In the tourism field, websites are the important channels because they serve as the information hubs between the providers and consumers of destination tourism services [6, 7]. Therefore, lots of tourism authorities employ the internet-based infrastructure to facilitate the exchange of information between stakeholders.  This study, which can be classified into the tourist information search domain, looks at the issue from a somewhat unusual angle: it focuses on how national tourist destination websites reflect cultural value system of their respective societies. One major growth engines of the websites is that users are able to search information by traversing throughout a set of hyperlinks [8–10]. This study examines the ways in which national destination websites build up the hyperlink structural network of destination stakeholders and communicate information through this network.

Specifically, the study posited the research question whether the cultural attributes underlie the information flow patterns of the web-linkages. The overall purpose of the study is to examine the structural idiosyncrasies of national DMOs websites using three national tourism websites – Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) of South Korea, Brand USA of United States, and German National Tourist Board (GNTB) of Germany.

## 2 Literature Review

Hofstede's studies [11–14] shed light on the embodiment of culture by suggesting cultural dimensions (e.g., Individualism-Collectivism, Uncertainty avoidance, Longterm (or Short term) orientation, Masculinity-Femininity, Power distance, and Indulgence-Restraint). Hall [15] claims that cultures can be classified as low or high context, depending on how important the context is to fully grasp the meaning of its communication. In high-context culture (e.g., China, Greece, Japan, South Korea, UAE), people are involved with each other and share strong intimacy. On the other hand, in low-context culture (e.g., Canada, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, USA), the degree of involvement is low meaning that direct verbal information is required to communicate in daily life. Since their frameworks are well-known and due to limited space, detailed descriptions are omitted here. Briefly, South Korea is the society in which people appreciate the value of collectivism. They tend to be familiar with the commands from top-to-bottom approach. Power is centralized to authorities in a hierarchical order. When communicating with others, they express their opinions indirectly by utilizing nonverbal cues. On the other hand, in the United States, people value individual's freedom the most. They also place great emphasis on equality and transparency, so that they expect to get all information through open access in a direct communication way [16]. Even though German culture share some characteristics with American culture [17], not every cultural characteristic match that of the American. Germany presents a distinct departure from the American culture in terms of conflict resolution. According to Hall [15], Germans' management style to deal with conflict is quite blunt and rigorous, which seems averse to Americans. In sum, the United States and South Korea are located at opposite poles of cultural aspects, while Germany would be placed on between of these two countries.

Cultural variations have impacts on various online behaviors in tourism. Park and Reisinger [18] argued that national culture exerts an influence on web-communication behaviors such as information search, communication, and transaction behavior. Mele, Kerkhof [19] examined the effect of cultural localization on users' perceptions in webpages by adopting Individualism-Collectivism, and Power Distance dimensions in heritage tourism context. Cultural values could be reflected in the network structure on the web which (un)intentionally resonate with the values that permeate owners' culture [6, 10]. Barnett and Sung [20] focused on the role of national culture as a webmechanism. They operationalized national culture as Hofstede's dimensions by the centrality and the overall structure of the hyperlink network. By analyzing data of 47 nations, they concluded that the national culture could explain the structure of the Internet. In tourism literature, one of the earliest studies conducted by Baggio, Scott [6] compared the structure of hyperlink network of tourism destinations assuming that the web system represents the economic and social group. Based on the literature, we assume that the cultural attributes embedded in DMOs websites might be associated with the layout of hyperlink network.

## 3 Data Collection

Three national DMOs websites were selected as the tourism information repositories to be influenced by cultural characteristics (see Table 1). For collecting hyperlink data, we follow the steps described by Yi and Scholz [21]. The hyperlinks of the websites were collected by using web-based crawler during late May and early June 2020. The overall network structures of each website were firstly quantified with the network indicators. In addition, blockmodeling analysis, a method of grouping similar nodes and condensing data into blocks based on the extent to which they are equivalent, was conducted to detect structural dissimilarity of information flow between networks.

