Astrid Dickinger

This paper discusses the role of context information in building the next generation of human-centered information systems, and classifies the various aspects of contextualization with a special emphasis on the production and consumption of digital content. The real-time annotation of resources is a crucial element when moving from content aggregators (which process third-party digital content) to context-aware visual authoring environments (which allow users to create and edit their own documents). We present a publicly available prototype of such an environment, which required a major redesign of an existing Web intelligence and media monitoring framework to provide real-time data services and synchronize the text editor with the frontend’s visual components. The paper concludes with a summary of achieved results and an outlook on possible future research avenues including multi-user support and the visualization of document evolution.

Due to a shift in the marketing focus from mass to micro markets, the importance of one-to-one communication in advertising has increased. Interactive media provide possible answers to this shift. However, missing standards in payment models for interactive media are a hurdle in the further development. The paper reviews interactive advertising payment models. Furthermore, it adapts the popular FCB grid as a tool for both advertisers and publishers or broadcasters to examine effective interactive payment models.

The preamble and the three studies of the dissertation are designed to answer two research questions. First, "What is the anatomy of service experience value from customer and provider perspectives?, followed by "How do contextual factors influence the service providers' capacity to recover value when services fail?" The preamble introduces the concept of value, outlining its evolution, emphasizing the critical disparities among the dominant research perspectives, and justifying the urgency of the present research. The dissertation adopts the Grönroos-Voima value model to tap into value co-creation processes across three spheres: customers, service providers, and joint sphere. This is done by uncovering the structure of the customer value-in-use perceptions (Study 1), evaluating service providers' value proposition against those perceptions (Study 2), and assessing the impact of service recovery actions on customers forgiveness and service expectations in the context of varying prior service experiences and harm direction (Study 3). The dissertation identified the fifteen key attributes describing the value of the hotel experiences and uncovered the critical discrepancies between the value perceptions and value proposition narratives. It also determined the varying effect of prior service recovery experience and service recovery actions on forgiveness on victims and observers of service transgressions. Each study outlined the limitations of the empirical research along with the theoretical and managerial implications of the findings.

Travelers' use of the Internet as an information source has been the subject of research in the past. Most studies focus on the search process; however, the influence of the actual search goal on search behavior has been neglected. Travelers' interactions with a website may depend on whether they search for precise factual information or rather stimulus driven and unplanned. This article provides an overview of literature on information search and shows how searchers who are browsing a website just for fun or are searching for factual information differ in their perception. A survey among 445 travelers will give insight into search behavior depending on the search setting. The results indicate that the main drivers for value and satisfaction for a goal-directed search are content quality followed by usefulness. These effects are attenuated for the experiential search. Further, ease of use is only significant for the goal-directed search group while enjoyment only exhibits effects for experiential searchers.

Online Information Search: Differences between Goal-Directed and Experiential Search (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232260352_Online_Information_Search_Differences_between_Goal-Directed_and_Experiential_Search [accessed Mar 2, 2016].

Bitcoin, a cryptographic currency invented by Satoshi Nakamoto, has been increasingly embraced by consumers as an online payment method since its introduction. Though an increasing number of tourism enterprises start offering Bitcoin as a payment option, Bitcoin has not yet been subjected to rigorous scientific scrutiny. This exploratory study purports to investigate the Bitcoin usage experience in and Bitcoin usage intention for shopping travel product online by European travellers. Drawing on the responses provided by 138 European travellers, the results exhibit that the penetration of Bitcoin usage in online travel purchase among European travellers is tentatively not prominent. Respondents however reported that they will purchase some travel products and particularly restaurant and food delivery online using Bitcoin in the future. The findings are helpful for tourism and hospitality operators by informing their decision making of whether an investment should be made in order to accept Bitcoin as a payment option.

Travelers have used the Internet as an information channel for years and more recently also started to produce content themselves. With an abundance of information channels competing for customers’ attention, researchers and practitioners need to better understand which online channels are trustworthy and consulted for travel-related factual information or for reports on experiences. Thus, this article compares the trustworthiness of three different online channels (personal, marketing, and editorial). The results of the experiment indicate that user-generated content appears to be highly trustworthy, showing high levels of integrity; however, it is not always regarded as the most informative. Editorial content providers, such as tourist boards, are considered to be the most able information provider. The results confirm that depending on the type of online channel, different dimensions of trustworthiness become effective as drivers of overall trust.

