Dr Kate Mingjie Ji

Existing research has overlooked the interaction of debt in the financial assessment of asset-light strategies. This research assesses how financial leverage (high or low long-term debt) interacts with management contracts as well as franchising to exert an impact on the value of hotel companies. Panel data of 195 observations in 2007-2019 were analysed with ordinary least square, robust regression, stepwise regression and quantile regression. The research findings clarify the impacts of asset-light strategies by differentiating the previously discovered U-shaped impact into a U-shape for management contracts and an inverted U-shape for franchising. Furthermore, when financial leverage is introduced, the above relationships hold at a low leverage level; but are weakened at a high level. Lastly, these U-shapes are asymmetrical, being more responsive to asset-light strategies than when there is no leverage interaction. This research hence clarifies agency costs and their relevance to asset-light strategies with varying financial leverage.

In the post-COVID-19 era, Chinese holiday seekers have shown significant interest in outdoor leisure opportunities or rural tourism, with a notable increase in enotourism. Wine tasting and related experiences have extended beyond consumption to become more experiential and sophisticated. To better capture this deepening yet under-addressed experience, this study developed a multi-item scale to measure wine tourism experiences. The scale covers six dimensions, namely escapism, entertainment, esthetics, education, novelty and hedonism, which are based on Pine and Gilmore’s (1998) experience economy model. The scale measures a wide breadth of experiences that are associated with wine tourism in the new era. Hence, it provides revised and pertinent market intelligence for winery to better market their products.

In addressing one of the least-researched areas in tourism - the formation of product strategies - this study focuses on the homogeneous package tour phenomenon. It draws on Industrial Organization theory to explore the impact of relationships between industry subgroups on the development of such products. With a specific focus on Chinese package tours to the UK, tour itineraries were firstly mapped to provide a visualization of relative homogeneity. Then, by examining the resource traits of participating firms, two subgroups in the industry were distinguished: tour operators (including wholesalers and retailers) and travel agencies (including Online Travel Agencies). It was found that the determination of product homogeneity involves a combination of the dependent relationship between tour operators; a more independent relationship between travel agencies; and the nature of the interdependence between the two. Strong bargaining power on the part of suppliers and weaker customer power further strengthened product homogeneity.

The UNWTO notes that the successful management of tourist congestion is highly dependent on controlling travel demand. It is surprising therefore, that demand management has been largely overlooked in the tourism literature, as have the roles of both tour operators and package tours in contributing to congestion or overtourism. Tour operators wield considerable power in ‘channelling’ customers to certain destinations and consequently play a major role in contributing to unsustainable mass tourist congestion. This research visualises the spatial patterns of People’s Republic of China package tour itineraries at peak season to the UK, which is then confirmed by statistical tests. The study confirms the important role of tour operators and package tours in distributing tourists in the UK and in confirming and accentuating its ‘hotspots.’ It highlights the power relationships and the spatial dynamism in the formation of overtourism. The study makes recommendations for managing tourist congestion in the post-pandemic world in the UK and elsewhere, largely related to encouraging tour operators and travel agencies to diversify their tourist product offerings.

This study develops a multilevel framework that connects customer-to-customer (C2C) interaction quality to brand attachment through customer experience. Two food traits—uniqueness and taste—and service quality are posited to play different roles in this link. This research contributes to the literature on the effects of food traits and service on the experience creation process at upscale restaurants. By including both objective measures from user-generated ratings and subjective measures from customer evaluations of restaurant dining, this research sheds new light on the cross-level direct and moderating effects on the experience creation process, and thus answers the question of when and how this process is contingent on food traits and service of different dining outings. It further contributes to the brand attachment literature by revealing the cross-level moderated mediating effect of customer experience on customer emotional connection to a restaurant brand.

Based on the literature regarding the mundane and the extraordinary, this study aims to understand the importance of the mundane in visitor experience. Mixed methods, namely, GPS tracking and questionnaires, were used. The results from a time usage analysis reveal that visitors spend nearly 26% of their time engaged in mundane activities (hospitality facility and transport activities). Based on a sequence alignment analysis, three behaviour patterns are identified: behaviour patterns in hospitality facilities, in attractions, and in a combination of both. These patterns reflect the visitors’ different levels of spatial engagement with the park, and this engagement subsequently contributes to the visitors’ evaluation of the park layout, visitor crowds, facilities and waiting times.

This research draws on the geographical concept of situated lay-knowledge to highlight how the formation of tourists’ attitudes to travel destinations challenges the theoretical foundation of theory of planned behaviour (TPB). It suggests that situated lay knowledge is dynamic as opposed to static which is the accepted basis of TPB and subsequently proposes ‘Situated Lay-Knowledge Travel Behaviour Model’ (SLKTB). The model was tested in a mixed methods approach where Chinese tourists, who knew little about Portugal, encountered Portuguese culture and cuisine in Macau. The overall results demonstrate that the formation of tourists’ attitudes about travel destinations is not pre-existing or static but dynamic and created from their ongoing encounters. 

