Keynote 5: Steve Hood, Senior VP of Research and Founding Director, SHARE Center, USA

Workforce Development in Hospitality and Tourism: Challenges and Opportunities

Hospitality in Healthcare and Senior Living: Opportunities and Challenges

Digital Business Models and Data-Driven Decision Making in Hospitality and Tourism

The Future of Tourism, Hospitality and Events

Keynote 3: Jason Siegel, President and CEO, Greater Orlando Sports Commission, USA

Sustainability and Growth: The Paradox for the Hospitality and Tourism Industry

The mining-industrial heritage plays an important role in the evolution of domestic tourism, contributing to developing creativity, revitalizing local cultural values and enhancing natural and anthropic tourism potential of the area. At the same time this activity represents a real opportunity for economic, social and cultural recovery. In Central and Eastern Europe there are a growing number of former industrial areas where the development of tourism can actively contribute to the regeneration of settlements and economic development.

The purpose of our research was to identify, classify and discuss the main attributes of the development of industrial heritage tourism in the scientific literature and their application in the elaboration of a model of integration in the tourism circuit of an old steel area in Romania. The iron ore deposits in the Harghita Mountains (Eastern Carpathians) have been known for 2000 years and the first iron processing plant was mentioned in 1561. The Vlăhița steel plant operated almost without interruption between 1825 and 2006, when it was permanently closed. In connection with the reconversion of the former steel plant, our research evaluated the tourism system in the area using tools specific to spatial analysis in tourism (Defert’s tourist function index, average length of stay, index of use of tourist accommodation capacity etc.).

The results show that the capitalization of industrial heritage can contribute to consolidating regional identity and increasing tourism potential, and the reconversion of the former iron plant into a space for entertainment and education is a way to preserve and reintegrate the historical heritage of the area. The study provides suggestions for future improvements in the development of the heritage tourism industry and emphasizes the importance of adopting sustainable development policies and strategies that also include tourism, an important component in a modern economy.

From iron to tourism: The reconversion of an old mining-industrial area

The primary goal of a Smart Cities Mission is the advancement in economy, improving the quality of life, incorporating smart technology by enabling the local area development and for the benefit of local people. The same applies to any other historical cities which are aiming for a future smart city. In this case Udupi, a temple city and a pilgrim abode for the population of South India has been in the list of Smart City Proposal and prioritised as the part of the Mission. The historical background of Udupi and its temples dates back to the 4th Century C.E. and the city treasures approximately 1600 temples. The place is famous for its enshrining temple of Lord Krishna and located geographically between the coast of Arabian Sea and foothills of Sahyadri Hills (Western Ghats). The study focus on the opportunities in the tourism sector by documenting the various temples and cultural sites with a spatial linkage plan for the unique cultural landscape of Udupi city. This will include the field based study of the existing tourism infrastructure available and evaluate the potential of integrated smart planning strategies to obtain a synergistic outcome. The paper intends to provide a structural basis for recommendations on smart infrastructure management on economic revitalisation, environment protection of the place and tourism experience of cultural landscapes.

Smart planning strategies for tourism infrastructure management in pilgrim cultural landscape: Case of Udupi, Karnataka, India

