Investigating the moderating effect of information sources on cruise tourist behaviour in a port of call

The aim of the study is to examine how destination knowledge acquired by cruisers through different information sources (online versus others) can moderate destination image formation and the relationship of image–satisfaction–behavioural intentions in a port of call. A multiple group analysis with partial least square method was carried out using data collected from a major tourism destination in Spain: Valencia. The findings revealed knowledge acquired through different information sources is a moderator of the image–satisfaction and satisfaction–behavioural intention relationships. The destination image formation is also significantly different from one group to the other. The findings o…

Towards a holistic understanding of cruise visitors’ sense of place: antecedents and experience outcomes

El turismo de cruceros destaca entre los demás productos turísticos por sus elevadas tasas de crecimiento, reflejadas en la demanda internacional de cruceros que se ha más que duplicado en los últimos 20 años, alcanzando los 28.5 millones de pasajeros en 2018 (CLIA, 2019). Pese a su importante crecimiento y desarrollo, el turismo de cruceros ha recibido poca atención en la literatura académica. Cabe señalar que los estudios previos se ha centrado principalmente en analizar aspectos relacionados con los servicios que se ofrecen a bordo de los barcos de crucero, mientras que la experiencia en los puertos de escala ha sido poco investigada. Conocer los elementos que contribuyen a una experienc…

The moderating effect of personal and situational characteristics in behavioural factors affecting ports of call

This research aims to study the moderating effects of cruise passengers’ gender, age, education, and prior experiences on a Mediterranean port of call destination image formation and the influence ...

Facebook brand community bonding: The direct and moderating effect of value creation behaviour

Abstract The present research deepens in the understanding of brand bonding in Facebook brand communities, drawing on value creation behaviours, the parasocial interaction paradigm and the attachment theory. Building up on these theories, our proposed conceptual model posits a direct relationship between value creation behaviour and brand community bonding, resulting from users’ interactions with other community members. The study also examines the moderating role of value co-creation behaviour on community members’ predispositions to develop emotionally based relationships with brands. The sample of the study consisted of 370 followers of brand Facebook pages and the model was assessed usi…

‘Tour me onshore’: understanding cruise tourists’ evaluation of shore excursions through text mining

ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is to shed light on the elements underlying cruise tourists’ evaluation of shore excursions, approaching them as an interaction of expressive and instrumental components.To fulfil the aim of the investigation, a thematic content analysis of 1296 online reviews was conducted using the text-mining software Leximancer. The results of the study revealed that cruise visitors with different overall satisfaction with their guided tour focus the narrative of their opinion on different tour attributes. Thus, the dominant themes of the cruise passengers delighted with their tour included the performance of the tour guide, the arrangement of the tour, as well as the cruis…

Guided Tour Influence on Cruise Tourist Experience in a Port of Call: An eWOM and Questionnaire-Based Approach

The study aims at exploring the importance of guided tours in cruise tourists experience while visiting a port of call and analyzing qualitative (electronic word of mouth from Tripadvisor) and quantitative (personal interviews with tourists) data. The results obtained from the electronic word of mouth analysis suggest that taking a guided tour is a highly satisfactory and sentimentally positive experience for the cruise tourist. Moreover, the empirical findings revealed that taking a guided tour has a moderating effect on (1) the interaction between destination image–satisfaction, (2) the satisfaction–loyalty causal relationship and (3) the destination image formation process regarding the …

“Sensing” the destination: Development of the destination sensescape index

Abstract Despite the increasing academic interest in the sensory dimension of the tourist experience, the quantitative empirical research in the field is limited by a lack of measurement instruments for evaluating the sensory stimuli perceived by tourists during a destination visit. The study addresses this gap by developing a composite index to assess the sensory destination panorama, termed as “destination sensescape”. The construct is conceptualised as a formative multidimensional variable with 5 dimensions (visualscape, smellscape, tastescape, soundscape, and hapticscape). The psychometric validity and reliability of the 17 items integrating the formative index were established by a rig…

Análisis comparativo del discurso sobre Innovación Disruptiva en los medios de comunicación y la literatura académica

[EN] This study aims to compare the media discourse on the disruptive innovation phenomenon with the academic literature published on that topic. For this purpose, 864 news articles referring to disruptive innovation were retrieved from the international news database Factiva. In addition, 161 academic papers including the term “disruptive innovation” were found on the Core collection of Web of Science published from 2004 until 2019. The automatic content analysis of the data will be carried out with the text-mining software Leximancer. The expected contribution of the study is related to uncovering how the media, in its role of agenda-setter and facilitator of the adoption of disruptive in…

The nexus between big data and sustainability: an analysis of current trends and developments

[EN] With the development of technological innovations, Big Data is transforming the socioeconomic world, impacting almost every organization and person. The transformations associated with the development of Big Data have important consequences for the sustainability of organizations, regions, and the society as a whole, and as such, they have been specifically addressed by the academic literature focusing on sustainability. Despite its importance, and perhaps because of its rapid emergence, there is a lack of studies dealing with the analysis of this body of literature and its trends. The current research attempts to fill this gap. The study develops a bibliometric and visualization analy…

Building relational worth in an online social community through virtual structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness

Abstract This research explores the creation of relational worth in an online social community through the lens of social capital theory. Virtual structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness as dimensions of social capital are assessed through the concepts of media dependency and parasocial interaction. Both constructs are regarded as antecedents of relational worth in online social communities, which develops through their users’ self-connection to the community. To test the proposed conceptual model an analysis was undertaken of data from 370 personal interviews with online social community users. The results showed that structural and relational embeddedness are both associated wi…

