United States

Tourism Micro, Small and Medium sized Enterprises (MSMEs) have been forced to shut down with limited opportunities of reopening and contributing to the tourism sector. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Future Tourism Project seeks to enable the digitization of MSMEs in the Eastern Caribbean to allow these businesses to shift and capture new and emerging markets in the tourism industry. The Future Tourism Project has been implemented by The University of the West Indies, Frankfurt School of Finance and Management and the UNDP.

A training needs assessment was conducted to capture the training areas most needed by MSMEs in the Eastern Caribbean and to develop curriculum to digitally transform these businesses. Two hundred and sixty (260) businesses responded to questions relating to the characteristics of the businesses, preferences of training times and modular structure, priority short courses and priority aspects of business operations, and relevant subject matters given the recovery of tourism businesses from the global pandemic, and demographic information about the respondent. The survey was conducted online using a database of 900 businesses that signed up to an Open Call across the ten (10) Eastern Caribbean countries.



Figure 1 First Priority Short Course





The results show that marketing, financial planning and digital technologies are three (3) first priority areas of training (Figure 1). Statistically significant results were received based on K-Wallis tests for groups of respondents based on the length in business. Financial planning was important for businesses 3 years and less and business planning was important for businesses 4-9 years in business. These findings contribute to understanding the capacity building needs of tourism MSMEs that contribute to tourism management and development.

TOUR 2021

Training needs assessment of tourism MSMEs in the Eastern Caribbean

tourism recovery

eastern caribbean

training needs

msmes

digitization

Dear Delegates, 

On behalf of the organizing committee at UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management and Elsevier, I have the greatest pleasure to welcome you to the **6th World Research Summit for Tourism and Hospitality: Resilience, Adaptability, and Innovation.** 

Though we cannot host you this year owing to Covid-19 at our beautiful resort-like campus in Orlando, Florida, we believe this virtual and live-streamed conference will provide an interactive, dynamic, and shared international platform for global academics and practitioners to discuss how to enhance research applications and knowledge management through resilience, adaptability, digital intelligence, innovation, and smart knowledge in bringing our industry and research back to normal. This summit particularly offers unique opportunities to unfold and embrace various repercussions of COVID-19 pandemic with various stakeholders, including academic researchers, industry professionals, and government officials, through dialogues on how to better utilize research outputs for the benefits of the industry, in a resilient, intelligent and innovative way. 

I hope you will agree that we have put together a wonderful program including keynote speeches, panel discussions, concurrent presentations, poster sessions, and best paper recognition and award ceremony. We hope you will take advantage of these activities and engage yourself with great learning and sharing opportunities during the two days of the Summit. Thank you for joining us and we look forward to our discussions! 

Sincerely, 
Dr. Youcheng Wang 
Dean and Preeminent Chair Professor

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poster

Distribution is a critical element of tourism marketing and management. While luxury travel is the fastest-growing segment of the tourism industry, almost all prior studies on tourism distribution channels (TDCs) have concentrated on the high-volume, low-price travel market. Therefore, this study seeks to fill this research gap by focusing on the characteristics of TDCs in the low-volume, high-end market from the perspective of outbound tour operators (OTOs).

Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted between December 2018 and September 2019. Respondents (n=23) were experienced specialists at the senior management level of luxury OTOs from various countries around the world. Interview questions are based on previous research and the lead author’s previous experience as a practitioner in the tourism industry.

Our analysis shows that luxury OTOs primarily approach travelers directly instead of through other intermediaries in order to be able to offer a seamless, safe, and extraordinary trip experience. Particularly word of mouth and referrals play an essential role. At destinations, most luxury OTOs attempt to shorten the TDC length by directly approaching service providers or DMCs to ensure arrangement flexibility, accuracy, and efficient communication with suppliers. The factors influencing luxury OTOs’ channel behaviors include accessibility, familiarity with the destination, communication convenience, and cost savings.

Because of the unique personalized needs of luxury travelers, luxury OTOs are disintermediating traditional travel agents, wholesalers, and inbound operators. Previous studies have analyzed the concept of disintermediation from the perspective of destination suppliers and the influence of the internet. In contrast, our findings indicate that disintermediation is a result of luxury OTOs’ response to the exclusive needs of upscale travelers. Consequently, luxury service providers should build direct and close relationships with OTOs and offer flexible and customized services to both OTOs and travelers.

