John Fotis awarded best PhD by IFITT

I am very proud of John Fotis for his award for best PhD by the International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism at the ENTER2016 conference. His thesis on the use of social media on consumer behaviour was supervised by Dimitrios Buhalis, Alan Fyall and myself. Congratulations John!

John receiving his award

John doing a presentation at ENTER2016 about this research

New Journal article in Psychology & Marketing

A new journal article entitled "Segmenting the Business Traveler Based on Emotions, Satisfaction, and Behavioral Intention" has been published in Psychology & Marketing, following a collaboration with Angel Millan and Maria Luisa Fanjul. This is the abstract of the paper:

As travel is part of their work, business travelers are assumed to be focused on carrying out a work-related task, rather than feeling emotionally stimulated during their trip. Due to this belief, there is limited research on consumer emotions within this segment of the travel market. However, not only is business travel an experience and therefore it involves emotions, but many business trips have a strong leisure component and business travel decision making is often emotionally charged. This paper segments the business travel market based on emotions, satisfaction, and behavioral intention. Using a sample of 400 managers in small- and medium-sized companies, the study demonstrates that the relationship between emotions and satisfaction is not unidirectional as far as business tourism is concerned. For two of the four segments, the valence of emotions translated into an opposite level of satisfaction/intention. The segments were found to differ in personal and trip-related variables.

Psychology & Marketing is a Wiley Journal with an Impact Factor of 1.08. According to the ISI Journal Citation Reports 2014), it ranks 41 out of 76 journals (Psychology Applied) and 73/115 (Business). It is a three star journal according to the ABS Journal Quality Guide. 

Most viewed article in Current Issues in Tourism - Reaches 10.000 views

One of my papers published in the Current Issues in Tourism journal has just reached the 10.000 views mark. An achievement since the paper has been published less than 2 years ago. The paper is co-authored with Scott Cohen (University of Surrey, UK, but formerly at BU) and Girish Prayag (University of Canterbury, New Zealand). 

Current Issues in Tourism is a highly regarded tourism journal: 

• Co-edited by two of the most prominent tourism academics (Professors C. Michael Hall and Chris Cooper)
• 2 star ranking in the Academic Journal Guide by ABS - Association of Business Schools
• Ranked as an "A" journal on the Australian ABDC list
• 2014 impact factor of 0.918 

The paper is freely available for download for everyone (golden open access sponsored by Bournemouth University - no subscription needed!) from this address 

Ray Holden / PAS Training and research / Plan for climate change

A while ago I reported on the activities of place and place research and their poor business practice (you can see my earlier posts here). Yet, I continue to be contacted by people who have dealt with them who feel compelled to share their (negative) experience with me. I recently received another first-hands experience of someone who attended one of their events and this is what the participant had to say about the experience (published with permission).

“Came across your blog having just been browsing to locate the tel no. of Ray Holden to remind him, yet again (after 6 written emails) that he agreed to reimburse my organisation having overcharged it for my attendance/presentation at a 'Climate Change Conference' held in London this June.  There are no numbers to be found.

The event I attended in London earlier this year was a joke and if I had been either of those who travelled so far (one came from S Korea, another from Toronto) I would have been outraged about the event.

Ray 'chaired' the event, wrote notes at the back of the room as individuals presented, and then privileged his own questions in the short period of time allocated to questions.  It was as if we had been gathered there for his own benefit and training!  It was poorly organised, no meaningful discussion, effectively a one man show, limited refreshments, no signage to get to the top of the building.  I left early and now can’t even get a response from him to get him to reimburse the £100 odd that we are owed.  Yet, Still receive the marketing for the next 'conference'.

I’m also going to be looking out for whether my work appears in any mutated way since the above gives me no confidence and there was less than transparent management of the presentation on the desktop.”

A month in Castilla-La Mancha

Ciudad Real is not a touristic city at all. Although its name is ‘Royal City’, there are very few signs of the old times.  Over time the four kilometers of walls and 130 towers that protected the city in the middle age were destroyed, with the last stroke coming in the 60's where all but two gates were removed. So there is not so much to see in terms of cultural tourist attractions. Yet the city is pleasant and very walk friendly. D. Quixote de La Mancha, the legendary character of Cervantes novel with the same name, is present in the city (as well as in surrounding cities).

The city has also got a beautiful park which I used for walks/runs. In the summer walking or running starts at 8 or 9pm due to the high temperatures. We had a maximum temperature of over 40oC every day (?!) and there were days when I went for a run at 10pm as it was too hot to do it before then. The first picture below was taken at 7pm...