Firms are increasingly using the mobile media for communication and promotion and Short Message Service (SMS), in particular. This study investigates consumers' intentions to redeem mobile (m-) coupons. Results from a survey of 370 mobile phone users in Austria indicate that consumers' attitude toward and perceived control of m-coupons affect their intention to redeem such coupons. The effort involved in redeeming m-coupons strongly affects consumers' attitudes toward m-coupons, and fear of mobile spam influences consumers' per-ceived control with regard to commercial SMS. Value seekers are more sensitive to the effort involved in redeeming m-coupons and to mobile spam than are other consumers. The results suggest that firms should not overwhelm consumers with m-coupons, consider the usability of m-coupons in deciding the right offer, and educate their consumers about how to use the m-coupons.

This study delves into the realm of sustainable tourism development, focusing on social innovation. It addresses a gap in existing literature by exploring the drivers and barriers of social innovation in community model destinations taking the networked nature of the tourism industry into account. Through in-depth interviews with stakeholders and participant observations, factors influencing social innovation at the micro, meso, and macro levels are uncovered. This research extends previous work on the interconnectedness of social entrepreneurial factors and innovation. Further, it emphasizes altruistic motivations, knowledge sharing and awareness building in addition to economic viability as essential at the micro level, while the importance of local networks, role models and the inclusion of local communities is essential at the meso level. Authenticity, as well as economic and political factors are macro influences to be navigated. This research offers direction for responsible and community-oriented tourism practices aligned with sustainable development goals.

The core objectives of this exploratory study are (1) to examine the friendliness of destination websites for mobiles and (2) to profile the features available in different versions of mobile destination websites. Through employing the device emulator testing approach to analyze websites of top destinations in the Asia Pacific region, this study finds that destination marketing organizations in the Asia Pacific region have been optimizing their official websites for mobiles over the past few years. A responsive web design approach is predominantly used by the analyzed destination, and more features are founde to be available in "fully mobile-friendly websites".

An increasing number of companies utilize mobile communication such as advertisements via Short Message Service (SMS) or mobile payment to facilitate interaction with their customers. Given the manifold potentials of mobile technologies, it is not surprising that a lot of innovative business models and services are emerging. In this paper we first discuss various theories of technology diffusion and trial of technology, which are frequently used in information systems and marketing research. Subsequently, we present a system which allows ordering products by simply photographing an advanced form of barcode, which can be placed on virtually any printed media, the product itself, or even be shown on television. We use a Structural Equation Modeling approach to measure the importance of various antecedents of trial, namely the ability to use a mobile technology, users’ role clarity, and both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, the role of previous experience as a moderator of the antecedents of technology trial is explored. The results show that there is a significant difference between experienced and inexperienced users regarding the trial of this service innovation.

The emergence of highly interactive media and the increased connectivity among people call for an investigation of usage behaviour of those media. People tend to rely heavily on peer-to-peer interaction influencing the adoption of new media formats that enhance this interactivity. The first explorative phase of this research consists of interviews with experts and focus groups and builds the basis of the proposed framework and measurement model. Then, a Structural Equation Modelling approach is used to assess the relative importance and the strength between different constructs, including perceived enjoyment, social norm, usefulness, ease of use and intention to use. The results indicate that perceived enjoyment and social norm are important antecedents for the adoption of technology with network externalities.

The Internet in general and social media in particular have changed the way travellers search for information, interact and communicate with companies and among their peers. Through social media, travellers are not only content consumers but also producers who provide detailed evaluations of their experiences in a destination. Given the abundance of hotel reviews, managers need cost effective, time saving and scalable systems to identify relevant customer evaluations. This text mining study presents insights into the analysis of reviews posted on TripAdvisor. A penalized Support Vector Machine identifies keywords representative for the most positive and negative reviews. These terms can be used as an early warning system by managers to efficiently monitor the online dialogue on their hotel. The benefit of the suggested approach is the selection of the most important terms regarding the weight of the term and not regarding mere term frequency.

