Advances in Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research: Volume 2

Volume 2 contributes to the general theme of this Advances series by offering original, eclectic theories and field studies that focus on culture, tourism, and hospitality research. Volume 2 includes chapters without length restrictions, giving authors the opportunity to provide more nuanced explorations of theory, method, and their findings, and so create articles that sharpen and deepen thinking to a greater extent than is usually possible in journal-length articles. Unlike handbooks of original essays, this Advances series aims to include chapters on topics and coverage heretofore missing from the literature, but that nevertheless build on prior scholarly contributions. Consequently, the primary objective for Volume 2 is to provide must-read chapters unavailable from other sources – a wellspring providing exceptional insights and tools for applied researchers and scholars focusing on culture, tourism, and hospitality.

Risk is a major concern among tourists and the objective of this chapter is to investigate how different factors contribute to the overall perceived risk and how novelty motivations moderate this risk. The sample population of the study consists of 4,057 international tourists on low-cost travel visiting the Algarve, Portugal in 2005 and 2006. The research findings show that the sensibility towards the occurrence of any type of risk vary with the tourist's age, familiarity with the destination, and travel experience as well as their propensity to seek novelty. Furthermore, it finds that younger tourists are more apt to be novelty seekers and, simultaneously, less sensitive to risk, than older tourists are. Familiarity with the destination derives from previous visits, diminishes the sensibility to the risk, and increases the degree of novelty-seeking. This chapter discusses specific managerial and theoretical implications.

Industrial tourism involves visits by tourists to operational industrial sites where the core activity of the site is non-tourism oriented. Although industrial tourism exists around the world, and is expanding rapidly, earlier terms used to describe the industrial tourism phenomenon reflect a narrow focus on particular sectors, such as farm tourism or factory tourism, or an impression of marginality, such as sideline tourism. This chapter proposes an integrated conceptualization of industrial tourism to embrace the production of virtually all goods and/or services, and indicates the ramifications for the management of industrial tourism attractions of the concurrent management of non-tourism enterprises.

Independent travelers are those vacationers who have booked only a minimum of their transportation and accommodation arrangements prior to departure on the vacation. Independent travel is an important and growing sector of worldwide tourism. Choice of vacation itinerary for the independent vacation represents a complex series of decisions regarding purchase of multiple leisure and tourism services. This chapter builds and tests a model of independent traveler decision-making for choice of vacation itinerary. The research undertaken employs a two-phase, inductive–deductive case study design. In the deductive phase, the researcher interviewed 20 travel parties vacationing in New Zealand for the first time. The researcher interviewed respondents at both the beginning and the end of their New Zealand vacations. The study compares pre-vacation research and plans, and actual vacation behaviors, on a case-by-case basis. The study examines case study narratives and quantitative measures of crucial variables. The study tests two competing models of independent traveler decision-making, using a pattern-matching procedure. This embedded research design results in high multi-source, multi-method validity for the supported model. The model of the Independent Vacation as Evolving Itinerary suggests that much of the vacation itinerary experienced in independent travel is indeed unplanned, and that a desire to experience the unplanned is a key hedonic motive for independent travel. Rather than following a fixed itinerary, the itinerary of an independent vacation evolves as the vacation proceeds. The independent traveler takes advantage of serendipitous opportunities to experience a number of locations, attractions and activities that they had neither actively researched nor planned.

Towns and cities across Canada face rapidly changing economic circumstances and many are turning to a variety of strategies, including tourism, to provide stability in their communities. Community Economic Development (CED) has become an accepted form of economic development, with recognition that such planning benefits from a more holistic approach and community participation. However, much of why particular strategies are chosen, what process the community undertakes to implement those choices and how success is measured is not fully understood. Furthermore, CED lacks a developed theoretical basis from which to examine these questions. By investigating communities that have chosen to develop their tourism potential through the use of murals, these various themes can be explored. There are three purposes to this research: (1) to acquire an understanding of the “how” and the “why” behind the adoption and diffusion of mural-based tourism as a CED strategy in rural communities; (2) to contribute to the emerging theory of CED by linking together theories of rural geography, rural change and sustainability, and rural tourism; and (3) to contribute to the development of a framework for evaluating the potential and success of tourism development within a CED process.

