United States

Alternative tourism contributes to the sustainable development of tourism and, among other things, to the active participation of communities in the management of tourism development in their territories, for which it is considered necessary to study the concept, characteristics and benefits of alternative tourism, as well as its relationship with sustainable development and tourist competitiveness, which lead to a methodology to evaluate the potential of a territory as an alternative tourism destination. The main objective of this study is to design an Index of Sustainable Development in Alternative Tourism (IDSTA) based on the indicators of tourist competitiveness that are focused on the dimensions of sustainable development, as a tool for identifying the capacities of an associated territory to the development of alternative tourism. This index was validated in a country considered an emerging destination and its different regions (departments or states). The main findings indicate that at the country level, the territory is suitable for the development of alternative tourism, while the analysis by grouping of departments (cluster analysis) shows three large groups, the first with optimal conditions for the development of alternative tourism , the second has a medium level and, the last group must strengthen its characteristics for alternative tourism.

TOUR 2021

Alternative tourism development index: Review and implications

emerging destination

tourism competitiveness

alternative tourism

technical paper

Dear Delegates, 

On behalf of the organizing committee at UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management and Elsevier, I have the greatest pleasure to welcome you to the **6th World Research Summit for Tourism and Hospitality: Resilience, Adaptability, and Innovation.** 

Though we cannot host you this year owing to Covid-19 at our beautiful resort-like campus in Orlando, Florida, we believe this virtual and live-streamed conference will provide an interactive, dynamic, and shared international platform for global academics and practitioners to discuss how to enhance research applications and knowledge management through resilience, adaptability, digital intelligence, innovation, and smart knowledge in bringing our industry and research back to normal. This summit particularly offers unique opportunities to unfold and embrace various repercussions of COVID-19 pandemic with various stakeholders, including academic researchers, industry professionals, and government officials, through dialogues on how to better utilize research outputs for the benefits of the industry, in a resilient, intelligent and innovative way. 

I hope you will agree that we have put together a wonderful program including keynote speeches, panel discussions, concurrent presentations, poster sessions, and best paper recognition and award ceremony. We hope you will take advantage of these activities and engage yourself with great learning and sharing opportunities during the two days of the Summit. Thank you for joining us and we look forward to our discussions! 

Sincerely, 
Dr. Youcheng Wang 
Dean and Preeminent Chair Professor

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This conference provides an interactive, dynamic, and shared international platform for global academics and practitioners to discuss how to enhance research applications and knowledge management through resilience, adaptability, digital intelligence, innovation, and smart knowledge in bringing our industry and research back to normal. This summit particularly offers unique opportunities to unfold and embrace various repercussions of COVID-19 pandemic with various stakeholders, including academic researchers, industry professionals, and government officials, through dialogues on how to better utilize research outputs for the benefits of the industry, in a resilient, intelligent and innovative way.

Tourists often look to residents to select destinations; they perceive residents' insights of persistent, recurrent, and geographically bounded environmental hazards as a reliable, trustworthy, and authentic source of information, to the extent of influencing their travel decisions. Residents’ insights are instinctively rooted at the collective learning that is developed in past discourse, which is amplified in the absence of official communication guidelines around environmental hazards. Hence, exploring residents’ discourse dynamics offers great value in understanding their potential to influence a destination’s image. This study aims to explore residents’ discourse on a hallmark case study: Florida’s 2017-2019 Harmful Algae Bloom known as Florida Red Tide. Florida Red Tide’s discourse was analyzed by performing a combination of social network analysis and text analysis (qualitative and quantitative) on geotagged Twitter posts from Florida during the persistent localized environmental hazard. Results indicate that discourse on Florida Red Tide is tangled with social and political realities beyond the hazard impacts. Discourse evolves around specific destinations that continually suffer from the persistent and localized event of Red Tide, while the most involved counties in the conversation are in South Florida. Discourse on Florida Red Tide is fragmented and occasional, with the highest engagement during the 2018 period of the bloom. Residents’ insights contain speculative components along with scientific facts, revealing an injection of risk from such discourse to the destination’s image. Our findings contribute to the literature on environmental hazards and tourism, by providing novel insights of the complexity inherent in the socio-ecological systems in which the tourism phenomenon exists. Furthermore, our findings offer insights for destination management organizations on the importance of cooperation with other institutions to raise awareness and create communication strategies for residents on persistent localized environmental stressors, aligned to support a positive destination image.