The concept of customer delight (CD) has gained considerable attention from researchers since Oliver, Rust, and Varki (1997) offered the foundational literature over two decades ago. It is crucial to understand the antecedents of CD. The extant CD literature primarily focuses on three main antecedents of customer delight.: [1] customer-related (e.g., joy, fun, hedonic), [2] employee-related (e.g., engagement, expertise, problem resolution), and [3] contextual-related (e.g., non-employee service quality, novelty) (Barnes & Krallman, 2019). The interpersonal role of the employee is particularly vital to lead CD in the hospitality industry because of psychological benefits influencing customers’ attitudes and behaviors (Mattila & Enz, 2002). For example, empathic employees are more likely to better understand customer needs and feelings, and employees’ adaptive behavior can provide better personalized service. Yet, to date, little research has examined employee empathy (EE) and employee’s adaptive behavior (EAB) as antecedents of CD. Thus, the primary goal of this study is to deepen the knowledge of antecedents of CD. The purposes of this study are two-fold: (1) to examine the impact of EE and EAB on CD and (2) to identify how CD influences customer willingness to return (CWR). The data were collected via a web-based survey of hotel guests in the United States. The proposed CD model was tested using standard partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings of this study indicate that there is a significant relationship between EE and CD and between EAB and CD. Result. Findings also show that CD influences CWR. As one of few empirical studies investigating the relationships among EE, EAB, CD, and CWR, findings from our research can provide a better understanding of CD within the hospitality literature. The results can also provide insights for practitioners to implement the concept of CD into their customer engagement strategies.

Exploring antecedents of customer delight in a hospitality setting: Employee empathy and adaptive behavior

This study investigated the Asian countries’ tourism video advertisements uploaded in YouTube since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic is predicted to change travel preferences, focusing more on safety and luxury, and less on mass tourism. The characteristics identified in this shift of preference has been outlined in the Hierarchy of Luxury Travel Needs framework (Amadeus, 2016). Using this framework, content analysis was conducted to examine 122 videos uploaded from January to December 2020. Nvivo 12 was used to analyze the data through thematic coding. To ensure validity, seven rounds of analysis was conducted independently by each researcher and was triangulated by coding comparison. The findings revealed that no country was able to feature all the components of luxury travel. Moreover, exclusivity is the most featured luxury travel component while product and service quality are the least featured. The study will be able to provide insight to the current priorities of tourism advertisements on a macro level and contributes to the limited literature on online tourism marketing amidst the pandemic. Thus, this study can aid the tourists in future travel decisions, while the national tourism administrators can use the data to evaluate their current promotional videos, and to plan and develop future advertisements.

A content analysis of Asian countries' tourism advertisements in YouTube: A luxury travel perspective

The study proposes a new research agenda for the management of tourist destinations in response to significant changes caused by over-tourism, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other negative impacts of tourism development. Although the literature traditionally describes the main purpose of destination marketing and management as increasing visitation and providing economic benefits to tourist destinations related to income, tax revenues, employment opportunities, investments, etc. At the same time, the social, health, and psychological impacts of tourism on local communities did not receive enough empirical attention in the previous literature. This study aims at exploring the effects of tourism development on the quality of life, health, and well-being of residents' communities in different tourist destinations. The applied mixed-method methodology includes cross-sectional, time-series, and panel data analysis. The results demonstrate that the level of tourism provides different positive and negative effects on residents’ health and well-being in the long and in the short term. The study contributes to knowledge and practice by shifting the emphasis of destination management from increasing tourists’ visitation to improving residents’ health and well-being, demonstrating the advantage of long-term tourism impacts over short-term effects, and providing recommendations for destination marketing and management organizations.

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Keynote 5: Steve Hood, Senior VP of Research and Founding Director, SHARE Center, USA

Workforce Development in Hospitality and Tourism: Challenges and Opportunities

Hospitality in Healthcare and Senior Living: Opportunities and Challenges

Digital Business Models and Data-Driven Decision Making in Hospitality and Tourism

The Future of Tourism, Hospitality and Events

Keynote 3: Jason Siegel, President and CEO, Greater Orlando Sports Commission, USA

Sustainability and Growth: The Paradox for the Hospitality and Tourism Industry

From iron to tourism: The reconversion of an old mining-industrial area

Smart planning strategies for tourism infrastructure management in pilgrim cultural landscape: Case of Udupi, Karnataka, India

Exploring antecedents of customer delight in a hospitality setting: Employee empathy and adaptive behavior

A content analysis of Asian countries' tourism advertisements in YouTube: A luxury travel perspective

Health and well-being impacts of tourism

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