Purpose The popularity of mobile technologies and applications is constantly growing and undoubtedly changing consumers’ and providers’ behavior. The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive systematic literature review of academic research related to mobile technologies and applications in smart tourism published between 2012 and June 2017. Design/methodology/approach Published peer-reviewed articles were gathered from the three largest and most popular online databases and search engines – EBSCO host, Science Direct and Google Scholar and ENTER conference proceedings. Based on a keyword-driven search and content analysis, 126 articles were determined to be relevant to this study. Findings Selected publications were analyzed in accordance with the proposed research questions and thematically classified into three main categories: consumer perspective, technological perspective and provider perspective. The findings contribute to a better overall understanding of recent research into mobile technologies and applications in smart tourism by presenting the main results, methods, trends and other insights of relevant publications. Research limitations/implications Although the researchers used two databases, one search engine and ENTER conference proceedings to collect articles, there is the possibility that some studies connected to the topic were not included. The study did not include books, other conference proceedings, literature reviews, theses, business reports and other possibly relevant publications. Originality/value This study provides a systematic review of the most recent published academic research (2012-June 2017; also including “Online First” articles) on mobile technologies and applications in smart tourism. The results of this study provide an agenda for future research in tourism and hospitality industry by identifying major trends and developments in smart tourism.
PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine how hotel brands communicate on social media before and during the pandemic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in relation to the tourism season.Design/methodology/approachTo gain insights into the communication of Italian hotel brands on social media, this study applies a qualitative methodology. Using the text mining technique, topic modelling was conducted on a sample of 5,032 posts from Italian 5-star hotel brands shared on the hotels' official Facebook pages.FindingsThe results show that hotel brands used essentially the same communication strategy in the tourism seasons before and after the pandemic outbreak, but with a particular focus on trust, safety and cordiality during the pandemic. Hotel brands focussed intensively on brand awareness, customer engagement and special activities that promote memorable and authentic experiences as well as luxury service quality.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the theoretical and empirical sense by bridging the concepts of tourism and hospitality, social media and corporate communication.
While social media have become a daily routine in modern society, brand communication and engagement with customers have become essential elements of marketing strategy and success in the tourism and hotel industry. This revolution of social media, in tourism and hospitality marketing, contributed to the rise of a novel sentiment analysis from a machine learning and natural language processing point of view. The purpose of the study is: to provide a general descriptive overview of comments posted by Facebook page followers; to identify specific textual attributes of hotel brand posts on social media and to apply the sentiment analysis to Facebook comments from four- and five-star hotel brands in Croatia to identify and compare customers’ feelings and attitudes towards the staff, services and products that hotel brands promote by posting messages on Facebook pages. To analyse hotel brand sentiments, the authors collected a total of 4,248 comments and 2,373 postings in English, German and Italian. The results showed that the comments on four- and five-star hotel brands expressed predominantly positive sentiments. Despite the positively oriented sentiments in the comments, Facebook page followers are predominantly passive users and do not tend to comment actively. The results can be used by marketers in the tourism and hospitality industry to plan their future social media communication strategies.
The concept of customer experience has received considerable attention in various disciplines, particularly in tourism and hospitality research. However, the aesthetic guest experience has hardly been investigated in previous studies. Aesthetics involves what makes an object beautiful and what people feel when they encounter a beautiful object. Dining experience encompasses almost all senses together, which makes it difficult to measure this concept properly. Considering the important role of aesthetics in the dining experience, this study provides a review and synthesis of the literature to establish a foundation for the conceptual framework for measuring the aesthetic guest experience in restaurants. The main objectives of this study are to categorise and summarise the research on aesthetic guest experience, present a new conceptualization and conceptual model of the aesthetic guest experience in restaurants, and highlight the emerging trends and gaps in the literature. The findings of this study contribute to aesthetic theory and offer practical implications for restaurant managers regarding all aesthetic components that should be considered when designing a memorable aesthetic restaurant experience.
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