Scholarly Works, Hospitality and Tourism Management

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https://hdl.handle.net/10919/24339

Research articles, presentations, and other scholarship

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 206

All for one and one for all: The spillover effect of sports on tourism market value
Campayo-Sanchez, Fernando; Mas-Ruiz, Francisco Jose; Nicolau, Juan Luis (Elsevier, 2025-07)
The literature on sports tourism shows the relationship between sports events and market value from different perspectives; however, the results of this study offer a new theoretical angle: the spillover effect of high-profile athletes on hotel market value. On the basis of the associative network memory theory, we argue that people create connections between athletes and the country where these athletes play, thereby enhancing the country's brand awareness and recognition. The empirical analysis, focused on renowned soccer signings and their effects on hotel chains, shows an increase in market value attributed to the announcements of the signings of these acclaimed athletes, giving rise to a spillover effect. The main theoretical implication derived from the alluded new theoretical angle of the spillover effect of high-profile soccer players on hotel market value.
When ChatGPT designs your trip: How GenAI adds a cognitive layer to smart tourism
Nicolau, Juan Luis (SAGE Publications, 2025-08-23)
This conceptual article explores how generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), particularly tools such as ChatGPT, is transforming smart tourism by introducing a new cognitive layer into digital ecosystems. While traditional smart tourism systems have focused on data-driven optimization and automation, GenAI enables content creation, emotional simulation, and human-like interaction, which redefines how tourism experiences are imagined, delivered, and evaluated. This article proposes a research agenda organized around eight key tourism business domains (product, demand, consumer behavior, supply, disruptors, performance, ethics, and sustainability) and fifteen thematic topics, including authenticity, predictive intelligence, emotion-driven marketing, and labor transformation. Drawing on the literature, we illustrate how GenAI shifts the focus from personalization to co-creation, from information retrieval to immersive storytelling, and from reactive systems to predictive design. The study concludes with a call for interdisciplinary inquiry into the ethical, social, and experiential implications of GenAI in tourism.
Impact of smart door locks on traveler satisfaction on accommodation-sharing platform: An empirical investigation based on generalized random forests
Xu, Yukuan; Wu, Banggang; Nicolau, Juan Luis; Law, Rob; Xiang, Shuting (Elsevier, 2025-10)
When deciding on accommodation-sharing platforms, travelers face safety uncertainty because they need to trade or live with unverified strangers. Considering that accommodation-sharing platforms are introducing smart door locks to reduce safety uncertainty, this study contributes to the service-dominant logic framework by introducing uncertainty-mitigating factors that enhance satisfaction in an accommodation-sharing context. Using a dataset on a quasi-experimental design and applying generalized random forests, the results reveal that travelers’ satisfaction increases with room services with smart door locks. The positive effect decreases when room hosts have high credit scores or rooms use real pictures. This study contributes to the literature on uncertainty in the service-dominant logic framework and has methodological implications in using machine learning methods to identify causal relationships. Our findings also provide practical implications for accommodation-sharing platforms and hosts.
Identifying valuable reviews for review users: The value of tag systems on hotel booking platforms
Xu, Congyue; Nicolau, Juan Luis; Law, Rob; Liu, Xianwei (Elsevier, 2025-10)
In the era of big data, hotel booking platforms are inundated with an overwhelming volume of consumer reviews, which hinders review users from identifying valuable reviews. This study examines how review tags—a simple yet powerful heuristic—highlight valuable reviews and influence potential consumers and hotel managers. Using a dataset of 190,939 consumer reviews, we find that tagged reviews are more likely to be exerted more posting effort and receive more attention from review users. However, these relationships follow an inverted U curve, which suggests that the overuse of tags may counteract the intended benefits. We extend the theory of planned behavior by showing tags shape reviewers’ posting effort via attitudes and subjective norms, while dual-process theory reveals the heuristic role of tags for review users. Our findings provide insights for platforms to improve review systems and offer reviewers strategic ways to enhance their review's impact.