With the abundant availability of Blogs and reviews marketers are facing the challenge of extracting relevant knowledge from these sources as these insights can be used for marketing intelligence. However, it is uncertain if the topics and the language used in Blogs reflect what researchers traditionally investigate in conventional image studies. This paper provides an overview of a method to automatically analyze thousands of Blog entries. Furthermore, it compares the findings of a conventional image study with the content mining approach to provide insights into destination image representation in the online and offline world. The results indicate that automated content analysis reproduces the findings from image studies to a great extent. Therefore they are a valuable additional source of information for DMOs.

While emojis serve as a proxy of emotion in digital environments and pave the way for new epistemological viewpoints in destination marketing, certain symbols fail to receive equal attention. This study explores the sentiment of emojis across social media posts featuring different destination characteristics and their impact on engagement. By employing topic modelling and permutation feature importance, the findings revealed 21 topics based on diverse tourism contexts and the relative importance of different emoji types in predicting engagement. Moreover, in addition to bridging semiotics, data science, and tourism, this research also provides a deeper understanding of leveraging visual semiotics through their embedded sentiment.

There is an abundance of blogs and reviews available which marketers can use to extract relevant knowledge. These insights can be used for marketing intelligence. However, it is uncertain if the topics and the language used in blogs reflect what researchers traditionally investigate in conventional studies. This article provides an overview of a method to automatically analyze thousands of blog entries. Within this context it compares the findings of a conventional image study with the content mining approach to provide insights into destination image representation in the online and offline world. The results indicate that automated content analysis reproduces the findings from image studies to a great extent, and therefore, the findings lend themselves for city benchmarking. Thus, it is concluded that blogs are a valuable additional source of information for destination marketing organizations.

Increasing internet use to access information and book trips significantly impacts the tourism industry and calls attention to learn more about website performance and evaluation. Specifically, how do tourists interact with websites? Which websites transform travelers into repeat visitors? Most research in this field employs multi-item measures conceptualized as reflective models. This paper suggests a theory-based alternative, formative measurement approach for website performance. The construct comprises eight dimensions: system availability, ease of use, usefulness, navigational challenge, website design, content quality, trust, and enjoyment. Website users identify dimensional indicators using evaluation surveys. Structural equation modeling examines linkages between the website performance index and outcome measures (satisfaction, value, and loyalty). Data provided by 455 travelers show the formative index works well. A second sample of 316 respondents cross-validates the findings. The study develops a sound and parsimonious measure allowing the monitoring and benchmarking of traveler perceptions over time.

The objective of this manifesto (as a result of the JITT workshop in June 2014) is to identify a list of pivotal research topics and issues in e-tourism. E-tourism can be seen as everything that happens electronically in the travel and tourism industry/experience; more formally it is defined as the design, implementation and application of IT and ecommerce solutions in the travel and tourism industry as well as the analysis of the impact of the respective technical and economic processes and market structures on all the involved actors and especially on the traveller’s experience. In tourism as an “information business”, Information Technology has always played an important role since the 1960s with the computerized reservation systems/global distribution systems; these were one of the first world-wide electronic networks. And since the beginning of the Web in the early 1990s, travel and tourism was and is a major application domain for Web-based services. As such, the domain is also a major driver of technological innovation. This manifesto provides guidelines on strategic research issues for the research community, but as such it is also conceived as a basis document for industry and policy makers.

Destination promotion videos (DPVs) are increasingly being used for online marketing and seen by travellers during the information search process. Yet, scholarly attention to DPVs is scarce and the research question of “how do DPVs influence viewers’ destination image change?” is unresolved. To fill these voids, this study (1) examines the projected image of Macau based on the video content analysis of their latest DPV; and (2) investigates the impact of viewing a DPV on viewers’ perceived destination image and on their behavioural intention to visit Macau. The efficacy of repeating—a framing method introduced by Entman (1991)—in influencing change in the DPV viewers’ image of the destination is highlighted. Findings from the experiment indicate that the content of DPVs and repeating certain shots are effective in positively enhancing travellers’ perceived destination image as well as triggering potential travellers’ interest in further researching and visiting the destination.

