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’.