Promotional Framing and Firm Valuation in the Restaurant Industry: An Event Study
Sharma, Abhinav; Santa-Maria, Maria Jesus; Nicolau, Juan Luis; Line, Nathaniel (Sage, 2025-06-10)
Existing research has demonstrated that sales promotions result in unintended devaluations of firm value. However, this phenomenon remains unstudied in the restaurant industry, leaving restaurant companies with little guidance on how sales promotions affect their organization. This paper investigates the impact of sales promotions—and their framing—on firm value in the restaurant industry. Guided by prospect theory’s loss aversion principle, this study explores whether framing promotions as gains versus reduced losses leads to different outcomes. Using a sample of 1,165 promotion announcements, restaurant promotions were found to increase firm valuation, with reduced-loss framing being more effective. While much of the literature on framing effects has focused on individual decision-making processes, this research demonstrates their broader implications for firm performance and challenges the generalizability of the negative impact of sales promotions on firm value observed in other service industries—particularly hotels—contributing to a deeper understanding of promotional framing in the restaurant industry.
Special issue: marketing science applications in tourism and hospitality research
Nicolau, Juan Luis; Sharma, Abhinav; Ruiz-Moreno, Felipe (Routledge, 2025-06-13)
Senior spa-goers' potion: Brewing post-trip life satisfaction from the essence of motivations
Nicolau, Juan Luis; Lopez, Maria Carlos; Alen, Elisa; Vila, Trinidad Dominguez (Elsevier, 2025-10)
This study analyzes the effect of tourism-related life-enhancing motivations and tourism-related constraints on seniors’ life satisfaction after a visit to a spa. Drawing on expectancy-value, leisure constraints, and social comparison theories, the empirical application conducted in the thermal tourism context finds that tourism-related constraints have no effect on life satisfaction and that tourism-related life-enhancing motivations present a diversity of effects. While some motivations have no effect, others exert a positive effect in absolute terms (novelty) and in relative terms (relaxation and internal motivations) following a reference dependence pattern that is in line with prospect theory. Additionally, reference-dependent motivations present asymmetric effects from different angles: relaxation behaves according to the principles of loss aversion, while internal motivations show, nonetheless, reverse loss aversion. Theoretical frameworks related to motivation may benefit from recognizing the diverse effects of motivations on certain dimensions, such as life satisfaction.
The effect of job availability on hospitality and tourism industry performance
Sharma, Abhinav; McGinley, Sean; Dogru, Tarik; Nicolau, Juan Luis (Elsevier, 2025-10)
This study analyzes the impact of job openings in the overall economy on the performance of hospitality and tourism firms. By using interlinkages theory, the results show that the availability of jobs in the overall economy negatively impacts hospitality and tourism. This effect is pronounced for the hotel and restaurant subsector, while absent for airlines. Apart from critical managerial implications, the main theoretical contribution of the results is the nuanced understanding of interlinkages within the tourism industry, revealing that economic factors such as job opportunities impact subsectors differently. This highlights the importance of considering sector-specific variables and interdependencies in interlinkages theory, rather than treating hospitality and tourism as a homogeneous whole.
The ideological recipe: CEO politics as the secret ingredient in boosting restaurant market value through promotions
Campayo-Sanchez, Fernando; Sharma, Abhinav; Kim, Yelim; Jung, Hyojun; Santa-María, María Jesús; Nicolau, Juan Luis (Elsevier, 2025-07)
Based on upper echelons theory, the objective of this article is to analyze the influence of CEO political ideology on the effect of promotional activities on the market value of restaurants. Using a sample of 1061 promotional activities conducted by major U.S. restaurants between 1990 and 2022, the empirical application shows that not only do restaurants’ promotional activities result in an increase in their market value—contrary to the negative effects found in the literature—but those restaurants led by liberal CEOs (versus conservative CEOs) experience a greater increment in said market value. These results and the relationships among CEO's political ideology, promotional actions, and market value bring about several theoretical implications, integrating theories from political psychology into financial market theories.
