Search Results (85)

This study applied the Stimulus–Organism–Response Theory to investigate the impact of sustainable destination management on perceived luxury service quality, taking into account the mediating role of perceived environmental responsibility and the moderating effect of tourist environmental awareness. Data were obtained from 541 tourists in Northern Cyprus, and the analysis was conducted using Herman’s single-factor test in SPSS version 23 and partial least squares structural equation modeling in SmartPLS version 4.1.1.2. The study’s results revealed a significant positive influence of sustainable destination management on both perceived luxury service quality and environmental responsibility. Furthermore, the study showed a significant positive relationship between perceived environmental responsibility and perceived luxury service quality. Additionally, tourist environmental consciousness was found to be an important influencing factor in perceived luxury service quality. The mediating role of perceived environmental responsibility was revealed to be a significant partial mediator between sustainable destination management and perceived luxury service quality pathways. Although environmental awareness revealed an insignificant moderating influence on the relationship between sustainable destination management and perceived luxury service quality, it indicated a negative significant moderating influence on the relationship between perceived environmental responsibility and perceived luxury service quality. The study highlights how assessments of luxury services are contingent upon perceived environmental responsibility through sustainable destination activities. Emphasizing both academic and management perspectives, it encourages future research to explore broader psychological and contextual factors. Therefore, it underscores the strategic necessity of sustainability in enhancing the luxury tourism experience. Full article

Modern software solutions have a multiplicative effect on enhancing quality of life across various urban sectors, including the environment, education, public health, security, transportation, time efficiency, employment, and other key aspects of city living. This article addresses a specific issue concerning the organisation of leisure activities for both local residents and tourists, using the Chechen Republic as a case study. In response, the study aimed to develop a digital solution to address this challenge, with potential for integration into the Republic’s unified digital ecosystem. By employing system analysis methods, the authors identified the key objects and stakeholders involved in the problem domain. They also defined the software product’s functionality and classified user categories. Using Unified Modelling Language methods, a use case diagram was developed to illustrate the conceptual operation of the system. Furthermore, object-oriented design methods were applied to create a user interface prototype for the software product. As a result, a digital service was developed that enables users to create personalised leisure routes, taking into account individual goals, time constraints, traffic conditions, and the real-time status of urban infrastructure. The resulting software solution is both customisable and scalable. The article also presents selected examples of project development. Full article

This study examines the key factors that influence tourists’ perceptions of destination quality and loyalty in the context of adventure tourism in Santa Elena, Ecuador, an emerging destination in Latin America. A quantitative approach was used, with data collected through an online questionnaire completed by 318 participants. Structural equation modeling was conducted using SmartPLS 4 to examine the relationships between motivational constructs (intellectual curiosity, health assurance, stress relief, physical condition, and social connection), perceived destination quality, and loyalty. The findings reveal that health assurance (β = 0.395, p < 0.001), stress relief (β = 0.417, p < 0.001), and intellectual curiosity (β = 0.143, p = 0.010) significantly influence perceived destination quality, while social connection and physical condition did not show significant effects. Moreover, perceived destination quality strongly predicts tourist loyalty (β = 0.634, p < 0.001). The model explains 63.5% of the variance in destination quality and 48.1% of that in loyalty. These results highlight the importance of post-pandemic health concerns, emotional well-being, and intellectual engagement as drivers of satisfaction and loyalty in adventure tourism. While existing research has largely focused on motivations and quality perceptions in adventure tourism within developed regions, studies in post-pandemic settings across Latin America—especially using validated structural models—remain scarce. This study also contributes to filling a gap in the literature by analyzing post-pandemic tourist behavior in Latin America, an underexplored context in existing research on sustainable and adventure tourism. The findings offer theoretical contributions to the field of adventure tourism and practical recommendations for destination managers seeking to enhance their competitiveness and visitor retention in the post-pandemic context. Full article

