• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.717-726
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• 2021

Tourism is one of the key economic drivers not only in Vietnam but also in the world. This study explores the awareness and perceptions of key stakeholders such as local residents, tourism businesses, and tourists on sustainable tourism development in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. Both quantitative and qualitative research approaches have been used with the secondary and primary data to provide insights on the subject. The secondary data is from vast sources, including the governmental department of tourism, statistical departments, annual all-level governmental reports, businesses, and others. The primary data is from the survey by questionnaires with 230 enterprises, 720 local residents, and 670 tourists and from the semi-structured and in-depth interviews conducted with local residents, businesses, tourists, local authorities' officers, and especially with 5 experts who are also stakeholders of Mekong Delta tourism. The results will help the related authorities understand the awareness and perceptions of the key stakeholders and deliver valuable information and a concrete delineated roadmap toward sustainable tourism development of the research settings.

• Journal of Smart Tourism
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.29-40
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• 2023

This research aims to understand the role of online reviews in the local search context by examining the effects of reviews on the representation of tourism businesses on local search platforms (LSPs). By simulating tourists' local searches for restaurants on three LSPs, namely Google, Bing, and Yelp, this study examines how different ranking results are generated across the platforms and how online reviews contribute to the differences. The findings suggest that online reviews are incorporated into LSPs as ranking factors and, thus, affect tourists' decision-making by influencing the information search results in the local search context. As one of the earliest studies on local search, this study discusses how the existing knowledge about the role of online reviews in tourists' decision-making needs to be reevaluated in mobile and more dynamic environments, and offers practical implications for tourism businesses' search engine marketing.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.251-269
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• 2023

Purpose - This study estimated the value of tourists' willingness to pay (WTP) to develop and promote regional tourism and minimize external effects using the contingent valuation method (CVM). Design/methodology/approach - To reduce exaggeration bias, a major issue of CVM, a pilot survey was conducted to categorize bid value. Additionally, the payment method was divided into a tourism fund and tourism taxes, and the respondents' answers were reaffirmed in two stages. Findings - As a result of the analysis, the tourists' WTP was estimated to be 5,132 KRW (3.60 USD) for the tourism fund and 1,036 KRW (0.73 USD) for tourism taxes. Research implications or Originality - The results of this study provide implications for securing financial resources and establishing policies in Gangwon province, which promotes special self-governing.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.216-232
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• 2017

This study's objective is to use the construal-level theory (CLT) to explore the effect of the utility of online travel reviews on tourists' perception. To accomplish this goal, online travel reviews are divided into two different categories based on concreteness, and the usefulness of each review is compared with the temporal dimension of psychological distance. The results show that close future tourists are more influenced by concrete reviews than abstract reviews; however, the far future tourists are more influenced by abstract reviews than concrete reviews. Based on these results, theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and suggestions are made for future research.

• The Journal of Economics, Marketing and Management
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.87-99
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• 2024

Purpose: This research examines the elements that affect Chinese tourists' trip experiences and behaviors in Japan and South Korea, focusing on destination image, digital engagement, and sustainability practices awareness. Research design, data and methodology: Data were collected from 414 Chinese tourists through an online survey and analyzed conduct confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Findings indicate a positive destination image significantly influences revisit intention but not travel satisfaction. Travel satisfaction positively affects revisit intention, while digital engagement and sustainability practices awareness both enhance travel satisfaction. Results: The results highlight the importance of leveraging digital engagement and promoting sustainability practices to boost satisfaction and repeat visits. Conclusions: The study provides practical insights for tourism stakeholders to develop targeted strategies, emphasizing customer service, sustainable practices.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.644-649
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• 2013

This study was conducted to determine the intake and satisfaction levels of Busan local foods in Japanese tourists visiting Busan. The degree of satisfaction with Busan foods and services in restaurants was evaluated. What these tourists wanted to eat after touring Busan was also determined. The subjects consisted of 100 Japanese tourists visiting Busan. Women (including housewives), highly educated people, and people who visited more than four times were predominant in number among the Japanese tourists. Busan local foods eaten during touring were: Dongrae Pajeon (29%), Sengsunhoe (21%), Daejikukbap (10%) and Haemultang (10%). Tourists wanted to taste local foods and answered that eating local foods during the tour was important. A variety of menu items earned a high score of 3.8 (from a highest possible score of 5.0) and various dessert items received a low score of 2.7 for satisfaction with Busan foods. In general, the satisfaction level for Busan foods was low. Tourists responded that they wanted to eat Bulgogi, Pajeon, Bibimbap, Sengsunhoe, and Kimchi jjigae in that order if they revisit Busan, indicating their preference for general Korean foods rather than Busan local foods. From all of the activities included in touring Busan, foods received the highest points (51%) in terms of attraction. As fifty four percent of subjects answered that they wanted to revisit Busan. Busan city needs to prepare tourist restaurants for Bulgogi, Bibimbap, Pajeon, and seafoods (including Sengsunhoe). They must also improve Busan local foods and restaurant services in order to attract and satisfy the Japanese tourists industry.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.10
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• pp.93-101
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• 2017