Social media discourse’s effects on persistent localized environmental hazards in tourist destination selection: An exploratory assessment

The 2021 Fourth Annual Gansu Baiyin mountain ultramarathon was an immense tragedy in which 21 marathoners were killed due to extreme weather. Recent trends in hosting outdoor sporting events in tourist attractions have played an important role to expand the Chinese tourist market. Although the risk of frequent accidents is recognized, outdoor sporting events still need more scholarly attention because of the different causation in each incident. This paper seeks to investigate the use of a system-based technique for accident analysis, which is the AcciMap approach by Rasmussen (1997). Several attempts have been made to adopt the AcciMap approach in the outdoor recreation domain, which was acknowledged as applicable so far. The findings have shown that the AcciMap approach is suitable for investigating severe incidents that happened in outdoor sporting events. The analysis conforms to the statement that multiple factors are interacted to cause an accident. Moreover, this study illustrates how those factors lead to the outcome, which provides insights for examining associations between them. In conclusion, suggestions on risk management for hosting future outdoor sporting events in tourists attractions are discussed, in the hope of preventing similar events from occurring and calling for a better combination of sport and tourism.

How to improve risk management in sport tourism: Applying the AcciMap approach to examine Gansu ultramarathon incident

This study aimed to evaluate the use of food delivery apps (FDA) during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. A total of 950 questionnaires were collected, covering four Brazilian regions: Southeast, Central-West, Northeast, and South. The data was collected during the peak of the second wave of the pandemic. A questionnaire with 39 measurement items was applied using an online survey. These items were evaluated using a five-point Likert scale covering the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2). The data was analyzed using covariance-based structural equation modeling. About 47% of consumers use FDA weekly. The continuance intention of FDA during the pandemic in Brazil was affected by performance expectancy (β =0.496; p <0.001), social influence (β =0.094; p <0.001), hedonic motivation (β =0.068; p =0.003), price value (β =0.103; p <0.001), habit (β =0.305; p <0.001), frequency of using FDA (β =0.051; p =0.04), and solidarity with the foodservice sector (β =0.090; p <0.001). It was also observed that the continuance intention reduces risk perception (β = -0.403; p <0.001), and risk perception reduces the frequency of using FDA (β =0.178 p <0.001). The results indicate that the UTAUT2 strongly explains consumers’ continuance intention. Differences in path estimates among Brazilian regions were observed, indicating some regional differences. It was possible to observe a tendency of using FDA during and after the pandemic, motivated by several factors. The FDA developers and foodservice managers could use this data to improve their services. Policies must be established to increase consumer and employee safety during the delivery service. This study was supported in part by São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) grant #2019/10936-0

The use of food delivery apps during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil: The role of solidarity, perceived risk and regional aspects



Intramuros is hailed as UNESCO World Heritage Site owing to its historical wealth. A must-visit area, there is a tourist influx amidst the COVID-19 lockdowns and travel restrictions. With the vaccine roll-out, the Philippine Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) allowed the resumption of tourism with 30% capacity in establishments among other guidelines to guard against the spread of the virus.




This study incorporates the requirements of the IATF, including physical distancing as the health and safety of the visitors, are prioritized in the re-opening of tourism. It hopes to illustrate how the modified Potential Physical Carrying Capacity (PPCC) can further be used for other destinations to promote sustainable tourism in the country amidst the pandemic.




Anchored on the work of Boullon (1985) in which the average individual standard of psychological comfort of tourists was considered, the formulae were modified to incorporate physical distancing and the maximum tourist capacity guidelines set by the IATF. The datasets used were downloaded from Openstreet Map, which in turn were computed so that only polygons that represent tourist attractions within Intramuros are left in the analysis. Based on land use and areas, tourist sites represented by polygons were highlighted using GIS software.