Focusing on the application of artificial intelligence, this study investigates the impact of emotional display on user engagement with computer-generated imagery influencers through the lens of the computers are social actors (CASA) framework. It breaks down emotions into individual muscle movements (i.e., facial action units). By using facial recognition based on 1,028 pictures shared by Lil Miquela, the findings disclose the significance of happiness, sadness, disgust, and surprise in triggering user engagement when promoting diverse products with visually captivating content. The findings highlight the importance of balancing the intensity of muscle movement to streamline the interplay between technology, human behaviour, and digital communication.

Collaborative approaches to destination design require conscious and reflexive stakeholder involvement in activities and decision making. Design science studies such participatory processes by observing design teams in practice. From these observations, scientists have identified design strategies and processes that design teams use to support their work in identifying problems and developing solutions. Observing design processes in tourism destinations provides an opportunity to identify successful co-design strategies for destination design. This study presents three key co-design strategies based on data collected from five living labs in five destinations. Each co-design strategy is presented with a recommended use, suggestions for stakeholder involvement, and activities to develop solutions efficiently and effectively with the available resources. Together, the strategies provide a framework to optimise decision-making in relation to shaping destination design processes, and to validate processes and outcomes.

It is well established in marketing literature that aligning value creation with customers' aspirations promotes satisfaction, repurchasing, and competitiveness. This study employs structural topic modeling and sentiment analyses on online documents to provide an empirical account of value alignment from customers' and service providers' perspectives. This generates insights into i) the attributes valued by customers and service providers, respectively, ii) the valence of those attributes, iii) the sources of value formation, iv) the value alignment between customers and service providers, and v) the relative importance of value attributes for budget and upscale hotels. The results indicate that guests focus on interaction, cleanliness, and comfort, while service providers most frequently discuss service-related aspects; however, the first two attributes also affect hotel ratings. Furthermore, the sources of value differ in terms of valence. These insights show that structural topic modeling is a scalable approach to understanding value from both perspectives.

In order to capture a strong position in the highly competitive tourism market, tourism destinations need to better understand the technological dynamics and develop proactive strategies. Social media spaces provide new opportunities for destination marketing organizations to reach out to consumers and learn about tourists’ opinion regarding the destination. Moreover, positioning a destination around the feelings it generates, and its ability to offer visitors unique experiences, relationships, meanings and self-expressions is a strong competitive advantage nowadays. Hence, this study analyzes the concept of destination brand personality and emotions reflected in TripAdvisor reviews among the different service settings (restaurants, hotels, and sights). Comparing the results with a survey-based method reveals interesting differences. In particular, the dimensions of excitement, sophistication and competence are significantly more represented in social media than in the conventional survey. Furthermore, feelings of anger, disgust and sadness are significantly more present in social media. Hence, this paper illustrates how tourists connect themselves in an emotional manner to a city and how this varies among the different touristic settings. Marketers can hereby modify and/or steer the experience developing new experience based upon UGC knowledge.

Destination image significantly influences a tourist's decision-making process. The impact of news media coverage on destination image has attracted research attention and became particularly evident after catastrophic events such as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake that triggered a series of lethal tsunamis. Building upon previous research, this paper analyzes the prevalence of tourism destinations among 162 international media sites. Term frequency captures the attention a destination receives­ from a general and, after contextual filtering, from a tourism perspective. Calculating sentiment estimates positive and negative media influences on destination image at a given point in time. Identifying semantic associations with the names of countries and major cities, the results of co-occurrence analysis reveal the public profiles of destinations, and the impact of current events on media coverage. These results allow national tourism organizations to assess how their destination is covered by news media in general, and in a specific tourism context. To guide analysts and marketers in this assessment, an iterative analysis of semantic associations through natural language processing extracts tourism knowledge automatically, and represents this knowledge as ontological structures.

