Abstracts for Session 5
Tourism innovation for precarious times
Title: Revisit intention in terms of destination image and travel anxiety under COVID-19 in Japan among travelers who obtain travel information from social media influencer
Author: Hisashi Masuda
Affiliation: Kyoto University
In this study, we develop a research model that combines tourist destination anxiety against tourist destination image theory with investigating the characteristics of travelers who acquire information from social media influencers. To test the model by SEM(structured equation modeling), a survey on tourism on Kyoto under COVID-19 was conducted among metropolitan residents in Japan (n=514). The result showed that destination cognitive image influenced the intention to revisit for both the group that acquires information from social media influencers or not. But the impact of the cognitive image was significantly greater in the acquired group than the non-acquired group. In addition, in the destination cognitive image, ease of tourism, tradition and culture, nature, and local community were significantly related for the acquired group, while for the non-acquired group, the only such relationship was food/cuisine and local community. This study provides a perspective on the use of insights from social media influencer marketing research into tourism research. In addition, we show the tendency to revisit tourist destination in consideration of travel anxiety, which provides useful insights for the management of destination under the influence of infectious diseases. We have not yet been able to analyze the impact of individual components of the image of a tourist destination or a more detailed model that takes into account the diversity of tourists. In the future, we will build a model that can explain more complex structures based on this model and collect data, aiming to contribute to this research field.
Title: Youth activation and intergenerational collaboration for tourism innovation in precarious times: LocalsFromZero case study
Authors: Dejan Krizaj, Rudi Medved, and Jaka Godejsa
Affiliation: University of Primorska
The 2020 pandemic and overtourism issues of recent years have shown us the benefits, relevance and limitations of tourism. In response, several international partners launched TourismFromZero, which has already received more than 900 responses discussing related issues and ideas.
In April 2020, several students submitted ideas via the TourismFromZero questionnaire with a common focus on local "from zero” experiences. They were invited to join the TFZ team to guide them in implementing their idea. The group formed the LocalsFromZero startup, invented a new concept for local tourism collaboration, and implemented the first minimally viable LocalsFromZero (LFZ) prototype.
LFZ is an experiential platform in the form of an e-marketplace with a profound social twist: education and support for the digitization of smaller, authentic providers and the opportunity for students to gain real work experience. A new platform/business model layer is included through the LFZ Scouts. Scouts are field agents who know their region inside and out. Their job is to find hidden local experts and hosts - and help them become part of the tourism market. These small but important players are often overlooked, even though they contribute greatly to the preservation of local traditions (past and present), culture and environment.
The case study presented analyzes the process from the initial pandemic response to youth activation and intergenerational collaboration that developed in and through unique circumstances and drivers of innovation.
This research is partly carried out in the framework of the EU-funded HORIZON 2020 project SMARTDEST.
Title: Hacking Hekla: Developing entrepreneurship and innovation in practice – barriers and ways forwards
Authors: Magdalena Falter, Gunnar Þór Jóhannesson, and Carina Ren
Affiliation: University of Iceland, University of Aalborg
This article explores entrepreneurship and innovation in rural communities in Iceland based on the case study of Hacking Hekla - a rural hackathon with focus on entrepreneurs in rural Iceland.
Digitalization is often proposed as a new all-purpose method in regional development to respond in an innovative way to the challenges of rurality. However, when turning to the fine-grained practices of development and implementation, the role of the digital often becomes less clear. This paper seeks to add understanding to how digitalization is understood and worked with in practice in regional development.
By focusing on the motivation of the various actors involved in this activity, we seek to crack open the black box of “innovation, digitalization and entrepreneurship” and shed more light on how these actors describe and work with innovation and entrepreneurship in the context of regional development.
Using action research (Lewin, 1946) as a methodology, this research actively uses the hackathon as a tool towards research as well as development. Data has been collected through participant observations, questionnaires and qualitative semi-structured interviews.
Hackathons are often applied in order to reach instant economic and societal change. The application of innovative tools in regional development processes are hyped as miracle solutions. The case study about the intervention of Hacking Hekla, however, showed that innovation comes about in rather subtle than drastic and smooth ways. Hence the study shows that strengthening entrepreneurship in rural communities is a complex process that might only show effects in the long-term.
Title: Tourism firms in crisis: Theoretical perspectives on the role of the entrepreneurial ecosystem
Author: Iris Hrund Halldorsdottir
Affiliation: University of Iceland
Long-term sustainability of a region includes its ability to respond and adapt to changes and shocks, which the tourism industry is renowned for. Using the concept of an entrepreneurial ecosystem as a theoretical lens, this study aims to explore the interplay between the entrepreneurial environment and coping of tourism enterprises in these turbulent times.
