• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.43-65
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• 2018

Purpose The emergence of mobile applications has simplified our life in various ways. Regarding tourism activities, mobile applications are already efficient in providing personalized tourism related information and are very much effective in booking hotels, flights, etc. However, there are very few studies on classifying the actual service requirements and improving the customer satisfaction in mobile tourism applications. The purpose of this study is to implement a practical mobile tourism application. To serve the purpose, we classify and categorize the service requirement of mobile tourism applications in Korea. We employed Kano model and analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Specifically, we conducted a focus group study to find out the service requirements in mobile tourism applications. Design/methodology/approach The data for this study were collected from Koreans and Foreigners who has the experience using mobile tourism applications. Participants needed to be familiar with mobile tourism applications because such users may be more aware of the mobile tourism applications services. We analyzed 147 valid data using Kano model and conducted AHP analysis on five experts in the field of tourism using Expert Choice software. Findings In this paper, we identified the 17 service quality requirements in the mobile tourism applications. The results reveal that the service requirement such as Geo-location map, Multilingual option, Compatibility with different operating systems were unavoidable service, absent of such requirements leads to the dissatisfaction. Based on the results of the integrated application of both Kano model and AHP analysis, this study provide specific implications for improving the service quality of the mobile tourism applications in Korea.

• Journal of Smart Tourism
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.27-36
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• 2021

As a popular concept, smart tourism is widely used as a strategic tool to improve the competitiveness of world tourism destinations. Taking Macao as a case study, this research explores the relationship between government, academic research, and smart destination applications, with a view toward investigating the utilization of smart technology to achieve service innovation, effective communication with tourists, and enhance the travel experience. The study summarizes the current situation of smart tourism in Macao, finding that most of the smart services in Macao rely on users to obtain information spontaneously and do not achieve real interaction and service demand. Suggestions and advice for smart development are provided.

• Journal of Smart Tourism
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.5-6
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• 2024

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.135-142
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• 2015

Purpose - Following the speedy development of the smart phone industry, tourism companies started to increase their brand recognition and sales volume by adopting mobile applications. However, applications for tourism industries are still insignificant. This study tries to analyze empirical evidence from Korean and Chinese consumers who have used mobile tour applications. By using an expansion of the technology acceptance model (TAM), this study will find what factors have effects on user intention for mobile tour applications. The findings will be helpful for the development of mobile tour applications and the tourism industries. Research design, data, and methodology - This study uses the TAM, which was presented by Davis in 1989. This study uses consumer acceptance level, consumer choice attitude, and use intention as the basic variables to fit to the TAM, and adopts choice content quality, brand value, and usage motivation as additional variables to analyze. This study has developed several hypotheses and collected data from 620 users who used mobile applications for tourism during April 1 to April 30, 2015. A total of 612 valid questionnaires were collected and used in the data analysis. The data was analyzed with structural equation modeling using SPSS Win/pc and Amos 22.0. Results - The findings can be summarized as follows: First, the content quality affects the consumer acceptance degree and choice attitude. Second, the brand value has a directly positive effect on the consumer acceptance degree and choice attitude. It is clear that the content quality and brand value play important roles in raising consumer acceptance and choice attitude. Third, usage motivation has no effect on the consumer acceptance degree and choice attitude. Fourth, the acceptance degree does not have any effect on the consumer choice attitude. Fifth, the acceptance degree affects the use intention. Last, the consumer choice attitude affects the use intentions. This indicates that consumer acceptance and choice attitude must both be achieved to induce use intention among consumers. Finally, the effects of the mobile tour application content quality and brand value on consumer acceptance degree and choice attitude were confirmed. Additionally, the effects of the consumer acceptance degree and choice attitude on use intentions were analyzed. Conclusion - It is not meaningful for tourism marketing to launch tour applications in the mobile market without understanding tourism consumer characteristics. When developing mobile tour applications, companies should focus on the characters of consumer choice attitudes as high quality, high brand value, usefulness, and ease of mobile tour applications. This study has limitations in that it did not consider negative factors such as perceived risks or analyze whether there are differences between Korean and Chinese consumers. In the future, we will consider equipping the same mobile tour applications commonly used by both Korean and Chinese consumers, and then examine negative factors as well as the differences in mobile tour applications between Korean and Chinese consumers.