Crowding y Overtourism en la literatura de turismo y cruceros

[EN] The purpose of this article is to make a small analysis of the situation of Crowding and Overtourism literature in the tourism sector. In addition, the paper makes a special review of this literature with emphasis on cruise ship literature. Using the Web of Science as a basis, the study makes a brief bibliometric analysis of this literature. The purpose is to know the state of the art and main trends in this literature. In addition, the work aims to lay the foundations for a subsequent in-depth analysis of this literature. The work has implications for researchers, as it analyses gaps in the literature and new future trends. In addition, the work can help professionals to observe new p…

Perceptions and behaviour of cruise tourists during their visit to a port of call

[EN] The purpose of the present research is to assess the perceptions of authenticity and crowding of cruise tourists visiting a port of call and its influence on their future behavioural intentions. The research was carried out in the city of Valencia, because it is one of the main Spanish cruise ports and is a representative city of the Mediterranean ports of call for the cruise business. A total of 467 valid interviews were obtained. For the analysis of data, the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS version 22.0) was used. The findings reveal that Valencia is perceived as an authentic destination with moderate levels of human and spatial crowding. The analysis also demonstra…

The Influence of Place Attachment, Ad-Evoked Positive Affect, and Motivation on Intention to Visit: Imagination Proclivity as a Moderator

Integrating the theoretical foundations of symbolic interactionism, parasocial interaction, direct affect transfer, push and pull motivational framework, and narrative transportation, this study investigates the determinants of tourists’ intention to visit a destination using Heidi, a famous literary and television series persona, as a stimulus. Place attachment, ad-evoked positive affect, and motivation were theorized as antecedents of intention to visit and imagination proclivity as a moderator. The model was tested using data collected from 410 prospective Spanish tourists. Results show motivation and place attachment as key determinants of intention to visit among individuals with high…

Does culture affect sentiments expressed in cruise tours’ eWOM?

ABSTRACTThe study aims to examine the sentiment differences in the content of cruise tour online reviews across North Americans and Europeans, as representing the two largest cruise markets. Dictionary-based sentiment analysis has been carried out on 1127 reviews on guided tours retrieved from TripAdvisor. The results indicate significant differences in the sentiment score of the reviews, with North Americans’ texts being more emotionally charged than the European ones. In addition, North Americans’ reviews conveyed a more positive affect and had a more subjective and intimate tone, while those written by Europeans contained a smaller amount of sentiment-bearing words and their tone was mor…

Familiarity and visit characteristics as determinants of tourists' experience at a cruise destination

Abstract The main aim of this study was to examine the differences in the interrelationships between destination image-satisfaction-behavioural intention across cruise tourists with varying visit characteristics (length of stay and type of visit arrangement) and familiarity. The data for the study was obtained through interviews with cruise passengers visiting a major Spanish port of call. The results revealed that both familiarity (informational and behavioural) and type of visit arrangement (excursion versus independent visit) moderated the hypothesized structural relationships. The moderating role of length of stay onshore was only demonstrated on the impact of satisfaction on behavioura…

Cross-cultural Perceptions of Onshore Guided Tours: A Qualitative Approach Based on eWOM

Recognizing the importance of the study of guided tour experiences and being aware of the cross-cultural variations of services’ perceptions, the purpose of this article is to examine if cruise tourists from the two main generating markets (Europe and North America) perceive differently a port of call guided tour based on the content of the eWOM generated. The data set was comprised of 334 reviews on guided tours undertaken in Spanish ports of call and published during the period 2009–2015 on the major travel Web site Tripadvisor. The thematic content analysis of the data was performed using the text mining software Leximancer. The results yielded different pictures for the experiences desc…

Implicaciones del turismo masivo en un destino de cruceros

[EN] One of the types of tourism that can generate greater problems of overtourism is cruise ship tourism, given the large number of people who disembark at a port of call to visit the destination. For this reason, the present study aims to analyze the perception of massification among cruise ship tourists visiting an important Mediterranean port of call and how it influences their satisfaction with their visit. To this end, using structural equation models and from a sample of cruise ship passengers, the model proposed in this study is tested. The results indicate that of the two typologies of massification analysed, it is spatial massification that contributes most to the perception of to…

Assessing cruise port of call performance: a passenger-based approach using PLS modelling

ABSTRACTIn the present context of booming cruise demand, the study aims to advance the knowledge on port of call performance from cruise passengers’ perspective. The aim of this investigation was twofold: (1) to examine the structural links among port of call perceived quality–satisfaction–future intentions (revisit and word-of-mouth (WOM) behaviour); and (2) to test the moderating effect of cruisers’ motivation (push versus pull factors) to visit the port of call on the proposed structural links. Partial least squares path modelling was used to test the proposed model with a sample of 492 cruise passengers at a Mediterranean port of call. The findings revealed that port of call quality has…

Exploring multisensory place experiences through cruise blog analysis

The Sustainability of Cruise Tourism Onshore: The Impact of Crowding on Visitors’ Satisfaction

The sustainability of cruise tourism has been questioned in relation to its negative effects on ports of call, among which crowding has recently become more pronounced. However, an understanding of how crowdedness influences cruise tourists&rsquo

Marketing Communication Course Material

El document forma part dels materials docents programats mitjançant l'ajut del Servei de Política Lingüística de la Universitat de València Este documento recoge las diapositivas de los temas que engloba la asignatura Comunicación de marketing impartida en inglés The document contains the slides of the topics covered in the Marketing Communication course.