Recently the concept of the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) has gained popularity with scholars. With its roots in Systems Theory, the concept is fundamentally about understanding how aspects of the environment, and their interplay, are important for entrepreneurship and innovation. In theory, innovation facilitated by a supportive EE can foster a region’s resilience in the face of crises. However, to date few, if any, studies in tourism have used the EE concept as a means of exploring its role in supporting tourism firms in a crisis scenario. This is where this study will provide an initial theoretical application of the EE concept to the crisis in tourism in Iceland brought about by the Covid pandemic. Specifically, the paper will theorise how elements of the EE, for example networks, government policy and cultural attributes, can align to support tourism firms in tackling crises.
Title: Factors influencing exclusion and untapped potential of young and small tourism professionals
Authors: Tadej Rogelja and Dejan Križaj
Affiliation: University of Primorska
The distribution of the benefits derived from tourism is very uneven. The author refers to the challenges of micro or small tourism communities and their stakeholders (local tourism providers, associations, etc.), which despite their tourism potential and due to various factors remain overlooked, excluded and/or uncompetitive in the tourism market.
A number of previous studies have already identified some of the key factors contributing to such a situation: lack of entrepreneurial thinking, lack of knowledge and skills in the field of digitalisation (directly related to the rapid technological advances of recent years), insufficient strategic planning, the regional/local character of tourism, ongoing COVID -19 pandemics, etc. (Hohl & Tisdell, 1995; Czernek, 2017, Ndivo & Cantoni, 2016, de Guzman et al., 2020). Similarly, in this study, the author explores what key factors are perceived by the above-mentioned stakeholders as inhibiting and problematic for their development and progress, but in this research the emphasis is placed on inhibiting factors that young and qualified professionals (e.g. students) see as being able to come to their aid (Lopes et al., 2021). The aim of such a research framework is to identify the common interests of both sides (young professionals and small tourism stakeholders), find synergies and propose a new conceptual model for connecting qualified young and marginalised tourism stakeholders. To reach that goal, the author will discuss several inductive approaches to better understand actual and suitable tourism development practices of young and small tourism professionals.
This research is being conducted as part of the EU-funded HORIZON 2020 project SMARTDEST.
Title: Retaining Recreational Tourism Through Digital Solutions
Author: Sabina Rolsted
Affiliation: Zealand Academy of Technologies and Business
Due to the COVID 19 induced restrictions in international travel and tourism activities and indoor activities, there has been huge surge in outdoor recreational tourism at both local and national level. Although outdoor recreation, as a trend has been growing steadily for the last couple of years (European Tourism Future Institute, 2019), COVID-19 has pushed the newer (recreational) consumer at a faster pace towards the nature and recreational activities. As summer 2020 witnessed the increased local tourism activities, a post COVID-19 scenario could be that tourism mobility is transformed not only temporarily but over the long-run (Ioannides & Gyimothy, 2020). This would require Danish tourism businesses to design their tourism experience products focusing even more on the changing customer segment for longer term and not just improvise at the moment of crisis.
This study intends to explore how the tourism businesses attempted to retain the customers and which innovative behavior and solutions they have applied in response. Due to social distancing requirements, businesses moved toward digitalization and sought digital solutions to interact with the customers. However, the nature and utility of digital solutions varied from simple and ah hoc solutions such as MobilePay - Pay and Play solutions, emergence of voluntary activities to business alliances with similar business; and Apps development funded by private and government sector consolidating various tourism stakeholders. The question is whether these solutions will remain useful for long term retention of the customers.
Keywords: Recreational tourism, digital innovation, digitalization, COVID-19 tourism responses.
Title: Guest cards and weather conditions in city destinations – An analysis of visitor flows - The case of the “Geneva City pass”
Authors: Miriam Scaglione, Rodolfo Baggio, and Marut Doctor
Affiliation: University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland Valais
Studies on travel, time-space consumption has always been a challenge for tourism research, but interest has expanded with the increased availability of tracking techniques (for example, GPS trackers, cellphone data). Under the seminal research umbrella led by Lew and McKercher (2006); McKercher (2018); McKercher, Shoval, Park, and Kahani (2015); Baggio and Scaglione (2017) have proposed a network analytic approach to visitor flows (VF). The cumulative distributions of the trajectories’ lengths were consistent with the “Levy flight random walks pattern” (LFRWP) either for the cell phone or loyalty/discounted/all-inclusive guest cards data. From a behavioral perspective, the verification of the LFRWP is coherent with visitor’s trajectories optimization strategy of grouping nearby attractions together before visiting another set of attractions, that is a faithful description of tourist activity.