A Cross-cultural Analysis of Attributes that Influence Customers’ Hotel Experience in Green Hotels
Bernard, Shaniel; Ho, Jo Ann; Dias, Alvaro; Zizka, Laura; Singal, Manisha (SAGE, 2025-08-10)
Although there is increasing awareness of hotels’ sustainability efforts, there are gaps in understanding both how and when green practices influence guest evaluations. To address this gap, this study applies the complexity theoretical framework and fsQCA to examine key attributes that influence guest experiences as reflected in online reviews of green hotels. In our study, emotions emerged as a critical attribute, surpassing the impact of sustainability measures. Results indicate specific combinations of hotel characteristics, such as ratings and sustainability practices as well as socio-cultural factors like collectivism and gender, drive positive and negative feedback in hotels. An intervention model for hotel managers to encourage proenvironmental behavior of guests is proposed based on their attribute grouping. Different strategies such as social norm messaging, co-creation with customers, and status signaling, will encourage guests to recognize and highlight sustainability practices in online reviews.
Survival of the fittest: Standardization by professional short-term rental hosts under severe uncertainty
Zhang, Huihui; Bianco, Simone; Zach, Florian J.; Xiang, Zheng (Elsevier, 2025-12)
Severe uncertainty, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, forces organizations to adapt quickly to survive in the marketplace. This study examines how professional short-term rental hosts enhance unit resilience under market disruptions through standardization, and how this effect is moderated by business size. A survival analysis is conducted using 155,132 observations of Airbnb units operated by professional hosts in Hong Kong between April 2018 and March 2023. Results reveal positive effects of standardization, and the benefits are more pronounced for larger businesses. The findings further identify that the positive effects of standardization become stronger and less reliant on business size during COVID. In contrast, under market growth, the alignment between standardization and business size is more important, where functional standardization benefits larger businesses but may harm smaller ones. This research enriches tourism literature by emphasizing the strategic lens of professionalization. The findings also provide insights for practitioners, platform managers, and policymakers.
Deploying popular culture for international expansion: Effect of operational strategies on hotel firms’ performance
Kim, Yelim; Nicolau, Juan Luis (Elsevier, 2025-12-01)
The global hospitality industry is increasingly linked with popular culture, yet its financial impact on hotel firms remains underexplored. This study examines how culturally symbolic events influence the market value of foreign hotel companies operating in the origin country of such culture. Drawing on associative memory theory, congruence theory, strategic flexibility theory, and dynamic capabilities theory, we analyze the effect of major South Korean cultural events on the market value of U.S. hotel companies operating in the South Korea. We find that popular culture events significantly boost hotel market value. Furthermore, franchised hotels outperform managed ones, suggesting that operational flexibility enhances responsiveness to cultural trends. These findings offer the first empirical evidence linking popular culture to foreign hotel firm performance and highlight the strategic importance of adaptable organizational models. The study contributes a novel cross-disciplinary framework and provides managerial insights for optimizing international expansion in culturally dynamic markets.
Sustainable Horizons: Navigating ESG Reporting Challenges in the Hospitality and Tourism Industry
Bernard, Shaniel; Singal, Manisha; Dias, Alvaro; Ho, Jo Ann; Zizka, Laura (2025-06-06)
A review of ESG reports shows that firms in the hospitality industry often take an external, fragmented approach to ESG reporting, failing to consider the sector’s diverse stakeholder groups and unique operational challenges. Integrating stakeholder salience theory and sustaina-bility materiality framework, we examine the current ESG issues reported by hospitality firms to offer preliminary directions for ESG reporting. Based on a sequential mixed-methods design in two phases, we analyzed 140 ESG reports and followed up with open-ended questionnaires and structured interviews with ESG experts. Our findings reveal clear variations in ESG priorities across hospitality subsectors: hotels focus predominantly on employee welfare and inclusion, restaurants emphasize food waste and supply chain engagement, while casinos highlight governance and regulatory compliance. Furthermore, we identified key challenges firms face in aligning ESG reporting with stakeholder expectations. This study offers theoretical and practical implications to improve ESG communication and accountability in the hospitality industry.
