New article by Angela Smith, Derek Robbins & Janet E. Dickinson 2019,
Defining sustainable transport in rural tourism: experiences from the New Forest
Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Volume 27(2), Pages: 258-275 |
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2017.1401633

Author information

Bournemouth University ranked Top 10 in the world in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2019: Hospitality & Leisure Management.

https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2019/hospitality-leisure-management

New Paper Published – Volchek, K., Liu, A., Song, H., Buhalis, D. (2018). Forecasting tourist arrivals at attractions: Search engine empowered methodologies. Tourism Economics. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354816618811558

Abstract

Tourist decision to visit attractions is a complex process influenced by multiple factors of individual context. This study investigates how the accuracy of tourism demand forecasting can be

improved at the micro level. The number of visits to five London museums is forecast and the predictive powers of Naïve I, seasonal Naïve, seasonal autoregressive moving average, seasonal autoregressive moving average with explanatory variables, SARMAX-mixed frequency data sampling and artificial neural network models are compared. The empirical findings extend understanding of different types of data and forecasting algorithms to the level of specific attractions. Introducing the Google Trends index on pure time-series models enhances the forecasts of the volume of arrivals to attractions. However, none of the applied models outperforms the others in all situations. Different models’ forecasting accuracy varies for short- and long-term demand predictions. The application of higher frequency search query data allows for the generation of weekly predictions, which are essential for attraction- and destination-level planning.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, attractions, forecasting, Google Trends, search engine, tourist demand

Abstract

Professor Heather Hartwell research into large scale nutrition interventions to improve public health

Good nutrition and eating well is an important part of public health and can help stave off a number of age-related illnesses. Over the last twenty years, Bournemouth University’s Professor Heather Hartwell has been carrying out research into nutrition in the context of developing large scale interventions to improve public health. Her work has taken her from prisons to hospitals to workplace canteens. When Professor Hartwell began her research career in nutrition, much of the health policy focus was on one-to-one support for people who were struggling with associated health conditions. The idea that large scale interventions might be successful was only beginning to be recognised.

“One of the first projects I was involved in at Bournemouth University was a commission from the National Audit Office, exploring nutrition in prisons,” says Professor Hartwell, “We found that while prisoners did have healthy eating options, the catering on offer tended to over-rely on processed foods – bread, sausages and pasties, for example. This meant they were eating more salt than the general population, which can lead to high blood pressure and the risk of heart disease. Among other things, we recommended that they used the prison gardens to grow fresh produce, as it was a low-cost way of adding more vegetables to the food on offer. Around the same time, we were also looking at nutrition in hospital catering. In this setting, we found that there were much fewer healthy food options on offer and that meal production and delivery were overseen by a number of different teams – caterers, porters and ward staff. This meant that there was no real consistency and making it easier for miscommunication to take place.”

“It was quite eye-opening working in two very different public sector contexts,” continues Professor Hartwell, “As researchers, it’s important to go into every situation with humility because until you’re fully immersed in the context in which you’re working, you can’t fully appreciate the barriers that staff might be facing. In the NHS, for example, catering managers are often providing three meals per day, drinks and snacks on a very low budget, which limits what they’re able to do. You can’t achieve perfection in any situation, but co-created research can significantly improve what was there before.”

Working in public sector settings and seeing the difference that larger scale interventions could make on people’s health then led Professor Hartwell to consider the difference that healthier eating options could make in workplace canteen environments. “These settings are really important because they’re where people eat on a regular basis, not just one-off celebratory meals. If people are continually being offered unhealthy food choices, then it can have long-term implications for their health. We’re offered very little information about what’s in our food when we eat out, so my starting point was to improve that.”

Over the last few years, Professor Hartwell has been working on a major European grant, FoodSMART, which has been addressing exactly that issue. The grant enabled Professor Hartwell and her team to develop an App, which uses data provided by catering companies to help consumers to make more informed choices about their meals. “We wanted to create an IT solution for the contract catering industry which would both better inform their consumers and also give the companies an edge when competing for new contracts,” explains Professor Hartwell, “It was slightly ahead of its time when we first created it, but is getting much more interest now as workplaces are increasingly concerned about employee wellbeing. Nutrition can help contribute to better health, which helps to reduce sickness rates and can improve productivity too.”