The salsa scene is actually good for a small city (75.000) and I managed to go to two salsa parties. Bachata is very popular in the city so I could also practice this genre.

Angel and Marta were great hosts and spend some time showing me around or invited me to join them in social events they were attending. The first weekend I was taken to Toledo, a beautiful historical city north of Ciudad Real. We spent our time there visiting the grand and beautiful cathedral, walking through the narrow alleys and having lunch at the very nice restaurant. We ended the day tasting the Marzipan sweets that are traditional in the city.

On two different occasions, Marta and her parents invited me to go to their summer house and enjoy the swimming pool (a must given the hot weather!). The house is close to River Guadiana and an artificial lake and they took me there at dusk. The scenery was just beautiful. See for yourself!

Angel had talked about a nice restaurant where they served beef that is mature for 60 days. So I invited him, his wife and Marta to go there for my farewell meal. The restaurant works on price per person basis and you are served eight courses (and can eat as much as you like!). It starts with cheese and two types of smokes meats, followed by tuna on tomato, two types of prawns, lamb and finally the matured beef. It all ends with a desert. The food was delicious throughout, as was the wine that Angel selected. Here are some pictures of the food and wine:

The owners of the restaurant are cheese producers and they also have a delicatessen next to the restaurant, with products there are mouth watering. Obviously the smoked ham legs are on display, as are the different types of cheese. There are many wines available to purchase (Castilla-La Mancha is an important wine producing region), and an impressive selection of canned food.

After the meal I was taken to the Mirador de La Mancha Hotel & Restaurant, which sits on a mountain overlooking the beautiful Castilla-La Mancha plains. The impressive D. Quixote statue made of wood really stood out, as did the paintings in front of the car parking places, inspired in Cervantes' novel.

University Castilla-La Mancha (Spain)

Today my month long stay in Ciudad Real (Spain) as a guest of the University of Castilla - La Mancha (UCLM) comes to an end. Over the period I worked with Dr. Angel Millan and Ph.D. student Marta Retamosa Ferreiro from the marketing department, exchanging ideas and experiences about research in marketing. Our main focus was on University branding as they have a substantial database about the perceptions of their university’s brand. 

We worked on a paper about the satisfaction of students across different courses (engineering, business and nursing), using customer-based brand equity as the theoretical underpinning. This involved doing a factor analysis followed by a logistic regression and, as always, statistical analysis takes longer than you anticipate (even though we were already familiar with the tests!). In the end we got there and we are now continuing to write the paper.

UCLM has five campi spread across the region (Albacete, Ciudad Real, Toledo, Cuenca and Talavera). The Ciudad Real one is modern and the facilities are good.

Interestingly, I had not met Dr. Millan in person prior to my arrival in Ciudad Real. Five years ago I presented a paper in Portugal about emotions in events which Dr. Millan attended. He then started supervising a Ph.D. on business travel which featured a strong component of emotions (experienced by business travellers during their trip). When he and his Ph.D. student were writing a paper about it, Dr. Millan remembered my talk and they decided to invite me to collaborate with them. 

In October they sent me an email asking if I was interested in co-authoring a paper with them. We ended up collaborating and submitted the paper to a good journal (three star according to the U.K.’s ABS list). After we submitted the paper, he commented that UCLM had funding for guest researchers and asked whether I would be interested in spending some time working with him. Fortunately I had a pretty uneventful July and therefore we applied to the grant, which was awarded. 

By the way, the paper we submitted got quite positive reviews, but as always we were asked to do some changes which we also worked on during my stay. We are now awaiting feedback about the revised version (we are optimistic as the changes requested were all possible to address!).

The month in Spain was not only about work. In the next post I will talk about some of the leisure experiences during my stay.

"Writing Dissertations & Thesis" e-book - First update is now live

Today I have added two major examples to the e-book:

* "Example 6.6: From description to analysis"
An example that explains how students can move from a descriptive review to an analytical one. I also include some information about how they could take it to the next level: the evaluation level

* "Example 7.1: Applying the generic process"
An excellent example of explaining a methodological choice that comes from a dissertation I supervised this year. The student applies the four stage generic process that I explain in the book very well.

Purchasers of the e-book get access to all updates. What you buy is not a finished book, but the current book + all future updates.

The e-book costs $7.99 (+VAT if applicable) and can be purchased at
https://leanpub.com/dissertations