Review of 2008 (1) - ANPTUR

Nothing much relevant is happening at the moment, other than teaching, (lots of) marking and writing up a couple of papers for conferences that are coming up later in the year. Hopefully, these will then result in submissions to academic journals. Therefore, over the next few weeks I will be posting about my main work last year.

In August I travelled to Brazil to be the international keynote speaker at the V Annual Conference of the Brazilian Association of Tourism Researchers (ANPTUR), which was hosted by UNA University Centre, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. The conference attracted more than 200 delegates, all tourism students and academics from Brazilian universities and research centers. The conference featured a diverse range of paper presentations, supported by three keynote speeches (including mine). My presentation focused on the impacts of mega-events and how the tourism industry can leverage the hosting of such events. I used EXPO’98 as the case study, following a research undertaken in 2002 with my colleagues at BU Professor Roger Vaughan and Dr. Jonathan Edwards. In addition to this presentation, I was also invited to co-chair one of the sessions on tourism marketing, which enable me to have a better understanding of what fellow Brazilian academic research.

The conference was an excellent opportunity to network and further develop contacts with Brazilian tourism academics. I thoroughly enjoyed it. This was also a good opportunity to enhance my understanding of the Brazilian tourism education system, both at graduate and post-graduate level: size, key players and sources of funding. One of the consequences of my attendance of the conference was the invitation to become a member of the editorial board of two of the main Brazilian tourism journals: ‘Cultura e Turismo’ and ‘Visão e Ação’.

(Photo: with Professor Miriam Rejowski, President of ANPTUR)

Publication of a book chapter

Today I have received a copy of the book Handbook of Tourist Behaviour: Theory & Practice, edited by Metin Kozak and Alain Decrop and published by Roudledge, where I have published a chapter entitled “The antecedents and consequences of prestige motivation in tourism: an expectancy-value motivation” (co-authored with Antónia Correia).

Choosing, buying and consuming tourism/travel products and services includes a range of psycho-social processes and a number of personal and environmental influences that researchers and managers should take into account. This book provides an overview of such processes and influences and explains the basic concepts and theories that underlie tourist decision-making and behavior.

We know quite a lot about what motivates tourists, but most studies focus on motivation as a whole (i.e. what are the most important motives). The number of studies devoted to the systematic examination of specific motives, such as prestige, is rather limited and an integrative model is lacking. Therefore this chapter aims to contribute to the growing body of knowledge on tourist motivation (1) by reviewing existing research in the field of the prestige motivation and (2) by developing an analytical model of prestige tourism motivation. This model is supported by current knowledge on prestige consumption, both within and outside the tourism literature, resulting in a detailed understanding of the motivation and expectation formation process. A number of research opportunities in the field of prestige tourism motivation are also identified.

Publication of a refereed paper

Today I received the final version of the pdf of a paper accepted for the International Journal of Tourism Policy (Vol 2, Nº 1/2). The title of the paper is "Multidimensional segmentation of gastronomic tourists based on motivation and satisfaction" and is co-authored with Antónia Correia (Algarve University), Carlos Ferreira da Costa (Masters Student at University of Aveiro) and Nuno Oliveira (PhD Student at the London Business School).

This paper evaluates whether motivation and satisfaction can be used as segmentation variables in gastronomy tourism. Based on a stratified random sample, the respondents were asked to rank the attributes when selecting a restaurant offering Portuguese gastronomy (motivation), as well as, their evaluation of those attributes (satisfaction). Factor analysis, categorical principal component analysis and non-hierarchical cluster analysis are employed to identify distinct groups of tourists. The findings point out three market segments which suggest that motivation is a much more powerful variable for segmenting gastronomic tourists than satisfaction. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for tourism policy and management.

I am particularly pleased with my involvement in the publication of this paper as the feedback from reviewers was very positive. One of the reviewers did not ask for any changes to be made and added "I would like to congratulate author(s) for their efforts and patience to come up with such an over-standard and well-designed paper". Certainly a comment to be proud of.

This is the second paper published from the gastronomy tourism study. The first published paper was entitled "The determinants of gastronomic tourists’ satisfaction: a second-order factor analysis", Journal of Foodservice, 19, 164-176. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the presence of a single second-order factor by developing and empirically validating a second-order factor analysis model for measuring satisfaction of gastronomic tourists in Portugal. Among the three first-order factors, ‘gastronomy’ was the most important determinant of tourist satisfaction, followed by ‘price and quality’ and ‘atmosphere’.

Presentation of the Study - Profile of the Portuguese Tourist in the Algarve

On Wednesday, 22nd January I travelled to Portugal to attend the public presentation of a study that I have been involved in. The study looked at the profile of the Portuguese Tourist in the Algarve. It was commissioned by the Algarve Tourism Board to the Faculty of Economics, Algarve University. Dr. Antónia Correia, with whom I team up frequently, is the lead coordinator of the study.
The study involved surveying nearly 3000 Portuguese tourists in the Algarve and was undertaken in three different seasons: Easter, Summer and New Years Eve (our interviewers finished data collection by 9.30pm on the 31st December!).
The session took place during the Lisbon Travel Exhibition (21-25 January). Although the room had only 130 capacity, there were around 150 attendees. The attendees' reaction was very positive and we are encouraged by their feedback.
The final report should be ready in March and we are now planning to write a few papers out of this research. The Algarve Tourism Board has published the preliminary results (an executive summary and powerpoint presentation, both in Portuguese) and you can find them here.
I will keep you posted of any developments

Welcome

Welcome to my Blog!

I will try to update it as frequently as possible with news about me: what I do, what I publish and where I travel to.

If you have any comments that you rather prefer to send me directly, my emails are mmoital@hotmail.com and mmoital@bournemouth.ac.uk

Miguel