Alongside FoodSMART, Professor Hartwell and her team were also leading on another European grant, which was looking at increasing our protein intake through vegetables. In the context of an increasing global population, it is important for the agricultural and catering sectors to consider more sustainable sources of food. “The project was about encouraging people to get their protein through vegetables, rather than meat, which uses far more resources than arable farming,” says Professor Hartwell, “It’s a healthier way of meeting our protein requirements as vegetables contain less fat and are much more sustainable in the long run.” Partly inspired by the issues of sustainability raised in this project, Professor Hartwell and her team have recently started working on a new research grant with partners in Brazil to consider how to improve our long term food security.

More information about VeggiEAT can be found here: https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/veggieat/
More information about FoodSMART can be found here: https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/foodsmart/

CALL FOR PAPERS – SPECIAL ISSUE
“Brand Management and Cocreation: lessons from tourism and hospitality” JOURNAL OF PRODUCT AND BRAND MANAGEMENT – Planned publication is early 2021. http://emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/journals.htm?id=jpbm 

2017 Impact Factor: 2.75

GUEST EDITORS: 

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis, Bournemouth University, UK
Professor Nigel Morgan, Swansea University, UK
Dr Sangwon Park, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China  

The planned publication early 2021
Deadline for submissions 1 September 2019
Submissions period 1 August 2019- until 1 September 2019. 

________________________________________________

CALL FOR PAPERS 

Branding originated as a means by which a company differentiated its goods and/or services compared to its competitors (Cowley, 1991). The importance of brand management in tourism and hospitality has become more important than ever as the sectors have become mature, global and highly competitive. Hitherto, the creation of strong brands was the result of passive or responsive marketing involvement by brand managers on consumers (Brown, Kozinets, and Sherry, 2003). Recent literature on marketing and brand management, however, suggests that strong brands are generated from a co-creation process, involving consumers’ active engagement (Boyle, 2007). For example, Coupland, Iacobucci, and Arnould (2005, p. 107) comment that “the consumer is an active partner with the marketer in brand-meaning formation”, whilst Brown et al. (2003, p. 30) note “the brand is a milieu where marketing management and consumer commitment co-exist”. 

Tourism and hospitality deal with experiential products and are at the forefront of cocreation (Buhalis & Foerste, 2015) so that the integration of brand management and co-creation is now a crucial issue (Buhalis and Inversini, 2014). In terms of inseparability, one of the service characteristics, the service environment implies the involvement of consumers in the entire service process – including the production and consumption stages (Middleton, Fyall, Morgan, Morgan, and Ranchhod, 2009). Moreover, the development of information technology (e.g. TripAdvisor, Booking, and Expedia) facilitates the sharing of consumer service experiences and their positive or negative reflections as part of co-creation activities, which potentially informs brand development and reputation (Binkhorst and Den Dekker, 2009; Au, Buhalis and Law, 2014). Numerous studies in tourism and hospitality have discussed the brand management and co-creation, separately. However, academic attempts to integrate two important themes are more limited. Therefore, the purpose of this special issue in JPBM is to explore brand management and co-creation in tourism and hospitality contexts using a variety of issues/concepts/examples. We invite submissions on a broad range of tourism and hospitality branding topics in this regard, and welcome both conceptual and empirical contributions. 

