No abstract

The present study investigates the factors that affect tourists' satisfaction towards food festivals and explores whether tourists intend to revisit and/or recommend food festivals to others. Based on personal interviews with 40 study subjects, eight factors that affect their satisfaction levels were identified: location and accessibility, food, venue facility, environment/ambiance, service, entertainment, timing and festival size. The majority of tourists were satisfied with the Macau Food Festival and intended to revisit and recommend it to others. The presented findings have practical implications for food festival organizers to further attract food tourists. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Tourism shopping has been acknowledged as a primary travel motive. Yet research on the underlying dimensions, antecedents, and consequences of tourist shopping satisfaction has not received adequate attention. The objective of this article is to explore tourist shopping satisfaction and examine its dimensionality. The authors systematically develop a scale that conceptualizes tourists’ shopping satisfaction as a four-dimensional construct that reflects tourists’ satisfaction of service product and environment, merchandise value, staff service quality, and service differentiation during their shopping excursion. Using this scale, the authors examine a structural model linking tourist facilities, as major destination attributes, to shopping satisfaction and shopping experience. This article ends with a discussion of the implications and future research directions.

No abstract

No abstract

This study describes the global casino and casino tourism boom. It investigates in detail the social, economic and environmental consequences of casino gaming in Macao since casino license liberalization in 2002. Building on earlier quantitative studies, in-depth face-to-face interviews with 17 key community leaders elicited their professional views on the impact of casino gaming on the community. The community leaders suggest that although casino gaming does make positive social, economic and environment contributions to the community, greater effort is needed to minimize its negative social and environmental consequences. Issues that need addressing include the changing values of teenagers, the high student drop-out rate, problem gambling and crime, changing family relationships, increasing tension between public needs and casino land requirements, traffic congestion, and air and noise pollution. Macao residents' acceptance level of the further development of casino gaming is found to be high, and their perceptions of its impact can be explained by the social exchange theory, rather than by social disruption theory. The results of this paper shed light on the community impact of casinos, and offer policy and governance implications for destination managers in Macao and other destinations with, or intentions to develop, casinos and gaming-related tourism.

No abstract

Purpose This paper aims to examine the environmental awareness, initiatives and performance in the Macau hotel industry. Design/methodology/approach A mixed research method was adopted involving quantitative surveys with 31 hotels in Macau and 11 face-to-face interviews with the hotel managers, facilities managers and engineers. Findings Response from surveys and interviews with 31 hoteliers show that hotels in Macau have a high level of environmental awareness. Most hoteliers actively introduce initiatives that contribute to cost savings. Initiatives including using energy conservation light bulbs, having an active system to detect/repair leaking facilities and installing water conserving fixtures are widely implemented, while programs involving using solar lawn light, recycling leftover food and reusing wastewater are not. Major barriers for going green include the lack of government regulations on environmental management (EM), financial constraints, the lack of employees to handle EM and the fear that environmental initiatives may negatively impact the guest’s experience, especially those VIP and hardcore gamblers and customers who expect enjoying the luxuries services in Macau hotels. Lower star hotels experience more difficulties in adopting green approaches. Research limitations/implications This paper presents a single case study of Macau; therefore, the results in this research may have limited generalizability. Originality/value This paper is one of the very few attempts that investigate EM in Macau – a renowned world tourism and gambling destination, where the vast majority of hotels have their casino facilities. Results show that apart from the financial consideration and the lack of government enforcement to adopt green measures similar to hotels in other destinations, EM practices of Macau’s hotels are also constrained by its customer base and the acute shortage of human resources that is caused by the tourism boom.