The study shows that PPCC within Intramuros ranges from 7-350 people per hour with the Fort Santiago complex having the largest of three hundred fifty (350) and Plazuela Madre Francisca del Espiritu Santo de Fuentes having the smallest with seven (7).




Notwithstanding that the tourism industry was hardest hit by the pandemic, it is critical to have the modified PPCC in the computation of the physical carrying capacity of the destination sites. Proper planning and good governance are made more efficient as the industry adapts to the new normal if this model will be used as the basis.

"Intra-muros”: An assessment of the physical carrying capacity of Intramuros in the time of COVID-19

The tourism and hospitality industry is most affected by the pandemic. Destinations most reliant on tourism for social and economic growth are prone to be hit hardest. Developing effective recovery strategies in this unprecedented time to support the tourism and hospitality sectors is crucial. Government and local tourism boards have been developing and promoting various tourism support schemes for the tourism and hospitality industry stakeholders. When travel restrictions are still in place, local tourism promotions are becoming vital to restart tourism for most destinations.

This study uses a case study of a travel campaign in 2020, the “Go to Travel” campaign from Japan, to raise stakeholders’ awareness of the importance of marketing communication strategy. The Japanese government encouraged collaboration across different parties, such as airlines, hotels, and local hospitality and tourism businesses, to embrace this marketing initiative. Nevertheless, the media criticized the campaign could worsen the outbreak as tourists' mobility will increase the risk of transmission. This implied that the insensitivity of the local tourism board in implementing the tourism recovery plan. The study discusses and recommends effective ways to launch and monitor a tourism recovery marketing campaign.

Tourism marketing campaign for COVID-19 post-crisis recovery - A case study of the“Go to Travel” campaign in Japan

Introduction

The current study examines the influence of hotel websites’ text-image congruence on viewers’ perceived trustworthiness, perceived ease of image, perceived credibility, perceived attitude, perceived fluency, and their booking intention.

Method

The data was collected from travelers who had booked a hotel room directly through a hotel’s website within the past 12 months. A total of 300 survey were collected. After the elimination of the missing values, 242 samples were utilized for the data analyses.

For the data analysis, the two-step approach suggested by Anderson and Gerbing (1988) was used. In the first step, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to test the validity of the measurement scales. A series of fit indices were used to assess the model fit for the measurement model. Cronbach’s alpha was used to assess the reliability of measurement scales. In the second step, structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the study hypotheses. Same series of fit indices were used to evaluate the model fit for the structural model.

Results

The results of both CFA analysis and SEM indicated that chi-square to degree of freedom ratio was less than the recommended value of 3 (Hair et al., 1998). In addition, other goodness-of-fit indices such as room mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), goodness of fit (GFI), comparative fit index (CFI), and normed fit index (NFI) were examined. The results indicated a reasonable model fit (Hair et al., 2010). Except H2d, rest of hypotheses were supported. (Table 1)

Discussion

The findings of current study offer important practical implications. Practically, the results help hotel managers to reveal better website design strategies to increase sales and drive repeat business.

Assessing the effects of text-image congruence on hotel guests’ information perceptions and booking intention

The COVID-19 pandemic affected numerous economic sectors, in addition to social, behavioral, and psychological aspects of the world population. Among the observed sectors, exhibitions and their stakeholders were impacted, including exhibition assemblers. In this article, we presented the results of a mixed exploratory research, investigating the impacts of the pandemic on exhibition assemblers in the city of Sao Paulo/Brazil. The research problem was the analysis of the impact of COVID-19 for owners/managers and employees of exhibition assemblers under the hospitality and competitiveness dimensions, and we suggested the following propositions: (P1) the assemblers of exhibition businesses in Sao Paulo/Brazil were negatively impacted on their work routine by the dissemination of COVID-19; and (P2) in times of crisis, assemblers in the exhibition sector have increased their competitiveness by innovating their operation area. For the preparation and development of this study, we presented central concepts of hospitality and competitiveness by authors in different research lines, as well as assemblers’ definitions and updated data on the impacts of COVID-19 in the sector. The field research was divided into two stages, the first being qualitative (through an interview script, in the form of in-depth interviews with owners, managers and members of institutions of the area), and the second, quantitative (through survey with collaborators of the assemblers). As findings, we observed the restructuration of the area during the pandemic, with the emergence of hybrid events and the adoption of new technologies to broaden the consumer experiences. Quantitative data suggested an interesting relationship with the analyzed constructs. For future studies, we suggest the analysis of other stakeholders, continuing the investigation of the impacts of COVID-19 on exhibition segment and the behavior of the post-pandemic market.