Disintermediation in tourism distribution channels: The case of outbound tour operators in the luxury travel market

Introduction

The RevPAR at most hotels has fallen dramatically due to COVID-19. However, evidence shows that this decline has not been similar in every country and, particularly, for each category. From a resilience perspective, hotel managers should understand the aftermath and consequences of this pandemic, adjusting strategies accordingly. Also, investors and managers who run hotel facilities in different markets and countries, need actionable insights to promote the sustainability of their hotels.

A main concern is that much of the research is currently under construction or predominantly conceptual (Alonso et al., 2020). As key aftermath, the hospitality industry debates about the design of the new offer of services and amenities offer (McKinsey, 2021). Thus, this empirical investigation provides useful evidence of the impact of a pandemic or health crisis on their business, highlighting the resilience of service quality and amenities at coping with a crisis.

Methods

We examine the moderating role of hotel category on the effects of COVID-19 on hotels prices of four leading tourist countries, as Spain, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom:

Sample Min (€) Max (€) Mean (€) 
All -444.990 1755.930 29.622 
1* -54.34 52.710 9.433 
2* -47.45 1001.360 34.284 
3* -444.99 1755.930 27.151 
4* -364.10 1205.150 25.604 
5* -101.68 1114.670 90.455 




Our empirical approach is articulated on a regression analysis drawing on data from 2,111 hotels before and after the pandemic, showing significant differences in prices before and after COVID-19.

Results

Results give support to the moderating role of category as a quality strategy to withstand health-related crisis, together with a heterogenous effect of the country. Also, we provide a ranking of hotel resilience based on their category and country of operation.



Discussion

This paper contributes to the resilience hospitality management literature of coping with event-related crises, giving insights about role played by category for investors and hotel managers.

A matter of differentiation? The moderating role of hotel category on the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on hotel prices: A cross-country investigation

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic not only threatens public health and safety but also hits the hospitality industry, where nearly 70 percent of hospitality employees have been laid off or furloughed (Benshoff, 2020). The industry is recovering with the vaccine rollout nationwide, but now it is facing another critical challenge of staffing shortage (Klein, 2021; Sebastian, 2021). Indeed, for many employees and employers in hospitality, COVID-19 means that they are tackling significant challenges related to their well-being, including their financial, physical, workplace, and mental well-being (Karatepe et al., 2021; Sönmez et al., 2020).

Based on the literature related to employee well-being (Sirgy,2019; Liu-Lastres & Wen, 2021) and the resilience theory (Rees et al., 2015), this study investigated how hospitality workers interpret employee well-being during the pandemic, how they cope with the challenges brought by the pandemic, and how these experiences affect their attitude towards their profession as well as their intentions to stay in/return to the industry. This study employed a qualitative approach and conducted semi-structured interviews with seventeen hospitality workers, including eight managers and nine front-line employees. In addition, constant comparison methods (Glaser & Strauss, 2017) were used to guide the coding process and identify major themes.

The preliminary results confirmed the multi-dimensional nature of employee well-being. It is further noted that although the respondents appreciated the importance of self-actualization at work, they prioritized financial well-being and personal safety during pandemic times. Furthermore, the respondents’ intentions of staying in/returning to the hospitality industry are affected by their empathy towards their employers, positive working experiences, self-alignment with the value of the organization, and consideration for career development. This study’s findings provide insights into building a resilient workforce, which is helpful in planning and preparing for future complications associated with significant crises.

Building a resilient hospitality workforce: Empirical insights from hospitality workers

The Covid-19 pandemic lead to large reductions in GDP in countries all around the world. While some countries introduced less restrictive measures, most countries implemented a lockdown of some sort at one or more times. Lockdowns, and other measures, have various economic consequences that have severely reduced GDP worldwide, including the effects of international border closures, quarantine-on-arrival, and the closure of hospitality businesses and visitor attractions. These tourism channels of impact are clearly only part of the reason why GDP has declined so dramatically, as lockdowns have impacted economies in many other ways.

Using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the world economy, based on data from the Global Trade Analysis Project and World Tourism Organisation, this paper uses simulation techniques to estimate the GDP reduction caused by different channels of impact. These channels often overlap, for example where visitor arrivals were restricted and hotels closed, the resultant loss of earnings for hotel employees could have resulted from either measure. They also work differently for domestic and international tourism, and by purpose of visit, and in different countries depending on levels of Covid-19 infections and government policies.

The CGE model estimates the economic impact of all channels combined, giving GDP results for each country that can be compared against actual changes in GDP. It can also estimate the economic impact of each channel, allowing the calculation for each country of the proportion of lost incomes that were driven by tourism channels of impact.

