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The COVID-19 pandemic affected numerous economic sectors, in addition to social, behavioral, and psychological aspects of the world population. Among the observed sectors, exhibitions and their stakeholders were impacted, including exhibition assemblers. In this article, we presented the results of a mixed exploratory research, investigating the impacts of the pandemic on exhibition assemblers in the city of Sao Paulo/Brazil. The research problem was the analysis of the impact of COVID-19 for owners/managers and employees of exhibition assemblers under the hospitality and competitiveness dimensions, and we suggested the following propositions: (P1) the assemblers of exhibition businesses in Sao Paulo/Brazil were negatively impacted on their work routine by the dissemination of COVID-19; and (P2) in times of crisis, assemblers in the exhibition sector have increased their competitiveness by innovating their operation area. For the preparation and development of this study, we presented central concepts of hospitality and competitiveness by authors in different research lines, as well as assemblers’ definitions and updated data on the impacts of COVID-19 in the sector. The field research was divided into two stages, the first being qualitative (through an interview script, in the form of in-depth interviews with owners, managers and members of institutions of the area), and the second, quantitative (through survey with collaborators of the assemblers). As findings, we observed the restructuration of the area during the pandemic, with the emergence of hybrid events and the adoption of new technologies to broaden the consumer experiences. Quantitative data suggested an interesting relationship with the analyzed constructs. For future studies, we suggest the analysis of other stakeholders, continuing the investigation of the impacts of COVID-19 on exhibition segment and the behavior of the post-pandemic market.

TOUR 2021

Hospitality in the age of Covid: The impact on exhibition assemblers

exhibition assemblers

hospitality

covid-19

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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This conference provides 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.

poster

The aim is to focus on defining the term winescape and its attributes in the Czech environment. Model of core and supplementary services in the wine region (Byrd et al., 2016) and delimitation of the wine visitor profile and their motivation (Quintal et al. 2021) of the Czech wine destination are examined. This exposes which factors are most influential in decisions to visit (and re-visit) a winery or wine destination and to determine the role of winescape and tourism services in promoting wine destination and wine tourism generally. Implementation of semi-structured interviews with winemakers will lead to the definition of core and supplementary services on the supply side. To define the attributes of winescape, primary data collected by interviewing tourists and secondary data taken from previous foreign research in this area (Quintal, Thomas and Phau, 2015; Terziyska and Damyanova, 2020; Thomas, Quintal and Phau, 2018) will be used, which will enter the factor analysis. Furthermore, an analysis of the dependence on the gender and income of the respondents, on the Moravian wine sub-areas and on with whom they visited the sub-area was performed. In general, four variables are affected by three factors. These factors are: wine quality, natural attractions, wine culture and tradition. Wine visitors can admire the destination due to its permanent attributes, which are mainly nature (landscape) and culture (heritage, customs), thanks to additional attributes such as wine products, events, experiences and visits to the region. These attributes of a wine destination form a term of winescape. The results can be used by wineries, information centers and regional agencies in further decision-making and the creation of their strategic marketing plans. The choice of preferences and key services can thus lead to a more thorough focus of their providers as well as to adequate financial inputs for their expansion.

Factors and attributes of winescape: A case in the Czech Republic

The crisis is an altering event that impacts both life and the economy severely and is a disruption that affects a system negatively by threatening its basic assumptions and requiring immediate addressal. With the world getting globalized every passing day, there is a sharp increase in bilateral, multilateral, and regional agreements, leading to crises and disasters being a part of our existence.

Tourism is a strong tool for development and addresses a wide range of global issues such as - poverty, employment, climate change, and environmental degradation (UNWTO). This sector has witnessed turmoil and challenges due to natural disasters, global economic and financial downturns, restructuring and regulating policies, etc. The impact of the crisis on the global tourism models is directly proportional to the size and frequency of the sector, and the economy is more interconnected and hypermobile. Tourism crisis is ‘any occurrence which can threaten the normal operation and conduct of tourism related business, damage a destination’s overall reputation for safety attractiveness and comfort by negatively affecting visitor’s perception of that destination and in turn cause a downturn in the local travel and tourism economy and interrupt the continuity of business’1.