Asymmetric effects of music preference on emotional and behavioral responses: a reference dependence framework
Nicolau, Juan Luis; Casado-Diaz, Ana B.; Ruiz-Moreno, Felipe; Diaz-Lajara, Daniel (Emerald, 2025-04)
Purpose: This study explores how liking music shapes customer behavior in foodservice settings by addressing three central questions: (1) To what extent do positive emotions from liking music influence time spent, choice of establishment and spending? (2) How do asymmetries between positive and negative emotional deviations from expected emotions affect these behaviors? (3) Does the influence of liking music vary across foodservice settings such as bars/cafés and restaurants? Design/methodology/approach: Using the stimulus–organism–response (S–O–R) model, the study explores how emotional responses triggered by liking music affect behavior. The concept of segment-specific thresholds is introduced, examining direct effects on behavior and asymmetric impacts due to emotional deviations. Regression analyses assess significant effects on time, choice and spending. Findings: The results reveal significant relationships between liking music and customer behavior across different foodservice settings, underscoring the distinct role of emotions and the need to consider contextual and segment-specific nuances. Notably, the study highlights asymmetric effects, where negative emotional deviations exert a stronger influence on behavior than positive deviations. Practical implications: The findings suggest that managers could promote customer engagement by tailoring music experiences to match segment preferences. Collaborations with music providers may further support targeted musical environments, enhancing brand differentiation. Originality/value: This research contributes to the hospitality literature by integrating a reference-dependence framework with the S–O–R model, emphasizing social comparisons and emotional asymmetry. The study provides insights into how music can strategically shape consumer decision-making.
Enhancing the interaction between guests and hotel managers: The value of guest-generated titles
Xu, Congyue; Wang, Guangyu; Nicolau, Juan Luis; Liu, Xianwei (Elsevier, 2025-10)
Online travel platforms not only help guests make booking decisions by providing online reviews but also serve as interaction channels between them and hotel managers. However, excessive reviews lead to information overload, thus challenging hotel managers in identifying valuable reviews and crafting personalized responses, ultimately preventing them from effectively interacting with guests. Using 384,562 reviews for 2510 hotels on Booking.com, we find that guests exerting additional posting effort tend to upload a guest-generated title, but hotel managers do not prioritize those reviews with guest-generated titles. By measuring these reviews’ title–content similarity and the personalization of managerial responses using a trained support vector machines model, we find that content-related guest-generated titles can help hotel managers craft personalized responses, especially for negative reviews. This research contributes to the literature on guest-generated titles in online travel platforms and provides theoretical and managerial implications for hotel managers and online travel platforms.
Enotourist satisfaction: A multidimensional approach
Sellers-Rubio, Ricardo; Nicolau, Juan Luis; Campayo-Sanchez, Fernando; Shin, Seunghun (Sage, 2025-04)
This study aims to analyze the dimensions that determine an enotourist’s experience when (s)he visits wineries. In addition, in a novel approach, this work examines the influence of wine routes on this experience. On the basis of a set of reviews posted by wine tourists on TripAdvisor, Latent Dirichlet Allocation analysis is conducted to identify the dimensions that determine the wine tourism experience. Subsequently, ordinal logistic regression analysis is performed to identify the most determinant dimensions of visitors’ assessments of their experiences and the influence of wine routes. Results indicate that the “staff” dimension, associated with the treatment provided by tour guides, is the most determinant dimension. In addition, significant differences are observed in the assessment of attributes across the different wine routes.