Decomposing the GDP impacts of Covid-19

One vital job behavior that hospitality organizations should support is helping behavior, as it represents employees’ proactive and reactive responses to the needs of their colleagues (Hwang et al., 2021) and plays a critical role in various service aspects (e.g., Zou et al., 2015; Kim et al., 2018; Özduran and Tanova, 2017). However, there is a paucity of research on how to support employees to engage in helping behavior. Thus, the aim of this study is to increase the understanding of how an employee’s living a calling and cooperative organizational culture impact their workplace well-being, and ultimately their helping behavior toward coworkers. The sample was collected from US hospitality employees using an MTurk panel. Partial Least Squares structural equation modeling and multigroup analysis were used to explain the proposed model. Results revealed that living a calling and cooperative organizational culture positively influenced both workplace well-being and helping behavior, respectively, and workplace well-being positively influenced helping behavior. Additionally, cooperative organizational culture and workplace well-being were significant mediators between living a calling and helping behavior. Cooperative organizational culture was vital for female employees to engage in helping behavior, while the impact of workplace well-being on helping behavior was more important for male employees. This study advances the understanding of employee’s helping behavior by unveiling new motivators (i.e., living a calling, cooperative organization culture, workplace well-being) and extends the understanding of organizational support theory and social identity theory. The study also demonstrates that gender has a significant influence on helping behaviors. Hospitality managers will benefit from this research by understanding the importance of employee’s social identifications and the necessary supportive workplace environment to elevate employee’s well-being and their helping behavior toward coworkers, a critical aspect to increase competitive advantage for organizational success.

The effect of cooperative organizational culture and gender on helping behavior

Tourists’ safety and security has been studied from a wide range of perspectives. Nevertheless, evidence on the actual safety and security threats encountered by tourists at natural parks have rarely gained attention in the mainstream safety and security literature. Moreover, the behaviours and strategies tourists adopt in their bid to overcome these threats have remained elusive in the tourism literature. For these reasons, the Protection Motivation Theory through a descriptive case study approach was adopted, involving 315 local and foreign visitors were selected through convenience sampling technique for the study. Findings revealed four main dimensions of adaptive behaviours by tourists in their encounter with threats at the park. These included; “personal physical measures”, “call for assistance”, “follow instructions” and “personal vigilance”. Personal vigilance which included “prayer” emerged as the predominant strategy adopted by tourists when they encountered threats at the park. These adaptive behaviours resulted from various threats, notable among them included: “slips and falls”, “insect bites”, “misbehaviour of other visitors”, as well as “physical stress and fatigue”. Again, the kind of behaviour adopted by tourists significantly related to their educational level and/or continent of origin. It is the intention of the study to use the results emanating toprompt management to modify and implement measures geared towards reducing potential hazards at the park. That apart, it is expected to improve tourists’ knowledge on the necessary precautionary measures to adopt before visiting national parks, especially in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic

Prayer as a cognitive adaptive behaviour to threat: the case of visitors at the Kakum National Park, Ghana

Purpose: As of June 2021, there were 172,242,495 confirmed cases of COVID-19 globally and including 3,709,397 deaths. The coronavirus pandemic has greatly affected all travel and tourism activities globally and the industry experienced about 60% decline in 2020. Given this, many destinations have experienced drastic declines. In our study, we aim to explore how a gastronomy destination has responded to the Covid-19 pandemics. For this purpose, we selected Gaziantep city, Turkey which is one of the UNESCO gastronomy cities in the world.

Methodology:A phenomenological approach was followed for this study (Creswell & Creswell, 2017). The study utilized semi-structured interviews with 28 participants including stakeholders, government agencies, municipalities and local entrepreneurs in Gaziantep, Turkey. All interviews were audio-recorded, with participants’ consent and the interviews lasted approximately 35 – 45 minutes each in length. The empirical data was analyzed by using MAXQDA to create a thematic map (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015).

Results and Implications: The research findings suggest that the cultural tourism activities including gastronomy tourism in Gaziantep has been mostly ceased during the COVID 19 pandemic even if the advance and strict hygiene practices were followed. According to the participants, the public and private organizations did not have high expectations for a fast recovery of Gaziantep in 2021-2022. The pandemic has affected the gastro-tourism activities adversely. However, the food sector was not affected dramatically. The participants stated that because of the Covid-19 pandemic, (1) online food sales increased, which were limited before the pandemic, (2) locals started using door-to-door food services, and (3) the international demand for “Gaziantep baklava” increased.

References

Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications. Los Angeles.