Tourist destination classification is pivotal for enhancing the travel experience, supporting cultural heritage preservation, and enabling smart tourism services. With recent advancements in artificial intelligence, deep learning-based systems have significantly improved the accuracy and efficiency of landmark recognition. To address the limitations of existing datasets, we developed the Samarkand dataset, containing diverse images of historical landmarks captured under varying environmental conditions. Additionally, we created enhanced image variants by squaring pixel values greater than 225 to emphasize high-intensity architectural features, improving the model’s ability to recognize subtle visual patterns. Using these datasets, we trained two parallel YOLO11 models on original and enhanced images, respectively. Each model was independently trained and validated, preserving only the best-performing epoch for final inference. We then ensembled the models by averaging the model outputs from the best checkpoints to leverage their complementary strengths. Our proposed approach outperforms conventional single-model baselines, achieving an accuracy of 99.07%, precision of 99.15%, recall of 99.21%, and F1-score of 99.14%, particularly excelling in challenging scenarios involving poor lighting or occlusions. The model’s robustness and high performance underscore its practical value for smart tourism systems. Future work will explore broader geographic datasets and real-time deployment on mobile platforms. Full article

This study employs the push–pull theory to analyze tourism motivations (push and pull), perceived risk (financial risk and perceived risk), perceived value, educational level and smartphone usage and their effect on willingness to pay (WTP) and electronic word-of-mouth (E-WOM) behavioural intentions in Smart Tourism Destinations (STDs). With a significant sample of 504 respondents in the STD of Cáceres, the push–pull theory is used to assess its impact on smartphone usage. Results reveal that motivations, financial risk, perceived value and educational level positively affect smartphone usage, directly influencing WTP and E-WOM. Managers are advised to prioritize privacy in mobile payments, implement security services against financial risks and promote specialized applications and encourage the personalization of offers through artificial intelligence. Understanding these variables, which explain 41.5% of WTP and 65.8% of E-WOM, provides a basis for strategic decision-making in STDs. Full article

This study examines the impacts of women’s social, political, and psychological empowerment on their participation in civil societies and further its impacts on their entrepreneurial resilience. This study employed the quantitative approach, and data were collected through surveys, which were later analyzed with Smart PLS 4. This study’s findings revealed mixed results. The impacts of psychological and social empowerment on women’s participation in civil societies and their entrepreneurial resilience were significant. The impacts of political empowerment on women’s participation in civil societies and their entrepreneurial resilience were insignificant. The occurrence of disasters is common in tourist destinations, and several studies have investigated it. However, the study on the ripple impacts of disasters on women has not been thoroughly investigated, specifically in the Asian context. Full article

Scientific and practical interest in public and private spheres about motivations in the consumption of local gastronomy is growing globally. In this sense, this research focuses its analysis on the relationship between gastronomic attitude and the motivational dimensions for consuming local foods, based on the gastronomic experience of visitors to the city of Cali, Colombia, an emerging gastronomic tourist destination. This study used a quantitative method; a semi-structured survey was carried out with 362 tourists who visited Cali, Colombia, a gastronomic city in the Délice Global Network. The data were analyzed using Smart PLS-SEM Software Version 4.0 via the partial least squares technique (PLS-SEM). The findings show that a visitor’s gastronomic attitude is a predictor of their motivation to consume local food. Furthermore, among the indicators that explain the gastronomic attitude, the influence of the city’s gastronomy on the visit stands out as the most predominant factor in the visitor’s attitude toward gastronomic tourism. Other theoretical and practical implications are also discussed. Full article

This study analyses the evolution of industrial heritage in the Ciudad Rodrigo region from its initial form to its current role as a cultural asset within the tourism sector. This study identifies and analyses the old mills in the region, distinguishing between those that have been abandoned and those that have been recovered for tourism purposes. Various historical sources have been used to do so, highlighting the Cadastre of the Marquis of Ensenada (mid-18th century). The aim is to determine the impact of this evolution on the local economy, with special attention to the role of tourism as a driver of territorial development through the enhancement of this industrial heritage using tourist routes. The results emphasise the importance of heritage recovery as a strategy to revitalise rural areas, highlighting the importance of tourism in the local economy, and as a key element for the sustainability of the territory. Full article