Table 1. National DMOs websites as seed source

## 4 Results

#### 4.1 Overall Network Structure

Table 2 presents overall properties of each hyperlink network. KTO has the largest network with the diameter value of 11 among three networks. The values of density of the networks were very low ranging from 1% to 2% indicating the direct interconnections between nodes in the whole network are very rare. A k-core analysis was applied to differentiate important actors for further analysis [22]. 3-kore in which we examine reciprocity and transitivity value was applied as cut-off point [23]. Among the 3-core networks, KTO network still has the largest network size with one giant component group. Overall, all three networks reveal quite low-density values same as in the whole networks. The KTO network is a much more collectivist network, with evidence of network size and the number of connected components. The KTO network could be characterized by collectivist network whose members share same cultural value in pursuit of a common goal. The Brand USA and GNTB, on the other hand, have much less hierarchized networks where a flatter structure is favored with more than 10 components. The networks of Brand USA and GNTB have more predominance of reciprocated hyperlinks over asymmetric connections than that of KTO meaning a more equal relation between members. The 3-core network properties of three DMOs networks are also provided in Table 2.

Table 2. Whole & 3-core network properties of three DMOs web-networks.

Note: The numbers in parentheses are the whole network properties of three DMOs networks

#### 4.2 Blockmodeling Analysis

A blockmodeling analysis was also conducted to uncover structural dissimilarity between networks. It is useful into sorting hyperlinks into discrete clusters based on each unique block determined by a researcher [24]. In this study, 6 blocks which are Federal Level Government, State Level Government, Local Level Government, Social Media, Private Sector, and Association were identified. Next, block image matrix was dichotomized from block density matrix. Because of the lack of space, only data for the two networks with the most differences – KTO and Brand USA – are provided in Table 3. To evaluate how well the blockmodeling fits the identified categories, the goodness-of-fit for the hypothesized blockmodeling was also examined. All three blockmodels secure the adequacy of representation of each data set. Based on the two matrices, we generated reduced graphs (Fig. 1).

The result indicates that there are structural dissimilarities between three DMOs networks. With a predominance of asymmetric connections compared to the other networks, KTO network implies more of a hierarchy culture. Brand USA reflects their cultural characteristic that all information is distributed quite evenly, moreover, the blocks are all interconnected each other without no isolation. To some extent, the study found that there are more similarities than dissimilarities between KTO and GNTB. The findings of this study support many of earlier studies whose results argue that human activities have fundamentally realms of culture.

Note: The numbers in parentheses are dichotomized value for image matrix

Fig. 1. Reduced graphs (KTO, GNTB and brand USA from left to right)

## 5 Discussion

The purpose of the study was to explore the structural idiosyncrasies of these websites which could impact on users' tourism information searching behavior. To this end, hyperlink network analysis was conducted on the data sets collected from three official tourism websites. Results indicated that the significance of structural hierarchy which was one common thread in the culture theories were associated with how the information is distributed. In the KTO network, rather than being evenly distributed among various players in the network, the number of links is concentrated in a limited number of subjects, governmental organizations, showing a structure in which power is concentrated. In the case of Brand USA and GNTB, actors other than the government share tourism information on the DMO platform, therefore, active information exchange was taking place among network participants.

Given the nature of tourism and destination branding, the target audiences are globally distributed. Accordingly, it is likely to cultural propensities would have a great influence the interaction between users and DMOs websites. For instance, a person in collectivistic culture would be more familiar with information created by top-down approach. We, therefore, assumed that the underlying cultural features of national DMOs websites could influence tourism information searching behavior or tourist satisfaction on websites. However, the study only unveils the evidence of different structural pattern of information flow based on cultural propensities. Therefore, future research should empirically examine how well users perceive the information patterns and how much it influences their decision-making process in tourism context. Also, it will be useful for researchers to explore more DMOs in same cultural sphere to draw validate conclusion.