• Asia-pacific Journal of Multimedia Services Convergent with Art, Humanities, and Sociology
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• v.8 no.10
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• pp.1-9
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• 2018

The purpose of this exploratory study is to identify the mobile phone applications (apps) used by foreign tourists visiting South Korea through a pilot study using focus groups and individual interviews. Concentrating on tourist mobile app use in a smart tourism environment and categorized through a taxonomy of mobile applications lays the framework and determines the factors boosting tourism smartphone app trends by foreign tourists visiting South Korea. Researchers collected data through ethnographic methods and analyzed it through qualitative research to uncover major themes within the smart tourism app use phenomenon. The researchers coded, counted, analyzed, and then divided the findings gleaned from a pilot study and interviews into a taxonomy of seven logical smartphone app categories. The labeling and coding of all the data accounting for similarities and differences can be recognized and are logically discussed in the implications of the apps used by tourists to assist tourist destinations. More specifically these findings will assist smart tourism destinations by better understanding foreign tourist smartphone app use behavior. Tourists visiting South Korea interviewed in this study exhibited significant mastery of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, craved free WiFi access, and utilized smartphone apps for all facets of their travel. Findings show major concentrations of app use in bookings of accommodations, tourist attractions, online shopping, navigation, wayfinding, augmented reality, information searching, language translation, gaming, and online dating while traveling in South Korea.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.87-100
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to investigate the evolution of regional tourism resources from the perspective of business ecosystem network. A regional tourism structure changes due to various factors such as natural resources, facilities, festivals and events, public resources, and etc. An exploratory analysis was conducted to examine the interaction between resource characteristics and alliance complexity in the regional tourism industry. In the process, the duality of technology provides an insight into the interaction among several players within an alliance network which include regional attractions and tourism industry. As a result. we identified four types of tourism alliance network: functional, organizational, resource-oriented, and artificially-allied. The managerial implications are also discussed.

• Journal of Smart Tourism
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.11-23
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• 2022

The use of robots in tourism and hospitality contexts have drawn increasing scholarly and practical regard. Although the number of recent robotics related studies continue to grow, a general knowledge map, which is important to point out promising directions for future studies, remains to be made. To understand the application of robotics in tourism and hospitality, this study conducts descriptive and bibliometric analysis to present a holistic knowledge map of this specific field where research trend, key contributors, highly cited references, and popular themes were identified. Collaboration networks among institutes and regions were additionally illustrated. Collaboration across fields, industries, and perspectives were encouraged following the findings and both theoretical and practical implications are accordingly provided.

• Journal of Smart Tourism
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.37-46
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• 2021

The travel-related applications on a smartphone help tourists make a reservation before their trip conveniently; use a map, direction guidance, and translation services during the travel; evaluate and recommend travel services communicating with others after their journey. This study examines the relationships among affordances and constraints provided by the mini-program, users' perceived value, and travel-related mini-program (TRMP) usage by analyzing the structural equation modeling. An online questionnaire was developed from the available scales in the published literature. A total of 651 TRMP users responded to the survey, and 448 valid responses were included for analysis. Affordance, including physical, cognitive, sensory, and functional affordance, significantly influenced the hedonic value of TRMP; utilitarian value except for cognitive affordance. There were negative relationships between unfamiliarity and both types of value. The utilitarian and hedonic value of TRMP significantly influenced both the exploitative and explorative use of TRMP. Travel-related mobile applications are dramatically increased in the tourism field. This research sheds light on TRMP usage, as a new and smart device, from a user's perspective based on the affordance theory. This study represents a valuable direction regarding the emerging travel-related online platforms in tourism.

• Journal of Smart Tourism
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.21-31
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• 2022

This review paper aims at providing a systematic analysis of articles published in various journals and related to the uses and business applications of big data. The goal is to provide a holistic picture of the place of big data in the tourism industry. The reviewed articles have been selected for the period 2013-2020 and have been classified into 8 broad categories namely business strategy and firm performance; banking and finance; healthcare; hospitality; networks and telecommunications; urbanism and infrastructures; law and legal regulations; and government. While the categories are reflective of components of tourism industries and infrastructures, the meta-analysis is organized around 3 broad themes: preferred research contexts, conceptual developments, and methods used to research big data business applications. Main findings revealed that firm performance and healthcare remain popular contexts of research in the big data realm, but also demonstrated a prominence of qualitative methods over mixed and quantitative methods for the period 2013-2020. Scholars have also investigated topics involving the notions of competitive advantage, supply chain management, smart cities, but also ethics and privacy issues as related to the use of big data.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.27-41
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• 2008

This paper examines the relationship between IT investment and the improvement of efficiency from the perspective of organizational contingency by the type of organizations and their maturity in IT use in terms of their history of e-commerce use. Organizations are divided into private and public in nature, and into experienced and inexperienced in e-commerce. An analysis was performed on data from 286 organizations in tourism industry. Comparison among the four groups showed differences in competitive and operational efficiency.