Search

This study describes the progress of cross-border tourism between South Korea and China in the volatile region of East Asia. It moves beyond normative economic modelling to explain some of the changes in tourist flows between the two countries from a descriptive perspective, looking at influential external factors that affect tourism cooperation and tourist flows. Issues examined here include political, economic, and national security factors, as well as cultural cooperation. This paper examines these variables, which impact the two countries' tourism collaborative efforts and organic bilateral growth, as well as the role of tourism on the establishment of a reconciliatory relationship between the two nations, which have historically been at odds.

This study aims to develop a model and a scale for evaluating the intercountry competitiveness of tourism destinations. Three-round Delphi surveys and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach were used to ensure research objectivity. In two rounds of the Delphi surveys, the questionnaire items were reduced from the initial 196 items to 139, and finally to 61. The relative importance of the items, key domains, and sub-domains were established through AHP analysis. Among the key domains, “sustainability management” and “demand” were perceived to have the highest relative importance. Among the items, “level of service quality” was found to show the highest relative weight.

Since the Thai government established a 5-year medical tourism promotion plan in 2004, Thailand has become a global leading country as a international medical tourism hub. Thus, this study attempted to assess Thailand’s medical tourism market, which is the largest in the world in terms of the number of foreign medical tourists and revenues. Strengths include strong government support, effective marketing policies, and high quality hospitals and infrastructure. Opportunities are globally increasing senior population, quick medical treatments, and development of digital technologies. However, weaknesses are found as having not cooperative teamwork between public and private medical sectors, language barrier, distrust on medical facilities or services, no regular quality assessment program for hospitals, and existence of only a few internationally well-known Thai hospitals. Thailand is also committed to threats such as uncontrollable global factors, intense competition in an Asian medical tourism mar...

This study aimed to identify any distinction between first-time and repeat convention attendees based on their perspectives of convention quality dimensions, multidimensional value, and behavioral intentions. The findings showed that accessibility and extra convention opportunities were not found to affect multidimensional value from first-timers and repeaters. First-timers valued professional education the most, followed by social networking and site environment in evaluating multidimensional value. Repeaters relied on social networking more than on education in assessing value. Site environment positively contributed to multidimensional value for first-timers but not for repeaters. Multidimensional value affected behavioral intentions more positively for repeaters than for first-timers. These findings will enable convention organizers to better understand the distinctions between the two groups and thus gain insight into how to attract first-timers and turn them into repeaters.

A Korean TV drama series (Daejanggeum), with a story line focusing on Korean food, was exported to over 50 countries resulting in a surprisingly popular mega-hit. The popularity of this TV drama, transcended across countries and cultural boundaries, has brought an enhancement to the national image of Korea or national brand, and led to a surge in sales of Korean industrial products, as well as an increased interest in Korean tourism resources. This study attempted to empirically investigate the effects of the TV drama series on the national image and intention to visit Korea as perceived by Chinese diners. Interestingly, the “peculiarity of Korean culture” was a main reason for preferring Korean cuisine, which positively affected the perception of the national image and the intention to visit Korea to partake in food tourism. Further, this study suggests that future studies are needed to compare the results of this research according to national, ethnic, regional, or religious boundaries. The com...

This study investigates differential hedonic pricing in relation to the choice of different hotel room views and floors and attempts to find out the determinants of respondents' willingness-to-pay (WTP) based on the their sociodemographics, psychological inclinations, and other travel-related variables. The findings reveal significant differences between WTP amounts among hotel rooms with five different views. More specifically, this study found significant differences between WTP amounts for rooms on the 1st floor compared to those on the highest floor (20th floor) in a hotel. The results supported the rationale for setting up specific hedonic pricing strategies by hotel managers. Importantly, some significant determinants were obtained in predicting WTP amounts, providing a better understanding of how differential pricing strategies may be applied in the hotel industry.