Some suggested tourism and hospitality branding topics include:
• Brand cocreation in tourism and hospitality
• Destination branding and cocreation
• Tourism and hospitality branding
• Tourism and hospitality Branding across cultures
• Branding through tourism ecosystems
• Sustainability and tourism branding
• Destination image and destination personality
• Branding for tourism places
• Regenerating obsolete brands in tourism and hospitality
• Tourists engagement with brands
• Brand managers’ approaches to tourism and hospitality products
• Strategies for adapting innovative branding strategies to tourism and hospitality
• The impact of technology on tourism and hospitality branding 

SUBMISSION INFORMATION
Full papers submitted to this special issue are subject to the standard review procedures and rules of Journal of Product and Brand Management. 

http://emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=jpbm Please note that:

• Papers need to be submitted online to the Special Issue on “Brand management and cocreation: lessons from tourism and hospitality” through the ScholarOne System (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jpbm).
• For informal enquiries you can contact the guest editors.
• Submissions will be blind-reviewed by at least two reviewers.
• Based on the reviewers’ recommendation, the guest editors and the Editors-in-Chief will decide whether the particular submission is accepted as it is, revised and re-submitted, or rejected.

Deadline for submissions 1 September 2019.The Scholar 1 site will not open for submissions until 1 August 2019.  The site will remain open for one month until 1 September 2019. Submissions to the special issue can only be made during this window and should be made by selecting the special issue from the drop down menu which will become available on 1 August 2019. The planned publication is early 2021. 

REFERENCES 

Au, N., Buhalis, D., Law, R., 2014, Online Complaining Behavior for Mainland China Hotels: The Perception of Chinese and Non-Chinese Customers”, International Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Administration, 15, pp.248-274. 

Binkhorst, E. and Den Dekker, T. (2009), “Agenda for co-creation tourism experience research”, Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management, Vol. 18 No. 2-3, pp. 311-327.

Boyle, E. (2007). “A process model of brand cocreation: brand management and research implications.” Journal of Product and Brand Management, Vol. 16. No. 2, pp. 122-131.

Brown, S., Kozinets, R.V. and Sherry, J.F. (2003), “Teaching old brands new tricks: retro branding and the revival of brand meaning”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 67 No. 3, pp. 19-33.

Buhalis, D., Foerste, M., 2015, SoCoMo marketing for travel and tourism: Empowering co-creation of value, Journal of destination marketing and management 4 (3), 151-161 76

Buhalis D., Inversini A. (2014) Tourism Branding, Identity, Reputation Co-creation, and Word-of-Mouth in the Age of Social Media. In: Mariani M.M., Baggio R., Buhalis D., Longhi C. (eds) Tourism Management, Marketing, and Development. Palgrave Macmillan, New York

Coupland, J.C., Iacobucci, D. and Arnould, E. (2005), “Invisible brands: an ethnography of households and the brands in their kitchen pantries”, Journal of Consumer Research., Vol. 32 No. 1, pp. 106-13.

Cowley, D. (1991), Understanding Brands by Ten People Who Do, Kogan Page, London 

Boyle, E. (2007) “A process model of brand cocreation: brand management and research implications”, Journal of Product and Brand Management, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp.122-131.

Middleton, V. T., Fyall, A., Morgan, M., Morgan, M., & Ranchhod, A. (2009). Marketing in travel and tourism. Routledge.

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis delivered a keynote Smart Tourism and the importance of networks for destinations presentation at the European Travel Commission Workshop in Vienna.

Professor Buhalis explained how eTourism evolved in the last 30 years and explained some of his research that was published in as early as in 1993 and is still relevant (Buhalis, D., 1993, Regional Integrated Computer Information Reservation Management Systems (RICIRMS) as a strategic tool for the small and medium tourism enterprises, Tourism Management, Vol. 14(5), pp.366 378. https://doi.org/10.1016/0261-5177(93)90005-6). He then transformed ETC delegates to the future explaining how technology will shape the future of tourism by 2030.

He explained what smart tourism is and what are the benefits for tourism destinations and organisations from the emerging tourism digital ecosystem.  Latest research from key publications was also offered.

Professor Buhalis also offered the latest range of research on smart tourism as explained in a range of publications including:

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis at the European Travel Commission Workshop in Vienna on Smart Tourism for destinations #tourism #smart #destination #smarttourism #smarttourism #IoT #ArtificialIntelligence