What’s been published in Academia this September?
Quoi de plus doux que de songer, en allant à grands pas sur une route ? On marche dans la lumière, dans le vent qui caresse, au flanc des montagnes, au bord de la mer ! Et on rêve ! Que d’illusions, d’amours, d’aventures passent, en deux heures de chemin, dans une âme qui vagabonde ! Toutes les espérances, confuses et joyeuses, entrent en vous avec l’air tiède et léger ; on les boit dans la brise, et elles font naître en notre cœur un appétit de bonheur qui grandit avec la faim, excité par la marche. Les idées rapides, charmantes, volent et chantent comme des oiseaux.
—Guy de Maupassant, “Julie Romain“, 1886 .
Communication is the keyword this September. Back to school this 2019, journals are full of ideas and advice on how to communicate better between people, companies and even with robots. 3, 2, 1 … Here we go!
On the relationship between clients and accommodation providers, Annals of Tourism Research publishes an article comparing AirBnB and hotel clients’ reactions to problems during the stay. According to the results of the five studies carried out, the host and the visitor in an AirBnB interact socially to a greater degree than in a hotel. Therefore, the guest perceives the host as an equal, generating positive emotions between them and, when a problem occurs during the stay, this relationship helps them to improve mutual understanding. In this sense, two basic recommendations are made (both to hotels and other accommodation services). On the one hand, strengthen social interactions with customers, personalizing their services (e.g., “This room was cleaned by John”). On the other, focus on what is perceived as authentic, through experiences that combine social life at the destination with a homely feeling (encouraging customers to participate in local life). Following these tips would reduce the number of negative comments on the Internet.
Reducing the number and impact of these comments is a challenge. The International Journal of Hospitality Management publishes two articles on the importance of improving communication between tourism staff and clients.
The first one focuses on the treatment offered by more than eight hundred receptionists to clients with some type of disability in Ghana. The authors identify four types of responses: pretending accommodators, empathetic accommodators, apathetic non-accommodators, and egoistic non-accommodators. By describing each type, they provide identification clues of the most problematic behaviors. In addition, attitudinal segments have been detected (depending on gender, educational level or hotel category), so they recommend investing in specific training.
The second one focuses on emotion, power and voice in situations where a client feels discriminated. According to these authors, when a client faces discrimination, many clients choose to remain silent so they don’t accentuate the reason why they are discriminated against. In these cases, customers express their discontent indirectly, through the Internet. When a client feels strongly discriminated, he or she will raise his/her voice, although he/she will not say that it is discrimination. The authors attribute this reaction to the concern of saving face. Face would be the positive image that someone has of himself/herself and would like to maintain in order to be socially accepted. Knowing how to communicate transparently about any kind of problem, or even knowing how to read between the lines are skills that hotels should reinforce among their staff.
Journal of Travel Research addresses a similar topic in a study about the consequences (particularly in terms of dissatisfaction) of having the feeling that we are treated worse than other clients. These situations derive mostly in a greater intention to explain to others how badly they have treated us, spreading a negative image of the establishment.
The importance of social relations in a context of customer recovery is also demonstrated in another article published in this same journal. In this case, the authors analyze the importance of social capital (from a structural, relational and cognitive point of view) for the resilience of tourism businesses after a catastrophic episode (an earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand). In this context, maintaining close personal relationships with key suppliers would encourage these suppliers to be involved in the recovery of the tourism company after the disaster. Social capital between companies would serve in this case as a buffer in periods of crisis. Therefore, in addition to improving key skills for resilience such as quick decision-making (company leaders), engagement, multi-tasking or delegating (all the staff), the authors recommend strengthening relations with providers (relational capital) by organizing meetings to get to know each other personally (structural capital), setting shared goals (cognitive capital).
Good communication is important, but what happens when a human customer has to deal with a robot?: “‘How may i help you?’ Says a robot” is the title of an article published in International Journal of Hospitality Management about what kind of language (literal or figurative?) is more suitable for a front desk robot agent.
Literal language is informative and direct. Quoting this article’s appendix (on the case of a restaurant’s recommendation), literal language would correspond to the following statement: “The restaurant has a nice interior design. The view is excellent […]”. Instead, figurative language includes metaphors and comparisons, providing the same information in an indirect way: “The restaurant looks more stunning than a palace. The view will blow your mind away […]”.
One of the conclusions the authors have reached indicates that, when the robot’s physical characteristics are similar to humans features, the client tends to humanize it, applying the same language norms as with a human. On the other hand, when it comes to a computer-shaped robot, the effect of linguistic style is attenuated. “Perceived credibility” is identified as the mechanism that explains this process. The more credible the robot’s features are, the more it is associated with a human receptionist with whom, since it would be an stranger to us, we would preferably adopt a literal language.
Annals of Tourism Research also publishes on robots and the tourism sector, through an article on environmental sensitivity monitoring. According to this study, a robot agent is as effective as a human to influence the client to respect certain standards. Knowing that one is being watched by a “present” agent, even if it is invisible, seems sufficient to induce a certain behavior.
The relationship between tourist and technology is also analyzed in another article of this same journal, this time about the impact of social interaction on tourist experiences: comparing face-to-face with online interactions. This comparison make us reflect on immersion issues, or on the different ways we might be attached both to our homeland and to tourist destinations.
Beyond communication, researchers publish about many different topics this September (see the word cloud made from the keywords of the three analyzed journals). There is a great diversity of topics, among which are destination loyalty (linked to pleasure and emotions), the relationship between sharing economy and crime, the residents attitude towards tourism development, philanthropy in tourism (both towards customers and employees), the implications of the UNESCO declaration of World Heritage on the preservation and promotion of tourism, stock market transactions related to accommodation companies, presenteeism or even challenging the scientific value of published approaches and concepts .
One of the most curious topics is the relationship between tourism and death. According to an article published in Annals of Tourism Research, the relationship between tourism and death manifests itself in complex experiences and this complexity encompasses both events and behaviors. It is not only about Dark Tourism. Tourism and death intersect, consciously or unconsciously: when the adventurer puts himself at mortal risk, or when a tourist witnesses the death of a traveling companion.
We will finish this summary with a touch of literature. An article published in this same magazine help us discover some of the French writer Guy De Maupassant’s work. Using his short stories as a source of data, the author discusses tourism-in-literature and existentialism. Different mechanisms linked to existentialism (alienation, avoidance, authenticity) can be identified in this author’s travel descriptions. The author defends the value of fiction as a source of analysis of tourism processes and concludes: “Reading a 19th Century short story writer reminds us that tourism deserves to be celebrated for all of its diverse potential; comforting, confronting and catastrophic”.
This is the first of many summaries. A first movement to get the courage to jump into the pool. It undoubtedly has its limits, the main one being that it is inevitably incomplete. For the selection of journals of this first text I relied on one of the many existing tools to identify the journals with the most impact: SJR 2018 (Category: Business, Management & Accounting – Subcategory: Tourism, Leisure & Hospitality Management). Once the publications with the most international impact were identified, I focused on the first three that publish an issue in September. Why the first three? Well, to start somewhere.
Besides, electronic publication of academic journals makes possible publishing at any time. There is no need for waiting every month to release an issue, nor to respect logical chronology. So, although here all the commented papers correspond to September issues, the first articles of future issues are already available (even some from next year’s issues). Some magazines do not even associate their numbers to a specific month (this will be the topic of a future post).
For now, I have served the appetizer. Over time I will refine the dishes and pair them with more regional and extra-academic flavors.
Good digestion and see you soon!