This study examines aspects of perceived motivations and images of foreign attendants at the Shanghai EXPO. Even though significant differences were found on several factors according to socio-demographic variables, there are inconsistent patterns. However, significant differences were found on all image domains between before EXPO and after EXPO. This indicates that the effects of hosting the EXPO were influential in changing image as perceived by foreign tourists. Relationships between motivations and image perceptions were found. For example, those who attended the Shanghai EXPO with motivation to seek novelty and excitement strongly perceived after attending EXPO that Shanghai is a cultural and historic city as well as an important economic center.

Rapid decolonization began after World War II (1939–1945) and did not conclude until the breakup of the former USSR in 1989. Many studies have labelled tourism as the peace industry. However, there have been limited efforts to analyze post-colonial tourism exchanges between colonizers and the colonized. This study explored the development of post-colonial tourism exchanges between Japan and South Korea in the period 1946–2010. The high level of residual mistrust and diplomatic disputes that affected bilateral flows in the years after Korea's independence from Japan have now been replaced by a very high level of bilateral flows between the two nations, indicating that many of the issues of the past are no longer seen as relevant by contemporary Korean and Japanese tourists. The paper suggests a framework for analysing post-colonial flows.

Cross-cultural understanding in tourism is a well-researched area, but in spite of great amount of time and money spent on cross-cultural training programs, this study suggests miscommunication continues to exist, caused by differences between expected and actual host or guest behavior. A gap, therefore, appears to exist between theory and practice. This article argues that much of this gap can be attributed to international tourists behaving in a manner that diverges from their expected cultural norms when they travel. They join a temporary “tourist culture” that sanctions, and indeed, encourages alternate behavior. Tourist behavior, therefore, represents a combination of national and “tourist” cultures. This proposition is tested by comparing the expected and actual behavior of Korean tourists visiting Australia. The study found that both tourists and frontline hotel staff noted that tourists behaved in a less restrained manner than expected. These findings have significant implications for cro...

The aim of the research reported upon in this study is to examine the impact of visitors’ socio-demographic and festival experience-related variables on expenditure levels and patterns of visits to festivals. Three statistical models including logit, OLS (ordinary least square) and Tobit models are employed to identify and examine the differences or similarities in results from three different approaches. A comparison of the three approaches using cross-section survey data generated differences in model fit. In addition, it was found that the set of independent variables which were significant in estimating festival visitors’ expenditures varied between the three models. As such the findings of this study suggest a singular statistical approach may be inferior to multiple ones in gaining a full understanding of the determinants of festival participants’ expenditure.

Many universities, two-year colleges, and graduate schools in Korea strive to increase the number of hospitality and tourism programs to accommodate the explosive popularity of the hospitality and tourism management field. This study aims to identify reasons why students in Korea at both the undergraduate and graduate levels want to study hospitality and tourism management and why they want to pursue such degrees abroad. The results of this empirical study of 540 Korean students majoring in hospitality and tourism management revealed that self-actualization, job opportunity, and overseas experience were major motivators for undergraduate students, while graduate students chose self-actualization and scholastic achievement as the two most important motivators. In the analysis of motivations to study hospitality and tourism management abroad, undergraduate students cited cultural experience as the main reason, while graduate students chose the desirable educational environment as the main motivator.

This study estimates the multiplier effect of the exhibition industry. In order to calculate the exhibition industry's total expenditure, consideration is made of three major sources of expenditure including hosts, exhibitors and foreign attendees. According to the summary of the economic impact analysis, the total exhibition receipts of US$645.7 million produced US$1.2 billion in output; 21 692 full-time equivalent jobs, US$260 million in personal income for residents, US$577.4 million in value-added, US$54.2 million in indirect tax and US$104.3 million in imports. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This study investigated the effects of the Korean television (TV) drama series titled, Winter Sonata, on the potential or actual Japanese tourist flow to Korea. More specifically, this research explored the reasons for the popularity of the Korean TV drama series, the change of perceived image as an impact of the melodrama, and the preferred products of soap opera-induced tourism. The objectives of this study were achieved through two ways: (1) review of articles in newspapers, magazines, and reports; (2) analyses of a survey of Japanese tourists visiting featured locations of the Winter Sonata TV drama series. The results of this study indicated that this Korean TV series had a variety of impacts in relation to Korea and Japan. Interestingly, Japanese respondents in their 40s and over-preferred Korean TV dramas and indicated a stronger desire to take a Hallyu trip. Additionally, a high level of interest and empathy for leading actors and actresses were the key reasons for their preference for Korean dramas. Results of the canonical analysis indicated that respondents preferred the Korean TV dramas due to all five reason dimensions which demonstrated higher levels and agreement for the development of five out of the eight product types from this study.