## References

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## A Conceptual Framework of Destination Sustainability in Sharing Economy

Huiying Zhang1(&) , Xi Yu Leung2 , and Billy Bai1

1 University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV 89154, USA<EMAIL_ADDRESS>2 University of North Texas, Denton, TX 76203, USA<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
Abstract. The introduction of the sharing economy has revolutionized resident-tourist relationships and provides further implications of destination sustainability. Built on several well-established theories, this conceptual study intends to develop a new and holistic framework to examine destination sustainability, focusing on the change of resident-tourist relationships. The framework is first guided by the stakeholder theory to identify the four key stakeholders in the new sharing economy context: residents, tourists, governments, and the sharing economy platform. With the collaboration theory and resource theory as a foundation, the framework then describes each stakeholder's specific needs and resources. The service-dominant logic further supports service exchanges and value co-creation among stakeholders. The framework then adopts the capital theory approach to conceptualize destination sustainability in terms of human, social, natural and manufactured capital. Finally, three propositions are developed to justify the new peer-to-peer collaboration paradigm that leads to destination sustainability. The proposed framework is aligned with the six-pillar transformation in e-Tourism research and serves as an intelligent solution to destination sustainable development in the sharing economy context.

Keywords: Resident-tourist relationship Sharing economy Destination sustainability Stakeholder theory Collaboration theory Resource theory Service-dominant logic Capital Theory Approach (CTA) Transformative e-Tourism

## 1 Introduction

The interaction between tourists and residents is fundamental to tourism destinations (Sharpley 2014). However, tourists' activities negatively impact residents' quality of life and local sustainability (Routledge 2001), and waves of anti-tourism movements exacerbate conflicts between tourists and residents (Hughes 2018). What's worse, the COVID-19 pandemic escalates the existing conflicts as residents condemn tourists as carriers of the virus and believe tourists contaminate communities (Los Angeles Times 2020), which hinders the move toward destination sustainability (Wulfhorst 2017). The introduction of the sharing economy sheds light on the current clash by facilitating satisfying resident-tourist relationships and enhancing destination sustainability. The extant literature review indicates a lack of theoretically innovative studies on the resident-tourist relationship and its role in destination sustainability (Font and McCabe 2017). Therefore, this study intended to: (1) review relevant theories that provide the theoretical foundation for the resident-tourist relationship in the sharing economy context; (2) develop a conceptual framework of destination sustainability, and (3) justify destination sustainability from the capital theory approach. It will contribute to the sustainable literature in the sharing economy era and offer guidance in addressing the resident-tourist relationship.

## 2 Literature Review and Theoretical Foundation

Proposed by Gretzel et al. (2020), the impact of COVID-19 pushed research to a crossroads to transform through challenging existing paradigms with a six-pillar approach (historicity, reflexivity, transparency, equity, plurality, and creativity). In this section, the existing literature and selected theories were first reviewed from the "historicity" perspective, extracting linkage among established theories and serving as the theoretical foundation. The study first identifies stakeholders in the sharing economy (Stakeholder Theory), their needs (Collaboration Theory), and resources as bases for exchange (Resource Theory). Then, value co-creation (Service-Dominant Logic) explains stakeholders' needs and resources to supplement each other. Finally, the rationale of destination sustainability is justified by analyzing four capitals from the Capital Theory Approach.

#### 2.1 Stakeholder Theory

Sharing economy literature on destinations (Boes et al. 2016; Leung et al. 2019) identifies tourists, residents, government, and sharing economy platforms as the four key stakeholders.

#### 2.2 Collaboration Theory

Collaboration theory serves as a useful tool to resolve conflicts and advance shared visions among different stakeholders (Jamal and Getz 1995) by identifying each stakeholder's needs. Tourists pursue authentic experiences, better value for money, and sustainable tourism products in the sharing economy environment (Cheng 2016). Residents' needs are summarized as reaping direct economic benefits from tourist activities (Lee 2013). The driving forces behind government involvement include the ardent interest in tourism's economic returns, the mitigation of the undesirable effects of tourist activities, and the implementation of destination sustainability (Kubickova 2016). Last, sharing economy platforms enable tourism enterprises to expand their scopes, generate platform users, and make profits (Teixeira and Ferreira 2019).

### 2.3 Resource Theory

Resource theory offers stakeholders guidance to exchange resources they possess to meet their needs and form peer-to-peer collaboration. Time, money, and involvement are tourists' resources enclosed in their travel experience (Prebensen et al. 2013). The principal resource owned by residents is local authenticity, which consists of genuine quality, originality, uniqueness, sense of place, and pride (Gannon 1994). The government has legislative empowerment and resources to implement tourism (Ruhanen 2013); sharing economy platforms play the primary role in applying information technology in connecting tourists with residents in destinations.