Merriam, S. B., & Tisdell, E. J. (2015). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation. John Wiley & Sons.

How can a gastronomy destination respond to the Covid-19 pandemic? The case of Gaziantep, Turkey

In this study we examine what qualities of Experiential Media (EM) are utilized and how and to what extent EM are employed to promote travel, sports, and more broadly cultural tourism in content produced in the buildup to the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 (21 November to 18 December 2022), to be hosted by Qatar, the first Arab nation to host the World Cup. Three YouTube platforms were considered for this study namely: Road To 2022, Al Jazeera Contrast, and Qatar Airways. Using the Oculus Quest 2, a VR head-mounted display (HMD), and the six-dimension model of EM framework we found that all of the nine EM contents utilized only three degrees of freedom (DoF) where the user can only look about than six (DoF) where user can also move about and that the majority of the content experiences lacked utilizing all of the qualities of EM, i.e., (1) Interactivity, (2) Immersion, (3) Multi-Sensory Presentation, (4) Algorithm and Data, (5) First-Person Perspective, and (6) a Natural User Interface. The study revealed three broad themes, namely FIFA stadium and travel, use of technology, and Qatar’s history and traditions, and sub-themes including design inspired by traditional Middle Eastern art; traditional sports and lifestyle of Qatar including themes such as camel racing, robot jockeys, pearl diving, luxury housing and cars; and luxury long-distance travel. We contend there is an opportunity for Qatar to more fully utilize EM potential and use immersive platforms to showcase a range of topics. Our research contributes to the literature on sports tourism, by adding theoretical discussion of the role EM play in the dynamic process of nation branding and destination marketing. Our research also provides practical and managerial implications for the tourism industry, sports tourism, and destination marketing.

Understanding how experiential media are utilized in the making of ‘Qatar 2022’

1. In the current online environment, the purchase intention has been arranged differently than in the physical environment, since customers have to interact with technology, affecting their decisions to purchase tourist services. One of the most important aspects is the eWoM, which is available to anyone with Internet access and provides positive or negative opinions about tourism products or companies.



Another essential variable is the new generations of users. In this work, Generation Y, a present and future reference of consumption in digital environments, has been taken as the target population. This group, which has great economic and social importance, presents a certain coincidence in its vital evolution and forms the most technologically advanced, influential and influenceablegeneration, especially in social networks.

This work presents, in a generational context, the influence of various variables on the online purchase of tourist services by these consumers. To contrast the proposed hypotheses, a survey was designed with an online questionnaire, using a convenience sample made up of 346 subjects. The model was tested using structural equations with Partial Least Square.

The results define a new model that includes variables related to eWoM, social norm, reputation and acceptance of the use of the Internet, social networks and electronic commerce, in addition to studying if it presents gender differences. These variables have not previously been studied together and are very relevant for tourism, as the most important leisure activity, due to its weight in certain countries or regions and due to the incessant increase in competition between destinations.

Its usefulness for tourism companies is shown, and it can be easily applied to improve online shopping in the context of market orientation.

Technology, ewom and reputation in the intention to purchase tourism services: A study of the generation Y with a gender perspective

The hotel sector is vulnerable to sex trafficking given its ease of access to buyers, ability to pay in cash, and maximum privacy for guests. Sex trafficking may occur with victims who are compelled to provide commercial sex through force, fraud, or coercion. An estimated 80% of all human trafficking arrests occur in or around hotels. Major global hotel brands are accused of profiting from sex trafficking, which suffered severe losses and long-term brand damage. The goals of the study are a) to investigate the barriers and opportunities of counter sex trafficking in the hotel sector. b) to suggest the optimal strategy of counter sex trafficking for the hospitality practitioners. The study utilized qualitative data of 30 interviews with hotel managers in the United States to address the following research questions: a) What are the current policies in place in the hotel sector to prevent sex trafficking? b) What are the stakeholders that are involved in counter sex trafficking in the hotel sector? c) What barriers and opportunities are there for hospitality practitioners to fight against sex trafficking? Through thematic coding and analysis, the findings indicate four pillars in the proposed hotel anti-trafficking actions framework: an inclusive climate that empowers and nurtures “thinking employees”; constant awareness promotions through pre-shifts and signage; collaborations with local law enforcement and external partners; resources and budgeting for advanced detection technologies. This study is significant because it evaluates the vulnerabilities of the hotel sector to trafficking crimes, accesses the effectiveness of anti-trafficking measures, and identifies key factors to executing anti-trafficking policies at hotels.

Training needs assessment of tourism MSMEs in the Eastern Caribbean

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