This paper introduced three representative market segmentation methodologies for hotel guest room customers. In scenario l, segmentation by the industry data was employed as the first trial of academic research in the hospitality industry. Scenario 2 is benefit segmentation for respective customer segment as a result of scenario 1. There might be the need for an intermediate step between the two methods, however, in the case of a large enough sample. Therefore, a brief outline of Chi-Square Automatic Interaction (CHAID) was introduced in scenario 3. The authors believe that these sequential methodologies are the most appropriate procedures for segmenting hotel customers.

Two research questions guided the study: Do perceived constraints change over time among a sample of state park visitors? and, Do changes in the magnitude of constraints influence visitation to sta...

The purpose of this paper is to explore residents’ perceptions toward casino development. Specifically, this paper examines whether there are significant differences between residents’ perceptions before and after the casino development and whether impact factors are correlated with both support for casino and expected personal benefits. Paired t-tests show that residents’ perceptions were significantly different before and after the casino development. Specifically, residents were likely to perceive positive impacts less strongly and negative impacts as being less worse after the casino opened than they did prior to the casino's opening. In contrast, residents were likely to perceive direct gambling costs as being more serious after the casino opened than they did prior to the casino's opening. Correlation analysis indicates that those residents who supported the casino development were likely to perceive economic and social impacts more positively. Residents who perceived they would personally benefit from the casino development were also likely to express economic and social impacts more positively, indicating support for a social exchange theory.

It has been suggested that there is a need to include variables other than traditional economic variables in models designed to assess visitors’ reactions to admission prices. This study explored the influence of selected behavioral and nontraditional economic factors in influencing visitors’ reactions. Analyses were undertaken on responses from five data sets that addressed pricing issues in the Texas state park system. Generally, the economic factors were more useful predictors than the behavioral factors. Especially useful were perceptions of value for the admission price and importance of admission price to a day visit. Ownership of an annual pass and level of loyalty were also useful predictors of price perceptions.

The casino industry for foreign visitors has been used as a tool of economic development in Korea. The objective of the current study was to examine cultural elements of the interaction between casino workers and guests at Korea's largest casino, the Walker Hill Casino located in Seoul. The guests were grouped into five major cultural groups: Japanese, Korean residents abroad, Chinese (Mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong Chinese), Westerners (US citizens and Europeans), and others (mainly Sri Lankan, Philippine, Bangladeshi, Thai and Malaysian). Based on casino employees’ perceptions significant differences were observed on all 28 items of behaviours of casino customers from the five cultural groupings. As a result, it is apparent that cultural differences will have a range of implications for management including marketing, training of staff and service provision for guests.

