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The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of the order in which a set of cities are visited to ascertain the effects of position on group tourists’ recall and evaluations.

Using a questionnaire, the views of highly experienced tour guides were analysed to provide preliminary insights about the likely occurrence of position effects. The topic was studied in Iran where a natural variation in the order of visiting cities on guided tours exists.

Credible and consistent evidence was found for the perceived effects of recency when considering tourists’ recall and evaluations. In particular, the influence was seen as clearly enhancing the recall and positive evaluation for the most high profile cities in the set of visited locations.

Replications of the position effect in other countries and for other kinds of tourism cities needs to be pursued, desirably by direct assessments of tourist’ views to buttress the present views held by guides.

Designing itineraries by making imaginative use of the effects of order on the tourists’ sequence of city visits should facilitate the memorability of destinations for tourists and benefit businesses.

Empirical evidence about order effects in multi-city tour itineraries has never been established. The study provides foundation evidence for such influences through a non-reactive and naturalistic assessment by tour guides who are in contact with varied itineraries and who regularly consider the experiences of diverse and large numbers of tourists.

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of an exploratory research paper undertaken in Auckland, New Zealand which focused on the Approved Destination Status (ADS) inbound tour operators’ understanding of the Chinese market and their strategies for developing Auckland as a sustainable destination.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten managers out of the 25 registered ADS inbound tour operators. The qualitative responses were coded and analysed using pattern identification and categorisation of emergent themes.

The findings profile New Zealand ADS inbound operators, summarise their knowledge of the Chinese market in terms of visitor expectations and characteristics, present the operator’s perceptions of Qualmark quality accreditation scheme and ADS Code of Conduct, and demonstrate the quality management initiatives they have developed in addition to addressing the issues within the Chinese market operation.

The study provides implications for destination marketers and tour operators in terms of the sustainable operation of the growing Chinese market.

The purpose of this study is to offer advice to the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) Government regarding the tourist and traffic flow concerning how these contribute to congestion in World Heritage Site (WHS) elements and make recommendations regarding the management of tourist flows and traffic congestion.

The research undertaken in this study is partially longitudinal. The case study is also partially ethnographic in that tourist behaviour at key sites has been observed. Concerning the specific methodology applied, data collection techniques are chosen to provide a multiplicity of data sources: on-site observation and semi-structured telephone interviews.

The study is found that Macao was at a crossroad. All stakeholders needed to take some responsibility for implementing actions recommended that would ensure that Macao SAR’s World Heritage assets would be used responsibly for future, as well as for present generations.

The study has shown that better and long-term understanding of congestion is necessary to inform better visitor management decision-making, enhance tourist experience and discover the factors that influence visitor satisfaction. It is also needed to reveal aspects of stakeholder readiness and barriers to action.

A theoretical framework and a practical case is presented, which introduce a new methodology for the creation of tourism products based on cultural heritage. After discussing selected definitions of cultural tourism, a first approach towards classifying cultural heritage based tourism is defined. The author emphasizes that one of the most crucial component of tourism development is policy, which has been analysed in order to shed light on the most important issues related to it. Thus, a conceptual chart on the creation of tourism products is drafted, outlining the elements that have to be taken into consideration in order to successfully stimulate ‘cultural consumption’ or exchange between hosts and guests. A case study shows the opportunities to create new tourism products using cultural heritage resources: “Barcelona's Cultural Identity Itinerary”, which is based on cultural centres and associations as the basic cultural resources, but also includes among others, museums, art galleries, historic sites and monuments within the itinerary.

Scholarship on the contact hypothesis and peacebuilding suggests that contact with marginalized ethnic and racial groups may reduce prejudice and improve opportunities for conflict resolution. Through a study of dual-narrative tours to Israel/Palestine, the purpose of this paper is to address two areas of the debate surrounding this approach to social change. First, past research on the effectiveness of contact-based tourism as a method to change attitudes is inconclusive. Travel to a foreign country has been shown to both improve and worsen tourists’ perceptions of a host population. Second, few scholars have attempted to link contact-based changes in attitudes to activism.

