Extensive resources are invested in digital marketing in the hotel sector, however, few studies examine the efficacy of these tactics. This study examines (1) the range of digital marketing tactics utilised and (2) the metrics used to monitor digital marketing performance. The research concentrates on hotels within Switzerland, and the analysis was conducted based on a survey with 31 respondents. Preliminary results indicate that a clear website address and informative content are perceived to be the highest ranked digital marketing tactics, while the highest ranked marketing performance metric are referrals to the website and social media likes and shares.
Environmental practices impact on operations and customer behavior, and may contribute to employees’ job satisfaction and organizational commitment and resource efficiency in hotels. This research updates the current green practices implemented in hotels in England, and examined employees’ perceptions of the importance and performance of green practices. Findings from an online survey of 42 hotels certified by Green Tourism Business Scheme showed that employees ranked most green practices as important and were well performed. Furthermore, of the 28 green practices surveyed and allocated into an Importance Performance Analysis (IPA) quadrants, indicated that most items are located in the second quadrant, “Keep up the good work”. Hoteliers are encouraged to benchmark their green practices with the findings presented here.
In this article, we present STarmac, a program developed by the Swiss Applied Science University of Canton Vaud (HEIG-VD), part of the University of Applied Science and Arts in Western Switzerland (HES-SO) to support young founders in the development innovative business ideas by providing them with the tools for management of market and technology risk. We present the STarmac program, its components and we outline a framework with some relevant metrics for its assessment and comparison with existing similar initiatives so that we can engage into a continuous improvement methodology and provide better support to our spin-offs teams.
In a service quality perspective, the animal behavior of humans (e.g. human ethology) in queues has, to our knowledge, never been observed. This paper provides an empirical exploratory enquiry with the scope to understand skiers’ behaviors in cable cars queues in order to improve their overall satisfaction. We carried 82 immersions and 43 semi-directed interviews in the Swiss Alps (Valais), during the scholar vacations of February 2016. Along with the literature review, this research provides hypotheses to better understand the interface between a human queue and a mechanical transportation system. To adjust to the rigid system of the cable cars, our results show that a queue’s regulation is mostly based on ethological behavior.
Pilgrimage Tourism, one of the oldest forms of travelling, is the largest tourism sector in India; annually more than 70% of domestic tourist movement is for religious purposes which comes to 250 million pilgrims (Jachowski, 2000, Singh, 2016) and accounts for 20% of the revenue generated in the tourism industry (Dewan et al., 2008), hence, making it significant religiously, economically, politically, as well as sociologically. The present study was based on a survey conducted among the visitors who came for the 17th Exposition of St Francis Xavier’s holy relics, a Christian religious event, from 22nd November 2014 to 4th January 2015. Firstly, we discuss whether there is any association between the two groups of travellers (religious only Vs religious plus other travel motivations) and their demographic characteristics. Secondly, an attempt is made to explore the possibility of identifying latent motivational factors. Next, testing is done to find out whether there is any significant difference in motivational factors (Tsai et al., 2002) across various demographic characteristics of the combined visitors. Finally, the paper identifies the gap with respect to various facilities available for tourism, based on what the visitors perceived before visiting and what they experienced afterwards. It was found that demographically there is no difference between those who are coming specifically for religious purpose Vs those coming for religious and other purposes. Results also allowed the categorising of latent motivational factors and finding that demographically there is no difference except for age (working class) with respect to escape from busy life. With respect to the various tourism facilities, it was found that the quantified results exactly match with the qualitative findings of Wilson (1997); almost all of the facilities experienced by the visitors are falling under the A-Quadrant, where serious improvements need to be made. It can be concluded that there are many grey areas where timely actions from various tourism stakeholders is urgently required to maintain a consistent and positive image before the ‘experience’ becomes less attractive.
Today’s society is evolving at a fast pace. New communications tools are appearing every day and new technology is appearing constantly. To keep up with the newest trends, meet customers’ needs and stay competitive on the market, organizations have to adapt, change the way they operate. This is a complex matter which has to be addressed at societal, organizational and personal levels. Imperatives identified lead to a conclusion that socially-constructed change is the most suitable strategy to implement change within a tourism community-type destination. Challenges are identified as being difficulties related to the human factor, communication and learning. The use of a change readiness index is discussed, as a tool to identify in which destinations radical change can be implemented more successfully.