This study follows an interpretivist paradigm and will consider the crisis that the tourism industry has faced since the beginning of the millennium, which are- economic (global recession of 2008), health (COVID-19), political (terrorist attack, 9/11), and environmental or natural calamity (Kedarnath cloudburst,2013). The study will categorise crisis based on two parameters- ‘probability of occurrence’ and ‘level of control,’ and the quadrants will yield the four types of crisis. Further, we will then learn from the mitigation and control techniques that have been employed and build a future course of action for planning, response, and resolution of sector specific crises and redressal.

*1(Sönmez & Allen, 1994)

Historical evidence of crisis management by the tourism industry

Tourists often look to residents to select destinations; they perceive residents' insights of persistent, recurrent, and geographically bounded environmental hazards as a reliable, trustworthy, and authentic source of information, to the extent of influencing their travel decisions. Residents’ insights are instinctively rooted at the collective learning that is developed in past discourse, which is amplified in the absence of official communication guidelines around environmental hazards. Hence, exploring residents’ discourse dynamics offers great value in understanding their potential to influence a destination’s image. This study aims to explore residents’ discourse on a hallmark case study: Florida’s 2017-2019 Harmful Algae Bloom known as Florida Red Tide. Florida Red Tide’s discourse was analyzed by performing a combination of social network analysis and text analysis (qualitative and quantitative) on geotagged Twitter posts from Florida during the persistent localized environmental hazard. Results indicate that discourse on Florida Red Tide is tangled with social and political realities beyond the hazard impacts. Discourse evolves around specific destinations that continually suffer from the persistent and localized event of Red Tide, while the most involved counties in the conversation are in South Florida. Discourse on Florida Red Tide is fragmented and occasional, with the highest engagement during the 2018 period of the bloom. Residents’ insights contain speculative components along with scientific facts, revealing an injection of risk from such discourse to the destination’s image. Our findings contribute to the literature on environmental hazards and tourism, by providing novel insights of the complexity inherent in the socio-ecological systems in which the tourism phenomenon exists. Furthermore, our findings offer insights for destination management organizations on the importance of cooperation with other institutions to raise awareness and create communication strategies for residents on persistent localized environmental stressors, aligned to support a positive destination image.

Social media discourse’s effects on persistent localized environmental hazards in tourist destination selection: An exploratory assessment

The 2021 Fourth Annual Gansu Baiyin mountain ultramarathon was an immense tragedy in which 21 marathoners were killed due to extreme weather. Recent trends in hosting outdoor sporting events in tourist attractions have played an important role to expand the Chinese tourist market. Although the risk of frequent accidents is recognized, outdoor sporting events still need more scholarly attention because of the different causation in each incident. This paper seeks to investigate the use of a system-based technique for accident analysis, which is the AcciMap approach by Rasmussen (1997). Several attempts have been made to adopt the AcciMap approach in the outdoor recreation domain, which was acknowledged as applicable so far. The findings have shown that the AcciMap approach is suitable for investigating severe incidents that happened in outdoor sporting events. The analysis conforms to the statement that multiple factors are interacted to cause an accident. Moreover, this study illustrates how those factors lead to the outcome, which provides insights for examining associations between them. In conclusion, suggestions on risk management for hosting future outdoor sporting events in tourists attractions are discussed, in the hope of preventing similar events from occurring and calling for a better combination of sport and tourism.

