bootstrap truncated regression models. The study also discusses the implications of the findings and highlights their importance to both the academic literature and the international tourism industry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]