9 – SMART HOSPITALITY STRATEGIES IN A SMART CITY CONTEXT (PDF)

Vicky Katsoni, Evi Dougali

Smart cities have been established as amalgamated and complex ecosystems, that take advantage of smart technologies, encourage coopetition and collaboration between actors, and focus on both citizens’ and tourists’ needs. The authors discuss the need for hospitality stakeholders to focus on a collaborative co-created destination experience by removing barriers of data silos and integrating data on hospitality management and marketing (micro level) with data on destination (macro level). A model is proposed for enhancing tourists’ experiences by providing an intelligent platform for gathering and distributing information within a destination; and integrating tourism suppliers at both micro and macro level, ensuring that benefits from this sector are well distributed to local society.

21 – WHAT DRIVES CUSTOMERS TO SPREAD THE WORD AND BE LOYAL? FACTORS INFLUENCING E-LOYALTY AND EWOM TO OTA’S WEBSITES (PDF)

Chatzopoulou Evi, Xanthopoulou Panagiota

The purpose of this study is to develop a model which explains how the consumers’ digital loyalty and Word of Mouth (WOM) of online travel agencies is formed. The literature review leads us to consider the users’ perceived website quality, e-perceived value, e-satisfaction, e-trust and switching barriers factors of website as main antecedents of the e-loyalty and e-WOM. In order to accomplish the study’s objectives, a model has been constructed and estimated using Partial Least Squares (PLS). Results show that e-satisfaction, e-trust, e-value and switching barriers have a direct effect on e-WOM and e-satisfaction, website quality and switching barriers have a direct effect on e -loyalty. Also, website quality creates e-WOM with e-satisfaction as a mediator; and e-trust creates e-loyalty as moderator by switching barriers. The developed model helps improve the explanation of e-loyalty and e-WOM from consumer in an online tourism and hospitality industry environment.

37 – MOROCCAN DOMESTIC TOURISM: PRIORITIZATION AS AN INEVITABLE OUTCOME OF
CORONAVIRUS (PDF)

El Hafid Mohamed, Sair Aziz

Over the past two decades, Morocco has clearly banked on international tourists due to many reasons. But the current circumstances caused by the appearance of the Corona pandemic pushed the tourism players to reprioritize the tourism market. Analysts in the sector predict a re-launch of international tourism in 2021 and a slow recovery of the tourism sector starts with reliance on domestic tourism to save tourism businesses from total crackdown. Due to many risk factors as a second wave of the virus, lockdown phobia, international travel restrictions and economic recession that his different sectors all these hinder the revive of international tourism and prioritize domestic tourism dynamics. Our research focused on the study of the probabilities of boosting the tourism sector by encouraging the local demand as a quick solution to overcome the current crisis.