How to improve risk management in sport tourism: Applying the AcciMap approach to examine Gansu ultramarathon incident

This study aimed to evaluate the use of food delivery apps (FDA) during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. A total of 950 questionnaires were collected, covering four Brazilian regions: Southeast, Central-West, Northeast, and South. The data was collected during the peak of the second wave of the pandemic. A questionnaire with 39 measurement items was applied using an online survey. These items were evaluated using a five-point Likert scale covering the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2). The data was analyzed using covariance-based structural equation modeling. About 47% of consumers use FDA weekly. The continuance intention of FDA during the pandemic in Brazil was affected by performance expectancy (β =0.496; p <0.001), social influence (β =0.094; p <0.001), hedonic motivation (β =0.068; p =0.003), price value (β =0.103; p <0.001), habit (β =0.305; p <0.001), frequency of using FDA (β =0.051; p =0.04), and solidarity with the foodservice sector (β =0.090; p <0.001). It was also observed that the continuance intention reduces risk perception (β = -0.403; p <0.001), and risk perception reduces the frequency of using FDA (β =0.178 p <0.001). The results indicate that the UTAUT2 strongly explains consumers’ continuance intention. Differences in path estimates among Brazilian regions were observed, indicating some regional differences. It was possible to observe a tendency of using FDA during and after the pandemic, motivated by several factors. The FDA developers and foodservice managers could use this data to improve their services. Policies must be established to increase consumer and employee safety during the delivery service. This study was supported in part by São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) grant #2019/10936-0

The use of food delivery apps during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil: The role of solidarity, perceived risk and regional aspects

In a past decade, travel related businesses have discovered a new way of marketing their products through social media digital influencers. The digital influencers can reach their followers in an authentic way, making the advertisement more efficient. This study analyzestheways COVID-19 pandemicimpacted top tourismdigital influencersonInstagram.Instagram content was explored from the behavioral perspectivewith thefocus onpeer review (oreWOM) and sentiment hidden behind users’ content.The data was collected throughInstagramscrapingpriorand during thepandemic.Then, changes in published content were detected through text mining andsentiment analysis. We found anincreaseinnegative sentiment,keywords related to indoor activities,and health concerns. Furthermore,theinfluencers’content productionrate andengagement from the audiencehave changed.Specifically, the way top influencers modified the content of their communication indicatestheirconnection to travel opportunities during pandemic, increasing perceived value of their work.Those influencers were able to keep their followers engaged despite inhospitable travel circumstances.We found that sustaining engagement and sharing knowledge about the destination can potentially sustain the intention to visit in the post-pandemic period.This concurs withliterature suggesting thatsocial media users expect certain functional, socio—psychological and hedonicbenefitsand that subjects with whom audiences can identify themselves, are more valuable for the consumers.Our findings contribute to understanding ofbehavior of toptravel influencers in social media.The study also contributes to the methodology ofthe user generated contentresearch in tourismandtodecision-making improvementsin tourism marketing.

Travel influencers under lockdown: The impact of COVID-19 on Instagram

Tourism experiences are shaped by the complexities of individual visitor psychological factors, and the fact that travel is inextricably linked to the issues of geographical consciousness may have an effect on the entire experience formation process. The dynamic features offered by mobile augmented reality (AR) are viewed as capable of improving how tourists engage with their surroundings. Despite the known potential of this relatively new technology, its actual acceptance among the users is still vague, especially in Malaysian context. This study thus explores the framework of mobile AR application and provides summative evaluation to examine tourist experience on the utilization of the application from the context of expectation, perception, and satisfaction. 'Iskandar.my' mobile AR app was employed in this research to evaluate tourist responses on the utilisation of this software platform in adding value to travel experience. By targeting the current and potential users of ‘Iskandar.my’ mobile apps, purposive sampling was applied. A total of 120 respondents among the local visitors of the Iskandar region was collected. The findings indicated that there was a significant influence in the respondents' experiences after utilising the AR content of the mobile apps. The use of this advanced technology provides a unique way of destination interaction and excitement of exploration that satisfies the users. However, the lack of variety in the attractions covered, as well as the app's limited offerings, were noted as factors that could affect 'Iskandar.my' competitiveness with other travel-related apps. For future improvement, it is recommended for the app's developer to improve the design and service dimension to meet users’ travelling needs. This study is limited to the mobile AR utilization experience among local visitors. Therefore, future research is recommended to include the perspective of international visitors for a better comparison of AR experience stimulation.