Mobile marketing, also known as wireless marketing, promises vast opportunities. Still in an experimental phase, businesses have little experience using this new marketing tool. Mobile services offer companies powerful marketing potential via direct communication with consumers, anytime and anywhere, but little research on this subject exists. This paper discusses Short Message Services (SMS), which belong to the first and most successful forms of mobile data transmission. Based on a literature review and exploratory qualitative research, this paper defines mobile marketing, describes its most popular application, text messaging, introduces a conceptual model of success factors for implementing mobile marketing, and proposes future research avenues.

Image is one of the most relevant forces attracting visitors to a destination, and the mushrooming of blog communities contributes to shaping (or modifying) visitors’ perceptions of a place. Large scale content analysis over time is believed to better capture the relevant factors shaping a destination’s image. This study, based on the analysis of 667,983 articles from 11 international online travel communities and social travel guides, identifies image factors using a Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) approach. LSA reveals attributes associated to the destinations across documents, which have been analyzed over time. The large number of documents allows observations on sub-periods (quarters) as well as the assessment of seasonal changes of the online image representation. The aims of this study are two-fold. The first goal is to outline the weight of cultural components on the overall online image of a city destination. The second goal is to monitor and identify changes of image components over
time.

Mobiltelefone scheinen ein allgegenwärtiges Symbol der Gesellschaft am Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts zu sein und führen seit ihrer Einführung in den frühen 90er Jahren zu starken Veränderungen in unserem Kommunikationsverhalten. Auch für Unternehmer eröffnen Mobiltelefone neue Alternativen, ihre Konsumenten auf individuelle Weise anzusprechen. Besonders interessant ist Marketing via Mobiltelefon (m-marketing). Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden die Einsatzmöglichkeiten von m-marketing untersucht und diskutiert. Zuerst werden Definitionen zu den Begriffen m-business und m-marketing vorgestellt. Danach werden Attribute des m-marketing erläutert und insbesondere SMS als Marketingmedium diskutiert und die vielfältigen Möglichkeiten von m-marketing am Beispiel von SMS-unterstützten Marketingaktivitäten beschrieben. Den Hauptteil des Artikels bildet eine Übersicht über die Einsatzmöglichkeiten von m-marketing im modernen Marketingmanagement. Weiters werden Erfolgsfaktoren sowie Barrieren und Herausforderungen beim Einsatz von m-marketing erläutert und diskutiert. Zum Abschluss werden die praktischen und theoretischen Implikationen der Ergebnisse aufgezeigt sowie zukünftige Forschungsfragen besprochen.

This paper investigates the relationship between leadership and dynamic capabilities as drivers of innovation in the hospitality industry. Utilizing data from hospitality executives, we examine how different leadership styles impact the formation of dynamic capabilities and service innovations during unprecedented crises. This research expands extant literature by showcasing how different leadership styles impact different dynamic capabilities and in turn, innovation. We identify that innovative hospitality firms differ from non-innovative firms in their level of dynamic capability development and regarding the extent to which different leadership styles impact dynamic capabilities. The findings suggest practical implications for hospitality businesses and provide insights that can benefit policymakers in their design of a more resilient industry.

Mobile marketing offers direct communication with consumers, anytime and anyplace. This paper reviews mobile marketing and then investigates the most successful form of mobile communication, short message services (SMS), via a quantitative content analysis of the Fortune Global 500 Web sites and qualitative interviews with European experts. The content analysis explores the diffusion of SMS technology and sheds light on mobile marketing campaigns of large multinational organizations. Combining a literature review with results from the qualitative survey leads to a conceptual model of successful SMS advertising. The paper closes with future research avenues for this emerging marke ting tool.

Globally, there are numerous undergraduate programs available in tourism that differ in content aims and scope. It is hard to judge which programs are preferable and on what criteria to base choice. Thus, this article provides a content analysis of 64 bachelor programs taught in English. The actual programs are compared to indicators identified in literature review. Furthermore, an adaptive conjoint analysis identifies the importance and utilities of different subject areas and themes that can compose a tourism program. The population is specified in a broad manner, including academics as well as industry professionals from both the private and public sectors. Results show that there are discrepancies between existing programs and what academics and industry professionals perceive as being important. The research offers recommendations on which topics and issues should be included in a tourism curriculum and provokes discussion on adaptation of existing curricula for the future.