Introduction The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) proposed major increases in the admission prices to Texas state parks. The existing regular price varied across parks, but was typically between $3 and $6 per vehicle. The differential prices among state parks reflected TPWD's policy of permitting local state park managers to set prices at their facility. Since each park was permitted to retain 35% of all revenues raised from pricing to enhance its budget, there was incentive for managers to set relatively high prices. Thus, the differential prices reflected managers' perceptions of price elasticity of demand at their facility. The new proposal was to change from $3 to $6 per vehicle to between $1 and $4 per person although children under the age of 12 would be admitted free of charge. Given that other surveys undertaken by TPWD indicated that the average number of people in a vehicle was close to four, if the shift to per person pricing was implemented it would lead to a substantial price increase for many visitors. In addition, seniors 65 and over previously had been admitted free of charge, but under the proposed new policy they would be required to pay half the regular price. The magnitude of the proposed increases led to a realization that there could be substantial visitor resistance, so before implementing them TPWD commissioned a series of three studies to evaluate likely visitor reactions. One of the goals of these studies was to ascertain if there were information strategies that could be used to ameliorate visitor resistance to the price increases. There was awareness of a body of empirical literature in the recreation field that consistently reported such strategies were likely to be effective in reducing stated resistance to price increases (Kyle, Kerstetter & Guadagnolo, 1999; McCarville, 1989; 1991; McCarville & Crompton, 1987a; 1987b; McCarville, Crompton & Sell, 1993; Reiling, Criner & Oltmanns, 1988; Schwer & Daneshvary 1997). The success of information messages in positively influencing perceptions of price increases has been primarily explained by adaptation level theory. This was first postulated by Helson (1964) and it suggests that visitors evaluate price comparatively by adapting to contextual and residual stimuli. Helson (1964) postulated that level of adaptation is the pooled effect of three classes of stimuli: (1) focal stimuli; (2) background or contextual stimuli; and (3) residual stimuli. He defined adaptation level as "a weighted product of these three classes of stimuli" (p. 58) or "a weighted geometric mean of all stimuli impinging upon the organism from without and all stimuli affecting behavior from within" (p. 59). Thus, adaptation level theory suggests that changing these stimuli may result in changing perceptions of price which, in turn, is likely to influence the manner in which people evaluate price increases. Focal stimuli are those to which visitors are exposed in state parks and that attract their attention. They include current price, quality condition, and services that are provided (McCarville & Crompton, 1987b). However, perceptions of focal stimuli are strongly influenced by contextual and residual stimuli that provide a framework within which an encoded message is evaluated. McCarville and Crompton (1987b) referred to contextual stimuli as "background variables that provide the context within which the focal stimuli are considered" (p. 224). In the context of public swimming pools, they noted that contextual cues included knowledge of pool location, of services offered, and of the magnitude of city tax dollars used to subsidize the pool's operation. Crompton and Lamb (1986) suggested that contextual cues could be changed to increase clientele groups' perceptions of value, without improving facilities or services. Information messages offer one way of doing this and the empirical literature in recreation reviewed later in the paper validates this strategy. …

Sun/Lost City's position as the pre-eminent resort in Africa was threatened in the 1990s when its monopoly on gambling in South Africa was removed. In response to the new competition, the resort embarked on a research program to explore what marketing actions it should pursue. As part of this overall program, this project involved conducting personal interviews with 302 visitors to Sun/Lost City, South Africa. The study was intended to explore the potential of using the interface between benefits and constraints to identify optimum target markets among existing visitors. The interview instrument contained 20 benefit items and 14 constraint items. Results of factor analyses showed a four-factor solution on the benefit items and a three-factor solution on the constraint items. The domain mean scores were used to group respondents into three constraint and three benefit clusters. The clusters were described by selected behavioral variables. The two sets of clusters were cross-tabulated to produce nine market segments. From among these, four potential target markets were identified as being likely to offer the best return on marketing effort.

This study tests the relative efficacy of different types of information messages on customers' willingness to pay half of the regular daily entrance price and purchase a half-priced 'Texas Conservation Passport' (TCP). A sample of 4,093 was selected through mail survey. The experimental design used in this study was an extension of the Posttest-Only Control Group Design that included one control message and three treatment messages. Out of two hypotheses built by the author, one hypothesis that asked whether respondents had willingness to pay half price for a TCP after the four information messages were provided, was rejected, while the other hypothesis was not rejected. Thus, results of this study partially confirmed the effects of information messages on consumers' decision making.

The purpose of this study is to determine the direct, indirect, and induced impact of a birding festival on a local economy. Nonresident visitors to the 7th Annual HummerlBird Celebration (September 7-10, 1995) in RockportlFulton region, Texas, spent over $1.1 milIion. Substantial economic impacts were also realized in terms of total gross output, employee compensation, and employment. The results indicate that spending among nonresident visitors contributed about $2.5 milIion in total gross output in the local community. In addition, it contributed about $0.8 million in personal income and also contributed about 73 full-time and/or part-time jobs to the local community. By documenting the direct, indirect, and induced impacts of birding festivals, event organizers and community leaders may be in a beller position to create interest in preserving natural resources and birding habitats. This study will provide event organizers and community leaders with microeconomic data, which may be useful for their investment decisions related to future birding festivals.

