CIMO Fellowship/Dandison C. Ukpabi
Main funder
Funder's project number: TM-15-9930
Funds granted by main funder (€)
- 13 500,00
Funding program
Project timetable
Project start date: 01/06/2016
Project end date: 31/03/2017
Summary
The emergence and the diffusion of information and communications technology (ICT) has transformed the tourism industry, thus, old business models have been rendered obsolete. With ICT, consumers have been vested with the power to co-contribute to the destination branding mechanisms through websites, social media and mobile technologies. Interestingly, there is a wide gap between developed and emerging markets on how these ICT tools are deployed and used by consumers to access tourism products and services. The aim of the research project is therefore to evaluate the current state of research on ICT in tourism and hospitality services through a critical literature review. The vision is to juxtapose research studies in both the developed and emerging markets in order to discover the gap especially in the emerging markets. The project also aims to evaluate the factors influencing the adoption of user-generated content as an evaluation tool on tourism and hospitality services during pre-trip planning. With this, the project hopes to identify hotel service attributes, by way of comparing developed and emerging markets, that attract positive electronic word of mouth (e-wom) through which other consumers base their patronage intention. The project is also aimed at evaluating, on a comparative basis, how management response strategies to user-generated content influence revisit intention. To achieve this, data is collected from consumers of tourism and hospitality services in both the developed and emerging markets. The result of this research project is expected to expose the dynamics of ICT especially social media in the firm’s branding and communication efforts especially as it affects the tourism and hospitality services in both the developed and emerging markets.