Geneva is an urban canton (state) comprising a surface of 282.5 km2 that promoted a guest card with 50 attractions and valid for 24, 48 or 72 hours. Data collected from 2016 to 2019 from more than 40,000 cards were enriched with daily meteorological information translated into categorical variables that mimiced MeteoSwiss’ weather forecasts. The research outcome (that used spatial analysis combined with general linear econometrics) showed limited validation of the LFRWPs even after data clustering (by season and meteorological conditions) along with a moderate evidence of weather influence.
The authors propose a twofold explanation to these facts: urban destinations with highly connected transportation seem to disregard the importance of the optimization of travelers’ strategies and; the limited number of attraction points may affect the verification of LFRWP.
Title: Designing a sustainable hotel platform for increased productivity and loyalty benefit - is it the right time for cooperation in the hotel industry?
Authors: Mladen Mitrović, Dejan Križaj, and Gordana Ivankovič
Affiliation: University of Primorska
Revenue Management (RM) is an area experiencing progressive popularity in the world of the hotel industry. The first author's doctoral dissertation (which is under research process) is dealing with the problem of applying RM and benchmarking of performance indicators as its integral part, in the 3, 4 and 5 stars hotels from Belgrade, Ljubljana and Zagreb, collecting information from the hotels directly and, potentially, through the Smith Travel Research (STR) database.
It is questionable to what extent it is practiced by smaller capacity hotels, which are not members of any chain. There are some indications on which it is expected the lower level of understanding and usage of RM and benchmarking in hotel SMEs from those cities e.g. small percentage of hotels sending their business reports to the STR, a worldwide recognized leader for hospitality industry benchmarking.
The idea is to present hoteliers with a chance to gain an enviable level of knowledge and to use RM with minimal investment through the presentation of an innovative mobile application that would consist of a three parts. The first part is theoretical, with intention to provide all useful information about the RM concept (history and development, formulas, glossary…). The second part will give a possibility for conducting benchmarking. Since great attention in the hotel industry is paid to guest satisfaction, which of course is also expressed through repeated visits, the application will also contain a part in which the cooperative activity of the hotels will encourage loyalty programs and this aspect of the application will serve guests to meet (and also to book their accommodation) all the amenities they can get during the stay in the object on a loyalty program basis. Probably the vast majority of these hotels do not have a site in their facility optimized for smartphone users, so potentially this part of mobile application could allow them to activate and present their offer in this market, which shows enormous growth. To begin with, the application is intended to present staying offers from hotels in Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade. If the whole idea is put in the context of the situation with the Covid-19 pandemic, its adequacy can be also considered from the point of view of promotion and encouraging tourist stays in hotels, at least on the national level.
Title: Tools for Sustainable Transformations in Tourism
Authors: Sara Lupini and Giovanna Bertella
Affiliation: UIT - The Arctic University of Norway
Sustainable Transformations (STs) are large-scale shifts towards sustainability. Central for such shifts are knowledge co-creation and sharing, collaboration and innovation. In their attempt to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, tourism destinations, viewed as complex socio-ecological systems, have now the opportunity to undergo STs. However, there is a lack of tools and methods that can assist tourism stakeholders, in particular companies and destination management organizations, in their attempts to move towards sustainability. The purpose of our study is to discuss possible tools and methods. This study reports our experience in developing and testing practical tools and methods aimed at promoting active participation, stimulating collaboration and fostering innovative thinking among destination’ stakeholders. Our study relies on central ideas from practice-and design-based learning theories, Theory of Change, Design Thinking and Sustainable Business Models. It includes a series of three workshops promoted by the local Destination Management Organization (fall 2020) and two students-enterprises workshops (fall 2020, fall 2021). Data were collected through participant observations, field notes, and final oral and written evaluations by and with the participants. The data were analyzed identifying critical aspects regarding the participants’ satisfaction with the workshops, possible improvements and perceived learning outputs, in general and in relation to sustainability. Our study’s approach has resulted to have both potentials and challenges. We argue that there is an urgent need for participatory creative methods, and our study is a contribution to development of a toolkit of such methods that can be used by scholars and practitioners interested in promoting STs of tourism destinations through innovation.