Through an analysis of 218 post-tour surveys, this study examines the role of dual-narrative tours in sparking attitude change that may facilitate involvement in peace and justice activism. Surveys were collected from the leading “dual-narrative” tour company in the region, MEJDI. Dual-narrative tours uniquely expose mainstream tourists in Israel/Palestine to Palestinian perspectives that are typically absent from the majority of tours to the region. This case study of dual-narrative tours therefore provides a unique opportunity to address the self-selecting bias, as identified by contact hypothesis and tourism scholars, in order to understand the potential impacts of exposure to marginalized narratives.

The findings of this study suggest that while these tours tend to engender increased support for Palestinians over Israelis, their most salient function appears to be the cultivation of empathy for “both sides” of the conflict. Similarly, dual-narrative tours often prompt visitors to understand the conflict to be more complex than they previously thought. In terms of activism, tourists tend to prioritize education-based initiatives in their plans for post-tour political engagement. In addition, a large number of participants articulated commitments to support joint Israeli–Palestinian non-governmental organizations and to try to influence US foreign policy to be more equitable.

These findings complicate debates within the scholarship on peacebuilding as well as within movements for social justice in Israel/Palestine. While programs that equate Israeli and Palestinian perspectives are often criticized for reinforcing the status quo, dual-narrative tours appear to facilitate nuance and universalism while also shifting tourists toward greater identification with an oppressed population. Together, these findings shed light on the ability of tourism to facilitate positive attitude change about a previously stigmatized racial/ethnic group, as well as the power of contact and exposure to marginalized narratives to inspire peace and justice activism.

Understanding tourist experiences with virtual reality (VR) products is essential for firms using VR for tourism marketing, particularly in developing countries where customers do not have access to personal VR devices or gadgets. This study aims to provide insights into technology usage for tourism marketing India, which is a developing country. It explores 360° virtual tours as an upcoming strategy for tourism promotion by analysing tourists’ perspectives through a qualitative approach.

360° YouTube video launched by the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, was shown to the participants as a marketing stimulus, followed by questions to understand tourists’ experiences and intentions. Responses were collected from 45 tourists who visited popular tourist destinations such as Shimla, Manali and Dharamshala districts of Himachal Pradesh, India.

The findings of the study indicate that several crucial elements play a pivotal role in creating the 360° VR experience. Based on interviews, it was found that 360° video experiences assist in visualising a destination through imaginative exploration, generating curiosity about the destination, forming a favourable image of the destination and facilitates ease of experience. A few participants mentioned experiencing discomforts, such as motion sickness and eye strain, while viewing 360° videos. Moreover, tourists provided valuable insights into various factors, including how 360° videos elicit arousal through entertainment and excitement, develop immersion and engagement in the virtual environment (VE), aid in assessing destination suitability, offers advantage over other media, serves as a substitutes for travel during constraints, generates assurance and influences intentions. These factors have emerged as significant considerations influencing their willingness to adopt such technology in the future.

In the contemporary market landscape, 360° VR technology is anticipated to enhance the experiential elements within VEs. While existing research has focused on the technical attributes of VR, there remains a crucial gap pertaining to the experiential and destination-related elements and their influence on usage, travel planning and intentions. Therefore, this study provides deeper insights into the unexplored concepts and dimensions of the virtual tourism experience, particularly concerning interaction with 360° videos. The study contributes novel insights to the existing body of tourism literature and provides practical implications for enhancing 360° virtual tour experiences.

Travelers are increasingly planning trips using smart travel planning apps to manage travel-related activities. They obtain their preferred tour itineraries with the use of these apps and subsequently choose their tour destinations. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of smart tour itineraries on travelers and explain what drives the continual use of them.

Drawing on the unified theory of acceptance and the use of technology model and experiential consumption (UTAUT), the authors conducted this study in Malaysia with a sample of 307 travelers who are familiar with the use of mobile apps.

The results confirmed that all the UTAUT dimensions except the facilitating condition are significantly related to the intention to use the itinerary. Both the hedonic and utilitarian values in personal consumption significantly motivate the travelers in the behavioral intention to use the itinerary.

This paper offers a good explanation of how the itinerary plans can be used by examining the theories behind the current app’s usage. Many researchers have examined the adoption of the smart travel apps, which has rarely been tied to the antecedents that drive how the travelers use itineraries that are designed by the smart travel apps. This study contributes to the research regarding using the mobile travel apps by developing an integrative model to explain the traveler intentions to use smart travel itineraries.