Two levels of data collection and analysis were employed in this research. Initially, a survey of Canadian provincial tourism guides was conducted to determine the number of communities in Canada that market themselves as having a mural-based tourism attraction (N=32). A survey was sent to these communities, resulting in 31 responses suitable for descriptive statistical analysis, using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). A case study analysis of the 6 Saskatchewan communities was conducted through in-depth, in person interviews with 40 participants. These interviews were subsequently analyzed utilizing a combined Grounded Theory (GT) and Content Analysis approach.

The surveys indicated that mural development spread within a relatively short time period across Canada from Chemainus, British Columbia. Although tourism is often the reason behind mural development, increasing community spirit and beautification were also cited. This research demonstrates that the reasons this choice is made and the successful outcome of that choice is often dependent upon factors related to community size, proximity to larger populations and the economic (re)stability of existing industry. Analysis also determined that theories of institutional thickness, governance, embeddedness and conceptualizations of leadership provide a body of literature that offers an opportunity to theorize the process and outcomes of CED in rural places while at the same time aiding our understanding of the relationship between tourism and its possible contribution to rural sustainability within a Canadian context. Finally, this research revealed that both the CED process undertaken and the measurement of success are dependent upon the desired outcomes of mural development. Furthermore, particular attributes of rural places play a critical role in how CED is understood, defined and carried out, and how successes, both tangible and intangible, are measured.

International tourist hotels play important roles in the service industry and have to constantly improve their competitiveness. They need to provide their customers with consistently high service quality in order to satisfy them. The employees of the international tourist hotels are the most important links in the service delivery chain because they are in direct contact with their customers. Because employee morale affects customer satisfaction the managers of the international tourist hotels need to cultivate good relations with their internal staff. Prior research identifies many factors affecting the satisfaction of employees. While relevant literature extensively investigates job satisfaction and leadership behavior, studies of these variables in the tourism service, particularly in hotel management, are almost absent. This research concerns the correlation between the style of managerial leadership and employee's job satisfaction in the international tourist hotel industry. After literature reviewing, empirical model and hypotheses are established. The study employs the questionnaires to conduct an investigation for employees in international tourist hotels so as to collect information. This research surveys 500 employees in international tourist hotels by questionnaire. A total of 300 questionnaires were returned (73 percent). Through correlation analysis, this research discovers that employees are more satisfied under consideration-style-leadership than construction-style-leadership. After controlling for differences in salary, employees appear to prefer consideration-style-leadership. No matter what the leadership style is, employees’ job satisfaction does not relate towards their coworkers. Besides, employees have different perceptions on work, salary, and overall satisfaction depending on their education level and seniority. The findings in this research expand the knowledge of human resource management and provide some practical suggestions to managers. The study provides a mechanism by which hoteliers can obtain feedback from employees about leadership styles. Such feedback can then serve as the basis for further development of leadership theory across disciplines. This study provides a guide to the preparation of supervisor in the hotel industry as effective leaders for the dynamic environment of the future. This study also provides a basis for informing developers of leadership training programs that can lead to improved hospitality academic leadership.

The present chapter includes a case study that describes and analyzes three performance audit reports over a three decade period for one U.S. state government's destination management organization's (DMO) actions and outcomes. This report extends prior studies (Woodside & Sakai, 2001, 2003) that support two conclusions: (1) the available independent performance audits of DMOs’ actions and outcomes indicate that frequently DMOs perform poorly and fail to meaningfully assess the impacts of their own actions and (2) the audits themselves are shallow and often fail to provide information on DMOs’ actions and outcomes relating to these organizations largest marketing expenditures. The chapter calls for embracing a strategy shift in designing program evaluations by both government departments responsible for managing destinations’ tourism marketing programs and all government auditing agencies in conducting future management performance audits. The chapter offers a “tourism performance audit template” as a tool for both strategic planning by destination management organizations and for evaluating DMOs’ planning and implementing strategies. The chapter includes an appendix – a training exercise in using the audit template and invites the reader to download a tourism performance audit report of a destination marketing organization and to apply the template after reading the report.