This research aims to conceptualise the use of the digital twins (DT) tool in tourism to address smart tourist destinations’ future challenges to enhance tourists’ experiences and residents’ quality of life through better services developed by DTs. This paper investigated the use of DT technology to tackle the new challenges facing smart tourist destinations (STDs) in terms of urban planning, sustainability, security, marketing, and tourism activities by using data on this topic from expert researchers and public and private organisations. Also, this research adopted a systematic review approach to analyse and illustrate the existing literature on the topic of DTs and their use for STDs, which helped us develop the DT concept in a STD context. The findings of this research reveal that DT technology is emerging as a disruptive technology tool that is being used to improve the management of STDs in terms of their efficiency, safety, sustainability, environmental protection, productivity, and energy consumption. Moreover, DT technology is a nascent tool in the tourism and marketing industries, but its versatility in relation to its capacity to analyse data and predict the behaviour of tourism and business ecosystems to address relevant issues at STDs gives it a key role in the tourism industry. Finally, a new definition of DT technology has been included in this study within a tourism and STDs context, filling the gap in this topic in the tourism industry according to some researchers’ suggestions. There are limited scientific publications about DT technology that jointly tackle the DT technology and STDs sphere. Accordingly, this manuscript defines DT technology and provides a new viewpoint of this technology that will help to initiate academic discussions on DT tourism within the context of STDs. Full article

In smart tourism, co-creation involves a collaborative effort among tourists, tourism service providers, and other stakeholders to enhance tourism experiences. This study aims to examine the factors influencing tourists’ co-creation experiences in smart tourism destinations through exploratory sequential mixed methods research. Participants who visited four Chinese smart tourism destinations took part in two study phases. In the first phase, eleven individuals identified the following five dimensions that might affect tourists’ co-creation experiences: smart environment; interactive activity; personalized service; cognitive engagement; and social interaction. In the second phase, an online survey was conducted with 283 respondents to validate these five dimensions. A structured equation model was utilized to analyze the collected data. The results indicated that all five dimensions identified in the qualitative study significantly influence tourists’ co-creation experiences. These findings offer theoretical and practical insights for future research on tourists’ co-creation experiences in smart tourism. Full article

Smart tourism technologies (STTs) enable tourists to obtain travel information instantly and to conduct several contactless transactions, which are preferred by travelers to limit the amount of unnecessary contacts after the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this paper surveyed 451 tourists and investigated the influence of attitudes and self-efficacy on an intention to visit smart tourism destinations. Attributes of STTs and tourists’ expertise and personal innovativeness were explored to understand their influence on attitudes and self-efficacy. Furthermore, we examined the moderating effect of being domestic or international tourists to address the differences in self-efficacy, attitudes, and behavioral intention. Our research findings show that attitudes have a stronger effect on behavioral intention than self-efficacy does, and interactivity has the strongest effect, among other factors, on attitudes. The finding suggests that by focusing on providing interactive services that can respond quickly to tourists’ requests together with personalized information, tourism providers would be able to enhance tourists’ intention to visit smart tourism destinations. Tourist type (domestic vs. international) did moderate the effects of interactivity and personalization on attitudes towards STTs. The finding highlights the differences between the two groups of travelers and provides an initial point for future research. Full article

This study employs behavioral reasoning theory (BRT) to investigate factors (i.e., personal values, reasons, and attitudes) affecting existing and future behaviors of Millennial tourists’ electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). It uses a mixed-methods approach that includes qualitative interviews with 25 tourists to elicit specific reasons for and against eWOM and a survey of 572 Millennial-Chinese tourists to quantitatively validate our BRT structural model. The statistical results from SmartPLS 3.0 show that all hypotheses on direct effects have gained empirical support except for the relationships between the existing behavior and its respective reasons for and against eWOM. These two insignificant direct effects are, however, shown to be fully mediated by global attitudes, respectively. Moreover, gender moderates the relationships between reasons against eWOM and the existing behavior and reasons for eWOM and future behavior, respectively. Most findings regarding the foregoing direct, mediation, and moderation effects are exploratory. In addition, this study contributes significantly to the literature by successfully developing and validating the scale of reasons for and against Millennial tourists’ eWOM within the BRT framework. Destination managers can use this scale of reasons as both a diagnostic tool and a blueprint for eWOM management. Full article