Given the increased use of the Internet in the travel industry, companies should be eager to provide reliable and high quality service when communicating online. This study focused on e‐mail response behavior of airlines with special attention to service recovery. A mystery approach was applied to empirically test the responsiveness and quality of replies to inquiries and complaints. Results show that complaints are answered less often and in an inexpedient manner. However, compared to inquiries, airlines address complaints in an empathetic and polite way.

The Internet is an important source of information for travellers. While the information search process is well understood the evaluation of sources based on the search goal still merits investigation. Users for instance may be very satisfied with certain websites when just browsing for fun. However, for users searching for precise factual information the outcome may not be satisfying. Thus, this paper investigates the satisfaction with a web site with the search task (exploratory vs. goal directed) as a moderator. The results indicate that for goal directed search usefulness and content quality are the strongest drivers of satisfaction.

The tourism industry is an ecosystem of suppliers, visitors, residents, destination marketing organizations, and entrepreneurs co-creating valuable experiences. Engagement of relevant actors and their collaboration are critical for innovation in the tourism (service) ecosystem. Living labs facilitate such collaboration in physical and virtual environments through parity-based partnerships among networks of actors. Taking an ecosystem perspective, this study advances the understanding of 1) how living labs can contribute to value co-creation in tourism destinations and 2) the requirements for effective co-creation. The findings from a three-phase mixed-method study with managers and participants of six tourism living labs underscore the relevance of actors, their motivations to engage, and structure for facilitating value co-creation within living labs. Effective co-creation processes lead to network growth and innovation, with resource availability being both a requirement and a perceived benefit of this co-creation.

Mobile communication has developed rapidly in the last few years, shifting from voice to data transfer and offering unique opportunities for providing information. This study focuses on one such aspect, mobile information for environmental purposes.<div></div> Firstly, the introduction reviews using new media for environmental information. Then an explanation of the mobile medium with its unique characteristics and examples of mobile information services follow. The paper proposes a framework for using mobile media for environmental information. This study subsequently focuses on one such aspect, an application that collects traffic information to help reduce traffic jams and emissions, then, illustrates both information services and personalized services for users. The paper closes with implications and proposed future research of environmental online communication.

The book investigates user satisfaction with mobile services, the perceived quality of m-commerce products, and the loyalty towards service providers. After introducing the m-commerce value chain and emerging mobile services, the first part examines relevant theories from diffusion of innovations and service quality to mobile services, and identifies new trends in the mobile communication market. The book demonstrates to what extent service quality and adoption theories of consumer behavior literature explain the (repeated) usage of mobile services, and how the results differ by user segments. A-priori and a-posteriori segmentations provide detailed insights. The results indicate that it is important to consider (un)observed heterogeneity in explanatory models.

Transport mode choice is a critical element in holiday decision-making, affecting other components of the holiday and the holiday's environmental impacts. This study investigates the role of price, time and convenience regarding transport mode choice using a stated choice experiment. It explores differences in mode choice among European student travelers, a very active travel segment, with some environmental awareness but low regard for the environmental impacts of their travels. Survey data from 372 respondents, resulting in 5952 choice situations, gives insight into transport mode choice and the role of travel cost, travel time, punctuality, access time/mode, travel class and type of connection. Results indicate that cost is the most important product attribute followed by time, with convenience playing a secondary role for student travelers. Flying emerged as the top choice (50%), followed by rail (25%) and car (21%). The findings also show that the degree of respondents’ general pro-environmental behavior – rather than their environmental attitudes – shapes students’ transport mode choices. However, a complex picture emerges, with a range of varying perceptions about the importance of time components (punctuality and access time) for each mode, and a negative threshold for journeys by rail of over five hours.

Destination image, place brand, and branding continue to receive attention by researchers and industry. However, a thorough definition and differentiation of these terms and further investigation are still necessary. Digital information sources provide relevant image formation and branding agents and thus, potentially impact travelers' image and serve as platforms to communicate perceptions. With abundant online information on places available, the data offer insights into the brand identity communications and the image perceptions by travelers. This study presents an automated web content mining approach. A total set of 5719 documents inform the online destination representation in various online sources. Results demonstrate how to extract destination brand identity and image through web content mining.