Road construction offers a unique lens through which to investigate tourism mobility. To date, research has focused on the socio-cultural effects of road construction, such as its influence on tourists’ movements and its hindrance to tourism development, with less use of systematic methods to analyze road construction-related conflicts. Accordingly, this study comprised a systematic analysis of road construction-related conflicts in Yubeng, China, and potential strategies to solve the underlying mobility dilemmas. A geo-historical trajectory of conflicts was examined, and road construction conflicts were categorized as involving resource competition, tourism dilemma, modern anxiety, or protection paradox. Then, formal conflict analysis and an evolutionary game model were used to analyze these different conflict categories and develop a general pattern of strategies by which the dilemmas might be resolved. The theoretical implications and practical insights of the findings for tourism development, as well as other social conflict contexts, were also investigated.

‘Tourism’ has been regarded as an essential driving force behind destination changes. On reflection, it is essentially not tourism, but the mechanisms underlying destination development process that lead to the changes. However, very few studies have explored these mechanisms with the majority of work simply comparing the pre- and post-tourism stages to conclude the effects of tourism on destinations. The current study builds on Lefebvre’s social space production epistemology to establish a conceptual framework to decipher the mechanisms. It was illustrated using the context of the Muslim community in Sanya, Hainan Province, China. Results demonstrate that the dynamic relationship between capital, culture and power initiated the production of the community space. Capital facilitated the production of ‘spatial practices’, which interacted with the ‘representations of space’ dominated by the (administrative) power and the ‘representational space’ produced by the Muslim culture. Theoretical implications of the framework for social changes are also discussed.

This paper discussed the major development stages of social enterprises (SEs) in rural island tourism in China. The authors established a conceptual framework with which to analyze the key factors affecting development under the context of Chinese social and economic institution. Informed by the SE life cycle model, the study adopted a case study approach with the Boxue Eco Village on Hainan Island as the case. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, focus group interviews, and observations. Institutional characteristics at every stage, including entrepreneurial, collectivity, standardization, and refinement, were analyzed. Based on the specificity of SE of rural tourism in this case, the authors summarized the influencing factors that shaped the development process of the enterprises. First-hand data were collected through interviews with entrepreneurs, management staff, villagers, and other stakeholders. The model was modified according to the research results, and provides a more integrated model suitable for SEs in Chinese islands. This study established a conceptual framework with which to analyze the development process of SEs in rural tourism within the institutional context of China. This framework could be applied to understand the substantial development of emerging SEs in China. = 本文讨论了中国海岛的乡村旅游中，社会企业发展的主要阶段。作者构建了一个概念模型，分析在中国社会经济制度条件下，影响社会企业的发展因素。结合社会企业生命周期模型，本研究以海南岛博学生态村为案例，通过深度访谈，焦点小组访和实地观察采集数据，展开分析。分析了包括创业、集体、标准化、精细化每个阶段的制度性特征。根据案例中的乡村旅游社会企业的特殊性，作者归纳了影响社会企业发展进程的影响因素。本研究通过对企业家、管理者、村民和其他利益相关者的访谈采集了一手数据。根据研究结果调整了理论模型并且提出了更加适合中国海岛乡村旅游社会企业的整合模型。本项研究为中国制度环境下的乡村旅游中，社会企业的发展建立了一个概念框架。该框架可以帮助人们理解新兴的中国社会企业的发展本质。

The pursuit of tourism destination competitiveness (TDC) has become an important consideration for policy makers as a means of growing tourism market share. However, the published research tends to interpret TDC as the combined performance of various destination attributes, thereby overlooking other factors that impact on TDC. This study suggests that assessments should focus on the most influential events and proposes an “incremental” approach to determining TDC. The concept “smart tourism destination”, which has been applied increasingly in China, is used because it allows the use of insights from internet-based news that draw upon timely and relevant information to assess TDC. Using internet-based news sources, this study assesses Hong Kong’s TDC in the context of the recently established Shanghai Free-trade Zone (SFTZ). An incremental approach is adopted because it provides a means of explaining the threats that SFTZ poses to Hong Kong as a tourist destination. =

摘要
提升旅游目的地竞争力是政策制定者扩大旅游市场份额的重要考虑因素。現有文獻倾向于闡釋旅游目的地竞争力為各种目的地特質的综合效能，因此其它因素对於旅游目的地竞争力的影响常被忽視。本研究顯示，旅游目的地竞争力的评估应着眼于最具影响力的事件，并提出以一个“叠加”的方式来決定旅游目的地竞争力。本研究採用智能旅游目的地的概念，並根據以互联网为基础的資訊，就最近成立的上海自由贸易区的背景下评估香港的旅游目的地竞争力，并以叠加方式來解释上海自由贸易区對香港作为一個旅游目的地的威胁。