The branding concept has been burgeoning from product branding and extending to service, corporate, and further nation branding (Papadopoulous & Heslop, 2002). The concept found in the tourism literature has been mostly adapted to a tourism destination (e.g., Gartner & Konecnik Ruzzier, 2011; Im, Kim, Elliot & Han, 2012). However, unlike characteristics of a manufactured product, a tourism destination has difficulties in terms of definition, measurement, and conceptualization (Murphy, Moscardo & Benckendorff, 2007). As a consequence, there has been a shortage of empirical research relating to the application of the branding concept to tourism destination management organizations spanning from national to local tourism organizations (Blain, Levy & Ritchie, 2005; Pike, 2010). To understand tourism destination branding, recently, studies have been conducted in the context of destination branding as a part of destination marketing strategy (Morgan, Prichard & Pride, 2001), brand identity and personality (Morgan et al., 2001; Murphy, Moscardo & Benckendorff, 2007), and brand logos and slogans (Blain et al., 2005; Hem & Iversen, 2004). The concept of the destination brand equity will be applied to Hong Kong tourists who are traveling to Switzerland. Switzerland is becoming a hot spot for Chinese long-haul trips following European destinations like UK, France, or Italy. Since a decade the core countries of the European Alps Switzerland concentrates more specifically on the Chinese market and with a time lag of a few years the overnight stays have started growing (Schmid, 2012). Since 2008 the overnight stays of Chinese touristsindicated a double- digit jump over the last five years and resulted in an accumulated growth rate of 246.9 percent, that is, the overnight stays per year climbed from 214,000 (2008) to 744,000 (2012) (BFS, 2009 & 2013). The Swiss Tourism Board estimated 2 million overnight stays from China in 2020. In this case China would overturn the neighboring country Italy as one of the key source markets for Switzerland (Schmid, 2012). The high increase in Chinese tourists led to marketing efforts of Switzerland Tourism and the Swiss Hotel Association hotelleriesuisse with their initiative “Hallo China” (Switzerland Tourism, 2004). At first, the main purpose of this study is to conceptualize destination brand equity. Second, it is to propose a destination brand equity model. Third, it is to test the model using a sample of Hong Kong tourists who travel to Switzerland. Fourth, it is to investigate characteristics of tourism products preferred by Hong Kong tourists. Fifth, it is to explore how their preferences for tourism products are different according to their travel-related or demographic variables. This study expects those outcomes and benefits. Frist, components consisting of destination brand equity model and conceptual model will be generated. Second, brand equity of Switzerland as perceived by Hong Kong tourists will be tested. Third, better understanding of Hong Kong tourists regarding their perception of Swiss image, level of awareness, overall quality, loyalty, and overall brand equity will be facilitated. Fourth, most previous studies focused only on preference, behavior or attitudes of Hong Kong tourists who travel in a short-haul distance. On the contrary, this study attempts to understand Hong Kong tourists to a long-haul tourism destination, here Europe. Fifth, according to specialization theory, more specialized tourists tend to select more far-way and more risky destination because their knowledge is growing and a range of their selection is diverse. In an increasing future trend in demand of overseas Chinese tourists, this study attempts to identify long-haul Hong Kong tourists’ preference, attitude or behavior in Europe.

Aims to enhance theoretical and practical understanding of quality management in tourism and hospitality. This book contains 28 chapters by international experts, highlighting the tensions and challenges in tourism and hospitality services management.

(1996). Launching of the Asia pacific tourism association. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research: Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 77-79.

Using data collected from 517 visitors to a birding festival, interrelationship were investigated among two social-psychological measures of involvement (Laurent and Kapferer's IP and Zaichkowsky's...