游客越来越多地使用智慧旅游计划App来管理他们的旅游相关活动。他们通过这样的App获得行程从而选择他们旅游目的地。因此, 本论文旨在研究智慧旅游行程对游客的影响, 并探究哪些因素驱使他们继续使用智慧旅游行程。

本论文采用UTAUT模型, 在马拉西亚取样, 共搜集到307位熟悉移动App的游客数据。

研究论文结果肯定了UTAUT各项因素除了辅助条件, 其他因素都显著与使用智慧行程息息相关。享乐型价值和实用型价值都对游客个人使用行为有着显著效果。

本论文通过检验App使用理论解释了行程计划如何被使用。许多研究学者已经检验了智慧旅游App的使用, 但是很少真正与游客如何使用App生成行程的驱动因素相结合。本论文对理论有贡献, 通过开发整合模型以解释游客使用智慧旅游行程的行为。

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the facial expression of the reviewer's avatar interacts with the valence of the consumer review to influence consumer purchase decisions.

A 2 (facial expression of the reviewer's avatar)× 2 (valence of the consumer review) between‐subjects online experimental design was used.

It was found that when the consumer review was positive, participants exposed to the reviewer's angry‐looking avatar were more likely to attribute the review to the product's performance than those exposed to the happy‐looking avatar. The causal attribution toward product performance, in turn, influenced the strength of intention to purchase the brand positively. When the consumer review was negative, however, there were no differential effects between the happy‐looking and the angry‐looking avatars.

This study contributes to the literature on consumer reviews by identifying an important source characteristic that consumers consider when processing consumer reviews – the facial expression of the reviewer's avatar.

The purpose of this study investigate the antecedents the adoption of tour itineraries from smart travel apps. Travelers are progressively expanding their smart travel planning applications to organize their trip-related activities. With the help of these apps, users achieve their favorite tour itineraries and choose their preferred destinations.

This study aimed to examine the results of smart tour itineraries on travelers and elucidate the motivations for their continual use and why travel experts are increasingly using smart tour itineraries. Innovation resistance and experiential consumption theories were used in this study. SmartPLS 3.2.8 was used to consider 682 valid samples using structural equation modeling (SEM).

This analysis identified the following crucial factors: usage, value, risk and traditional barriers. Moreover, utilitarian and hedonic values significantly affected barriers. Finally, theoretical and practical suggestions are presented along with future research directions.

This study encompasses the tender of innovation resistance theory to travel itineraries by integrating experiential consumption theory in the context of smart tourism apps.

The paper research objectives are: to investigate into the classification of special interest tour preferences in terms of their types and to compare whether consumers with different demographic attributes result in discrepancies in special interest tour preferences.

Those collected questionnaires that had incomplete answers and that had a significant response tendency or were left blank with no answers were eliminated. The required statistical methods are explained thus: this study conducts analysis on special interest tour preferences by factor analysis to distinguish between the categories of special interest tour preferences; this study adopts correlation analysis to examine the ratio scale of the study's demographic variables, including age and education level; this study adopts one‐way ANOVA to examine the variables of categorical or nominal scale, such as gender, marital status, and occupation.

After collecting the questionnaire data, factor analysis is used to conduct classification of the types and a total of four types emerged: recreation type, nature/ecology type, physical adventure type, historical/artistic activity type. Furthermore, in the verification of the demographic variables of each type preferences: age and nature‐eco type preferences constitute a significant positive correlation, and age has also formed a significant negative correlation with physical adventure type; gender differences result in a significant difference in recreation type preferences and a significant difference in physical adventure type preferences; marital status has a significant variation regarding physical adventure preferences.

Special interest tours are gradually on the rise and the previous literature is still lacking a systematic method for investigative analysis. Accordingly, conducting a systematic categorization of special interest tour preferences and to examining the background of the consumers of each type of special interest tour preference is essential.

The necessity for special interest tours to conform to consumer interests, and the existence of special interests, require that those in the travel industry conduct market segmentation, prior to designing travel itineraries, so as to have an understanding of the target market. Furthermore, the types of special interest tour preference this study provides can offer the basis for discussion of relevant issues for those travel business industry operators in the industry and future researchers.