In light of the rapid development of social media industry players need to become more strategic in their online interactions with tourists. Research on online reviews and how to best respond to them is inconclusive. Therefore, the first aim of this study is to gain an understanding of the presence of emotions in hotel reviews and manager responses. Second, this study investigates how the level of emotions of online hotel reviews and online management responses vary according to hotel classification and review rating. Conclusions are drawn from a quantitative text analysis on 440 reviews and 440 responses from Trip Advisor. The results suggest that management significantly need to consider strategies for online dialogue in order to retain satisfied customers as well as a positive online reputation.

Service recovery is one of the most researched areas in the disciplines of business, marketing, tourism and information systems due to the inevitability of service failures. Despite its increasing attention from scholars and practitioners, the efficacy of relying on recovery strategies for managing customer service experience has long been a great concern. Given that service recovery can only partially compensate the detrimental impact of service failures, this chapter argues that operators should “proactively” detect and redress failures in the current service design as opposed to “reactively” defend service failures and manage service recovery. Following this notion, this chapter aims at introducing five diagnostic tools for deconstructing the structure of an experience and thereby detecting and overcoming failures in service experience. The five tools are service flowcharts, service blueprints, service maps, service failure proofing and the fishbone diagram. In addition to the introduction, this chapter includes the empirical demonstration of applying service maps for service failure detection. Harnessing consumer reviews on TripAdvisor.com of three luxury hotels in Vienna as the data source, the empirical demonstration exhibits the major areas of improvement in each corresponding property. Being one of the first attempts that integrate analysis of online reviews with diagnostic tools for service experience enhancement, this chapter does not only complement service design literature with a demonstration prototype but also provide operators in the service industry with useful tools and examples of how diagnostic tools can assist in detecting service failures and then advising solutions for service design advancement.

Purpose Online reviews have been gaining relevance in hospitality and tourism management and represent an important research avenue for academia. This study aims to illustrate the discrimination between positive and negative reviews based on single word items and the sector-specific relevance of hidden topics. Design/methodology/approach By probing two parallel approaches of entirely unrelated analytical methods (penalized support vector machines and Latent Dirichlet Allocation), the analysts explore differences in language between favorable and unfavorable reviews in three service settings (hotels, restaurants and attractions). Findings The percentage of correctly predicted positive and negative review reports by means of individual word items does not decrease if reports from the three tourism businesses are analyzed together. Originality/value However, there is limited generalizability of the discriminant words across the three businesses. Also, the latent topics relevant for generating customers’ review reports differ significantly between the three sectors of tourism businesses.

ABSTRACT Due to rapid development in technological solutions, location-sensitive information services are spreading into more and more fields and markets. Cruise ship travels are one domain for which geo-spatial and cultural information services play an important role in enriching the passengers' experiences. This paper examines, therefore, the information provided online and analyzes the content provided by river cruise operators offering tours along the river Danube. Additionally, RIVERTALE, a location based on-board information system in the stage of a prototype, is evaluated by both tour operators and passengers. Two system variants are considered: a lean-forward kiosk type information system and a lean-back interactive cabin TV information system. The survey among the passengers reveals that there is a strong willingness to use the information service, primarily determined by the perceived usefulness and entertainment of the system. Industry representatives, in contrast, do not recognize such additional information services as urgent and important as their customers.

As a dearth of research on the examination of projected image in destination promotion videos (DPVs) is recognized and the question of how DPVs influence viewers’ destination image change is unresolved, this study (1) examines the projected image of Macau based on the video content analysis of their latest DPV (entitled “Experience Macao Your Own Style”); and (2) investigates the impact of viewing a DPV on viewers’ perceived destination image and intention-to-visit change. The efficacy of repetition in influencing change in DPV viewers’ image of the destination is highlighted. Findings from the experiment also indicate that the content of DPVs and repeating certain shots are effective in positively enhancing travelers’ perceived destination image as well as triggering potential travelers’ interest in further researching and visiting the destination.