Title: Product innovation overnight
Authors: Elsbeth Bembom, Randy Bruin, and Carina Ren
Affiliation: Aalborg University, UiT- The Arctic University of Norway
As for many other tourism companies across the globe, the summer of 2020 was unusual for many tourism entrepreneurs throughout the Arctic due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While their usual international clientele stayed home, local companies were to some extent able to welcome domestic tourists instead. Since tourism in many Arctic destinations had grown significantly during the last decade due to increased interest of international markets, tourism businesses needed to rethink their offers for this new domestic guest. How did Indigenous tourism entrepreneurs adapt to the crisis and how can their responses be understood considering discussions of Indigenous entrepreneurship? To answer these questions, this study draws on interviews with tourism managers at local DMOs and Indigenous tourism entrepreneurs in the Arctic.
As described in the interviews, local tourism businesses implemented minor to radical product innovations to target domestic visitors, such as ‘softening’ their tours and upgrading their food and accommodation offers with locally produced products. In accordance with earlier research on Indigenous entrepreneurship, Indigenous business owners often rely on directly available resources and prioritize their heritage and values over financial profit (Wennecke, Jacobsen & Ren, 2019). Even though Indigenous entrepreneurship is often contrasted to “mainstream” definitions of entrepreneurship (Hindle & Lansdowne, 2005), this research stresses the adaptability and resilience of Indigenous tourism entrepreneurs during a crisis, which challenges assumptions regarding Indigeneity and entrepreneurial skills.
Title: The potential impact of The University of Iceland Science Park on Tourism Innovation in Iceland
Author: Runolfur Smari Steinthorsson
Affiliation: University of Iceland
University of Iceland did establish a Science Park in 2004 with 6.8 ha of open land at the university campus in the city center of Reykjavik. When founded University of Iceland Science Park (UISP) was at the idea stage with ambitious plans to construct buildings within the park and rent spaces to companies and institutions. It turned out to be difficult for UISP to attract tenants and secure enough financial resources for the constructions. In 2008 the fundamental concept of UISP did change. Instead of the idea of a being a property owner offering space and services to various organisations the Science Park changed its vision to become a community developer. The emphasis was on developing an open and inclusive community for people to live, work, study and play.
In 2021 the University of Iceland Science Park is becoming an area with an attractive site plan. Within the Park area are now four large buildings and space for more buildings. A house for students is next to the area on campus for student housing, adding new rooms for 277 students to the 1300 that already are living in the campus area. Two of the buildings are homes to international biotech companies. The fourth building is designed to be a house for many companies and institutions. It will be the main building for a large computer games company. In this building a considerable area will be controlled by the UISP providing space for a Start-Up Accelerator, new start-ups, cluster organisations and entrepreneurs.
University of Iceland Science Park is an important addition to the innovation ecosystem in Iceland. The vision of the Park is to be an active open and inclusive community of work and play leading to growth and impact. Recently the Icelandic Tourism Cluster decided to move their premises to UISP area. That move can be seen as an important step for the UISP in the process of establishing the Park as a player in the innovation ecosystem in Iceland. This research addresses the following questions: How can UISP unlock its opportunities and avoid the threats that loom in the ecosystem, it is part of?; Why did the Icelandic Tourism Cluster decide to move to UISP. What impact can that move have on Tourism Innovation in Iceland?
Keywords: Science Park, Ecosystems, Tourism, Development, Impact
Title: The life cycle of China's exhibition patents for new exhibition travel
Authors: Liu Linyan, Zhang Yin, Jin Yangnan, Florian J Zach
Session: No 5. Tourism innovation for precarious times
The convention and exhibition industry is for many cities a critical driver of incoming travel activity. Not surprisingly most 2020 conventions and exhibitions have been cancelled due to COVID-19. While for many events the COVID-19 closures happened overnight, others could adapt and develop an online or at least hybrid version of their event. Today it seems that the hybrid model might be here to stay as a safeguard against other disease outbreaks and also as a means to attract customers that, for various reasons, are not able or inclined to attend in person.
It has become the industry’s current concern and consideration to identify how the technological innovation of the exhibition industry can help the development of offline exhibitions and the integration with online exhibitions. Starting from exhibition patent information, this study explores the distribution characteristics of exhibition innovation technology and processes, as well as the development of Internet-related exhibition technologies. Employing the use of technology life cycle theory, this research analyzes the life cycle of exhibition patent technology and focuses on measuring the scale and quality of exhibition technology innovation. The results suggest that the exhibition patent technology is in a growth stage. The exhibition patents related to Internet technology have developed rapidly but the quality is not high.
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