Hospitality in the age of Covid: The impact on exhibition assemblers

The covid-19 pandemic has generated an unprecedented crisis that has challenged the restaurants and hotels industry. In Brazil, these sectors are still overcoming the challenges through competitive advantage strategies. In this regard, this research intends to answer the following problem: What's the perception of restaurant and hotels employees about the competitive advantage strategies applied by organizations during the pandemic crisis? The main objective of the research is to analyze through the application of online surveys the perception of employees about the aspects that provide competitive advantage and survival of the businesses in the previously mentioned sectors during the crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The propositions are: (P1) Considering the COVID-19 pandemic crisis scenario, stakeholders in the hotel and restaurant sector presented competitive advantage factors; (P2) the COVID-19 pandemic threatened the survival of businesses operating in the restaurant and hotel sector. This study uses a mixed-methods approach. In the first stage, the authors used relevant bibliography about hospitality to do the literature review, afterward semi-structured interviews were employed using the snowball technique to contemplate professional aspects and the services routines of these organizations. The interviews with hotel and restaurants managers showed aspects such as the influence of the pandemic on the services routine and the relationship with their stakeholders. The results showed that both sectors tried to apply innovative measures to deal with the crisis. The moment brought the businesses closer to their stakeholders, forming partnerships. The interviews express similarities between the sectors regarding the challenges experienced concerning sales reduction, employee dismissal, and strict safety and hygiene protocols to demonstrate credibility to customers. The research shows a gap in knowledge from the employee's point of view, justifying this research follow up to a quantitative stage applied to employees of hotels and restaurants.

In search of survival: The impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on the hotel and restaurant sector

The present study offers a bibliometric review of the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) research in hospitality and tourism with a specific focus on the progress and applications of AI in various facets of the industry. To that end, this study aims to present the prevailing state of research on AI to highlight the emerging themes and issues, while providing valuable insights and novel opportunities for hospitality decision-makers by drawing a clear picture of the current state of affairs of the industry as it relates to AI applications. This study employed a bibliometric approach and analyzed the relevant articles that were published in hospitality and tourism journals. Theoretically, this study’s findings contribute to the discourse on AI in hospitality and tourism research by providing an overview of the bibliometric methodology and utilizing bibliometric techniques to offer insights into the interdisciplinary structure of hospitality and tourism research.

A critical review of artificial intelligence research in hospitality and tourism

The contemporary era is experiencing a paradigm shift through the use of digital technologies when most travelers are millennials and tech-savvy. In this vein, augmented reality (AR) provides an enriched travel experience through the 3D real environment in real-time by giving useful information, comprehensive guides and navigation for travelers. Such scenarios are providing avenues for the achievement of sustainable development of tourism through addressing environmental, social and economic aspects. Therefore, the present study aims to illuminate the current state of knowledge related to the nexus of augmented reality (AR) and sustainable development of tourism by integrative literature review. Methodologically, the integrative literature review included peer-reviewed studies from the web of science (WoS) and used ATLAS.ti 9.1 qualitative data analysis software. The findings of the study based on word cloud, identified codes, and future research agenda based on the identified gaps are of great worth to address the areas of concern related to the enhanced use of augmented reality in the vein of sustainable development of tourism. The findings will inform the relevant stakeholders about the current status and use of augmented reality (AR) in the context of sustainable development of tourism by highlighting the avenues for fostering tourism sustainability. The end part of the study also discusses the limitation of the research.

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