This study investigate the effect of each type of search volume on the number of Facebook fans and the number of tourists. According to the hierarchy effect model, the effect of communication appears to be the sequentiality of cognition-attitude-behavior. Applying this theory, this study predicted that when consumers who have higher involvement and knowledge on specific cities through search behavior, they will be more active in information search through Facebook fan page subscription and will lead to direct tourism behavior. To verify the prediction, we examined the influences among search volume of Seoul shown in Google Trend, the number of fans of official facebook page named 'Seoul Korea', and the number of foreign tourists. As a result, the type of search keyword was divided into four categories: tourism attraction keyword, natural environment keyword, symbolic keyword, and accessibility keyword. The regression analysis showed that tourism attraction keyword and symbolic keyword have influence on Facebook fanpage 'Like'. In addition, facebook fanpage fan size have mediation effect between search volume and number of tourists. All in all, it would be useful to appeal to foreign tourists with a message that emphasizes tourism attraction and Korea-related contents.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.59-77
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• 2018

The tourism industry is now changing to smart tourism, which maximizes tourists' overall tourism experience with the use of advanced mobile technologies and emphasizes the utilization of tourism information. Despite the quantitative expansion of the tourism industry, there is a lack of academic and practical discussion on tourism safety. Especially, in the context of walking tourism, tourists are more likely to be exposed to natural or social disasters and emergencies. Therefore, it is necessary to build a system that can provide walking tourists with safety information not only on dangerous factors which are anticipated to be confronted during a walking trip in advance but also on specific dangers in real time. Under the circumstances, this study seeks to identify the types of tourism safety information that can be offered by using publicly available open data, drawing on the safety information framework on the walking tourism that is presented in Choi et al. (2017)'s study. More specifically, this study focuses on the use of open data which is provided by the Korean government. Furthermore, this study verifies the types of safety information that are most urgently needed in walking travel situations. Specifically, this study aims to derive the importance and priority of each type of safety information for a walking trip by applying the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) analysis. For this, we collected 35 questionnaires from walking tour operators (practitioners) and walking tourists. The main results are as follows. First, natural disaster information is the most important factor in the top-level factor of safety information for walking tourists, followed by social disaster, life safety, and exhibition (security crisis) information. Second, information on natural disasters, environmental pollution, and weather is considered to be important at the sub-level factor. Lastly, the noteworthy result of this study is that the importance of each type of safety information varies depending on the walking tour operators (practitioners) and the walking tourists. That is, there is a recognition difference between the operator (practitioner) and the user in the importance and priority of the safety information of the walking trip. Therefore, it is necessary to develop policies and services reflecting the opinions of potential users when providing safety information so that the most importantly recognized information can be provided first.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.171-177
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• 2020

This study investigates e-service quality of online travel agency and influence on relationship quality and Reuse. The individual Chinese tourists with experiences using online travel agencies were chosen for the study. The survey was carried out at Jeju International Airport, which is the most frequently used by Chinese tourists visiting Korea. Data were collected for 7 days from July 15, 2019 to July 21, 2019. A total of 320 tourists were attended in this research and finally 300 samples were used for empirical analysis. The result of the study showed that e-service quality of online travel agencies all factors(convenience, individuality, accuracy and price attractiveness) influences on relationship quality all factors(satisfaction, trust) and the factor 'accuracy' was analyzed as the biggest among them. Moreover satisfaction and trust factors of all sub-factors of relationship quality influences on reuse. In the future, we intend to provide basic marketing data for Chinese tourists using online travel agencies to officials and practitioners. Particularly, focusing on the tourism behaviors of individual Chinese tourists, we are going to propose effective business cooperation plans and strategic alternatives with online travel agencies.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.145-164
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• 2023

The proliferation of online reviews on dining experiences has significantly affected consumers' choices of restaurants, especially overseas. Food quality, service, ambiance, and price have been identified as specific attributes for the choice of a restaurant in prior studies. In addition to these four representative attributes, cultural factors, which may also significantly impact the choice of a restaurant for tourists, in particular, have not received much attention in previous studies. This study employs the text mining technique to analyze over 10,000 online reviews of 76 Korean restaurants posted by Chinese tourists on dianping.com to explore the influence of cultural factors on the consumer's choice of restaurants in the overseas travel context. The findings reveal that "Hallyu (Korean Wave)" influences Chinese tourists' dining experiences in Korea and their satisfaction. Moreover, Korean food-related words, such as cold noodle, bibimbap, rice cake, pig trotters, and kimchi stew, appeared across all the review topics. Our findings contribute to the existing tourism and hospitality literature by identifying the critical role of cultural factors on consumers', especially tourists', satisfaction with the choice of a restaurant using text mining. The findings also provide practical guidance to restaurant owners in Korea to attract more Chinese tourists.