The review sentiment garden: Blossoming loss aversion and diminishing sensitivity across time and crisis
Sharma, Abhinav; Shin, Seunghun; Nicolau, Juan Luis; Park, Sangwon (Elsevier, 2025-08)
Adopting an approach grounded in prospect theory, this article tests the principles of loss aversion and diminishing marginal sensitivity in hotel review sentiment. While prospect theory has been extensively tested in other areas, its application to review sentiment is novel, thereby extending our understanding of how hotel guests perceive and evaluate their service experiences. Simultaneously, this study examines whether the predictions of prospect theory hold to the same extent in post-Covid-19 reviews as they do in pre-Covid-19 reviews. The analysis is conducted on a sample of 416,756 reviews from 375 hotels in 14 European cities posted between 2000 and 2022. The findings show that a significant level of loss aversion and diminishing sensitivity characterizes reviews from both the pre-pandemic as well as post-pandemic periods. However, the effect of loss aversion becomes even more accentuated after Covid-19, with a gradual return to pre-pandemic levels.
The Effect of Short-term Leases on Hotels’ Agglomeration and Market-Entry Strategies: A Game Theory Approach
Bianco, Simone; Zach, Florian J.; Singal, Manisha (Sage, 2025-03)
Hotel agglomeration has been recognized as a driving force behind the success of tourist destinations. However, little research has delved into the effect of short-term leases on the dynamics of agglomeration. Utilizing a game theory approach, this study fills this gap in the literature by investigating the influence of short-term leases on agglomeration in the hospitality sector. Employing random-effect and logit models, our research reveals significant changes in the capacity of hotels to harness the benefits of agglomeration in the presence of short-term leases. With these altered market dynamics, newly established hotels gain a competitive advantage by undercutting short-term leases in terms of price class. However, inertia or misinterpretation leads mid-price and upscale hotels to choose a different strategy. This study advances our understanding of demand-driven agglomeration and offers valuable insights into the optimal market-entry strategies for new hotels.
From booking to rating activities: A holistic analysis of online review behavior in a destination
Nicolau, Juan Luis; Bigné, Enrique; Bulchand-Gidumal, Jacques; William, Edu (Elsevier, 2025-06-01)
The objective of this study is to analyze the online review behavior of users in the context of a range of activities undertaken at a destination while considering the determinant factors at three stages, namely, reservation (booking time and price), consumption (experience), and post-consumption (online behavior). Drawing on expectancy–value theory and cognitive dissonance theory, the main contribution of this paper to the tourism literature lies in its argument that the timing of the characteristics that describe the above activities may have different effects on the final response of users, be it their qualitative decision of posting or their quantitative decision of rating. By taking advantage of a unique database containing information at different stages from booking to rating, results show that the prices, which are observed at the booking time, can affect the posting and rating decisions of users, while the moment of the activity, which is observed at the consumption stage, only affects their posting decision.
Hunted hunter: the role of competitive comparison in product survival
Campayo-Sanchez, Fernando; Mas-Ruiz, Francisco; Nicolau, Juan Luis (Springer, 2025-03-07)
This study proposes that competitive comparisons disseminated by rivals influence the market lifespan of a product. This paper bridges the following two fundamental aspects of strategy: product survival and competition analysis. Utilizing a framework that examines rivalry from two perspectives—organizations and products—we build on the awareness–motivation–capability theoretical approach to explore in detail the impact of competition on the commercial longevity of firms’ products. Our first hypothesis posits that when a rival competitively compares its product with the product of the focal firm, the latter firm is more likely to counterattack by carrying out competitive actions. The second one assumes that the survival of a focal firm’s product increases when another company compares the product of the focal firm with any of the products that are part of its portfolio. We employ a longitudinal database capturing dyadic competitive comparisons between automakers’ vehicles in the Spanish car market from 2008 and 2017. This market context is important because Spain was the eighth largest automobile producer worldwide (and the fifth one in Europe) and ranked twelfth in the worldwide ranking of countries (and the fifth one in Europe) with the most units registered in 2017. Consistent with our hypotheses, our analysis reveals the following: (i) competitive comparisons by a rival with a focal firm’s product led to increased subsequent actions by the focal firm, specifically in terms of pricing and advertising investments; and (ii) a focal company’s product remains in the market longer when it is identified as a comparison target by another organization.

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