The level of success in tourism is gauged by several metrics; however, the most widely used is the level of tourist arrivals. However, this research answered the call for greater investigation of the impacts of qualitative factors and intangible cultural–heritage assets on destination performance. The primary research purpose was to analyze the effect of implementing a local well-being philosophy (Tri Hita Karana) on tourist revisit intentions for Bali and the mediation of destination quality and destination image. A research model was developed to examine the relationships among local wisdom (TKH), destination quality, destination image, and revisit intentions. Data were collected via a survey of 520 digital nomadic tourists and analyzed using SmartPLS 4. The results indicated that the implementation of THK positively and significantly affected revisit intentions, destination image, and destination quality. Destination image and destination quality had positive and significant effects on revisit intentions, and destination image and destination quality also significantly mediated the effect of THK implementation on revisit intentions. The findings suggested that implementing local wisdom values such as THK in the management of a destination makes visitors feel more favorably about the quality and image of the destination and they have the intention to revisit. Full article

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a disruptive technology that is being used by smart tourist destinations (STDs) to develop new business models and marketing services to increase tourists’ experiences and sales, revenue, productivity, and efficiency and STDs. However, the adoption of AI applications and platforms requires a high economic budget for STDs that want to integrate this digital tool into their future agenda and tourism development plans, especially when they set them up for marketing plans and operational processes. This iterative technology needs regular maintenance as well, leading to recurring costs and specialised crews in advanced technologies and marketing activities. This study aims to show the impact of AI advancements on STDs’ tourism marketing to enhance the quality of services and illustrate their future agenda to improve tourists’ experiences. A comprehensive literature review on AI technology and STDs has been conducted to illustrate new tourism marketing in their future agenda. Moreover, this study presents real examples of AI technology in a tourism context to better understand the potential of this digital tool. The findings of the current study support the idea that AI is a multipurpose tool that helps manage, monitor, and analyse sales information; revenue management; minimise prediction errors; streamline operations; and develop better marketing strategies, optimising economic resources, reducing marketing costs, and responding dynamically to changing needs for tourists and residents in STDs. Furthermore, the investment in AI technologies by STDs helps enhance the quality of products and services, and attract new investments, which benefit the regional economies and population’s quality of life. This study is the first to address the use of AI to improve tourist marketing in STDs, which is its primary uniqueness. Also, this study identifies new opportunities and initiatives through AI that can be developed to help tourism marketing in STDs. Full article

The Game Theory is aiding global tourism research to leverage destination appeal and competitiveness in the context of climate change advocacy. As global tourism continues to play a vital role in economic development and cultural exchange, there is a growing need to unravel the complexities of tourist behavior and destination competitiveness. Therefore, this study aims to utilize the Game Theory to investigate the relationships between Fear of Missing Out (FOMO), Regenerative Tourism Destination Competitiveness (RTDC), Tourist Visit Intention (TVI), and Destination Loyalty (DL) within the UAE, with the moderating role of Climate Advocacy. An online survey (using Google Forms) was distributed via social media platforms (primarily Facebook groups), resulting in data collection from 296 respondents. Smart PLS 4 and SPSS were utilized for data analysis. The findings revealed that RTDC had significant positive relationships with FOMO, DL, and TVI, thus supporting hypotheses 1 to 10. However, the hypothesis regarding Climate Advocacy moderating DL and TVI was not supported. Based on the Game Theory, this study contributes to the theoretical understanding of regenerative tourism destination competitiveness and offers practical implications for destination management strategies. Limitations include reliance on self-reported data and context-specific considerations. Future studies should also consider cultural contexts, to enhance the external validity of research outcomes. Full article