Tourists experience on Iskandar: My mobile augmented reality as a travel guide

The hospitality sector faces a strong challenge after the actual pandemic crisis and the labour force has to meet these new requirements (Basque Culinary Center, 2020). Employability of future professionals, hence, acquires a key role in defining and coping with those changing paradigms rapidly.

Prior work on the implication of personal traits on employability are scarce (Salvador, 2008), and the research on employability skills are imprecise (Suleman, 2018). A common definition of graduate employability is the ability to access a job, maintain it, or find another one (Hillage and Pollard 1998). Under this definition, the personal factors and individual traits acquire a higher importance on the probability of getting a job (Suleman, 2018).

Furthermore, this research studies the impact of a learning by doing and a practical focus on their Final Degree Project of the students and employability, as long as this could be understood as the primary goal of an internship (Chen, Shen and Gosling, 2018).

METHODOLOGYThe sample is a convenience group from the 4th year of Gastronomic Sciences students that answered a questionnaire after finishing their practical internship. A questionnaire was built using 4 different scales: resilience, proactive disposition, internal locus of control and emotional self regulation questionnaire. Self efficacy towards employment questions were created ad hoc for this purpose.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONAt the moment of uploading the abstract, there was one week left to close the questionnaire, due to the fact that there are some students that are still finishing their internships. Preliminary results might show that students with high resilience, emotional intelligence management demonstrate a better self perception towards employability. Finally, skills related to project development or capacity to build a new idea, are perceived might be the most important for having a positive perception towards employability.

New requirements for gastronomy professionals in the future? Traits development in hospitality education as a driver to enhance employability in a post Covid scenario. A case study of Basque culinary center

The tourism and hospitality industry is most affected by the pandemic. Destinations most reliant on tourism for social and economic growth are prone to be hit hardest. Developing effective recovery strategies in this unprecedented time to support the tourism and hospitality sectors is crucial. Government and local tourism boards have been developing and promoting various tourism support schemes for the tourism and hospitality industry stakeholders. When travel restrictions are still in place, local tourism promotions are becoming vital to restart tourism for most destinations.

This study uses a case study of a travel campaign in 2020, the “Go to Travel” campaign from Japan, to raise stakeholders’ awareness of the importance of marketing communication strategy. The Japanese government encouraged collaboration across different parties, such as airlines, hotels, and local hospitality and tourism businesses, to embrace this marketing initiative. Nevertheless, the media criticized the campaign could worsen the outbreak as tourists' mobility will increase the risk of transmission. This implied that the insensitivity of the local tourism board in implementing the tourism recovery plan. The study discusses and recommends effective ways to launch and monitor a tourism recovery marketing campaign.

Tourism marketing campaign for COVID-19 post-crisis recovery - A case study of the“Go to Travel” campaign in Japan

Introduction

The current study examines the influence of hotel websites’ text-image congruence on viewers’ perceived trustworthiness, perceived ease of image, perceived credibility, perceived attitude, perceived fluency, and their booking intention.

Method

The data was collected from travelers who had booked a hotel room directly through a hotel’s website within the past 12 months. A total of 300 survey were collected. After the elimination of the missing values, 242 samples were utilized for the data analyses.

For the data analysis, the two-step approach suggested by Anderson and Gerbing (1988) was used. In the first step, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to test the validity of the measurement scales. A series of fit indices were used to assess the model fit for the measurement model. Cronbach’s alpha was used to assess the reliability of measurement scales. In the second step, structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the study hypotheses. Same series of fit indices were used to evaluate the model fit for the structural model.

Results

The results of both CFA analysis and SEM indicated that chi-square to degree of freedom ratio was less than the recommended value of 3 (Hair et al., 1998). In addition, other goodness-of-fit indices such as room mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), goodness of fit (GFI), comparative fit index (CFI), and normed fit index (NFI) were examined. The results indicated a reasonable model fit (Hair et al., 2010). Except H2d, rest of hypotheses were supported. (Table 1)

Discussion

The findings of current study offer important practical implications. Practically, the results help hotel managers to reveal better website design strategies to increase sales and drive repeat business.

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Hospitality in the age of Covid: The impact on exhibition assemblers

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