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Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to review the impact electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) has had on the hospitality and tourism industry and to discuss changes that will affect its future. The paper's touchpoint is our earlier paper (Litvin et al., 2008), which proposed that eWOM was to become a major influence as a conduit of travelers' views and opinions. Design/methodology/approach-The article summarizes arguments in our earlier paper, describing ways in which eWOM has evolved into the influential system it has become, with special emphasis on the growth of mobile media as a platform for eWOM dissemination. Findings-We conclude that eWOM has fulfilled its promise to become a major influence on the hospitality and tourism industry and will continue to play an essential role in hospitality marketing for the foreseeable future. Practical implications-We provide examples of successful media campaigns and propose strategies for hospitality and tourism businesses under the categories. Originality/value-eWOM has emerged to become a highly influential element of modern marketing strategy. This look back at an early eWOM article, with reflection on changes that ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH IN HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM MANAGEMENT REVISITED

Hofstede's five cross-cultural dimensions have been broadly applied in the literature. Money and Crotts recently applied the dimension of uncertainty avoidance to a matched sample comprised of low uncertainty avoidance German and high uncertainty avoidance Japanese tourists, finding their behaviours consistent with those behaviours predicted by Hofstede. This study both replicates and extends their research across a representative sample of first time leisure visitors to the USA representing 58 nations. It was found that visitors from high uncertainty avoidance cultures exhibited behaviours consistent with those of the Japanese in the Money and Crotts research, whereas visitors from low-uncertainty avoidance cultures behaved similarly to their German subjects. Such findings, across a broad sample population, validate the original research through a more rigorous test of its propositions, provide increased confidence regarding their generalisability, and further contribute to our understanding of the influence of national culture on tourist behaviour.

Self-image congruity, the relationship between one’s self-image and one’s image of a product or service, is a widely accepted consumer behaviour theory lately finding currency in tourism literature. For tourism, as a global industry involving international tourists from varied cultural backgrounds, it is important to explore how the theory holds across a broad spectrum of cultures. To test the concept’s cross-cultural applicability, an exit survey which overlaid the concept of self-image congruity with Geert Hofstede’s cross-cultural dimension of individualism/collectivism was administered to vacation travellers from multiple cultures as they departed Singapore airport. The results affirmed the applicability of the concept of self-image congruity for tourism research and, extending this understanding, suggested that the concept enjoyed enhanced robustness when considered in conjunction with the cultural moderating variable of individualism/collectivism.

Understanding family/spousal vacation decision making is important to tourism marketers. Twenty-five years ago, Jenkins divided the process into multiple subdecisions, such as where to visit or how much to spend, and studied how a sample of U.S. families allocated their decision-making responsibility for these decisions between the spouses. The current research, based on Jenkins’s work, uses recent data extracted from two sample populations, one from the United States and the other composed of Singaporean couples, to revisit the question. Whereas Jenkins found a large percentage of decision making to have been “husband-dominant,” the current studies each found a significant trend toward joint decision making. The article discusses the apparent trend and suggests, a generation after Jenkins’ work, how these new findings may be of value to tourism marketers promoting the family vacation product.