### 2.4 Service-Dominant Logic

Service-dominant (S-D) logic provides a system-wide perspective of value co-creation through service exchanges among different stakeholders (Vargo and Lusch 2014). Value-creation in tourism is inextricable from tourists' participation and involvement (Prebensen et al. 2013), such as feedback. Residents contribute to the value co-creation process as both suppliers of authenticity and co-creators to tourists' experience (Stylidis et al. 2014). The government joins the value co-creation process as a facilitator and regulator (Ruhanen 2013) by regulating unethical and illegal behaviors on tourists' rights, securing locals' safety and benefits, and cohering efforts to destination sustainability. During the value co-creation process, sharing economy platforms enable efficient synergies of residents and tourists, and the platform itself profits for a fraction of the sharing fee (Belk 2014).

#### 2.5 Capital Theory Approach to Sustainability

The capital theory approach (CTA) uses all capital assets' economic value to measure sustainability (Ruta and Hamilton 2007). These capital assets can be categorized into natural, manufactured, human, and social capital (Ekins 1992). Applying CTA to destination sustainability, this study posits that a destination's total capital should not decline over time for sustainable growth.

## 3 A Conceptual Framework of Destination Sustainability

The relevant literature review provides a solid foundation to connect the related theories and guide tourist destinations' sustainable development. The proposed framework was aligned with the six-pillar shift advocated in the transformative e-Tourism research (Gretzel et al. 2020). The careful examination (historicity) and reflection (reflexivity) on the current literature generated a different approach (creativity) to the sharing economy's function in all related stakeholders (equity). Additionally, this framework revealed the sharing economy's implicit value in destination sustainability (transparency) through building bridges that lead to an alternative to the current challenge in practice (plurality). Figure 1 (below) presents the proposed conceptual framework.

#### 3.1 Resident-Tourist Relationship Facilitated by Sharing Economy

The proposed framework identifies four stakeholders, whose unique needs and possessed recourses are marked in the blue and black dash circles (Fig. 1). The value cocreation process occurs within the red-dash circle of the framework. In short, the new peer-to-peer collaboration paradigm ensures value co-creation in destinations through exchanging resources and meeting all stakeholders' needs.

Fig. 1. A conceptual framework of destination sustainability built on sharing economy

#### 3.2 Destination Sustainability Built on Sharing Economy

In the center of the framework (Fig. 1), CTA explains how the multi-stakeholder approach of value co-creation in the sharing economy contributes to destination sustainability. Human capital consists of the health, knowledge, skills, and motivation of residents, tourists, and employees at both sharing economy platforms and government level. Such initiatives enhance the total human capital of the destination. Hence, the following proposition:

Proposition 1: Peer-to-peer collaboration in the sharing economy and a multistakeholder approach to value co-creation will enhance destinations' human capital.

Further, the government builds trusted, accessible systems of governance, regulations, and justice, while the sharing economy platform provides safe, supportive working environments and intelligent networks. Such peer-to-peer collaboration forms a new paradigm of social relationships that contributes to the increase of social capital. Thus, the following proposition is put forward:

Proposition 2: Peer-to-peer collaboration and a multi-stakeholder approach to value co-creation will enhance the destination's social capital.

As the core assets of destinations, natural and cultural resources are wellmaintained to attract tourists due to value co-creation in the destination. Therefore, we formulate the following proposition:

Proposition 3: Peer-to-peer collaboration and a multi-stakeholder approach to value co-creation will maintain or enhance the destination's combined natural capital and manufactured capital.

The framework indicates that a favorable resident-tourist relationship can only be sustained when all stakeholders have a common interest in keeping this mechanism running. In the proposed context, all the stakeholders contribute their resources to and benefit from the destination development, resulting in an operationally sustainable system.

## 4 Implications

#### 4.1 Theoretical Implications

In response to the recent criticism on lacking macro-level guidance in the literature (Gretzel et al. 2020), the current study makes the first attempt to conceptually explore multi-stakeholder collaboration in the sharing economy. The IT-facilitated sharing economy platform also serves as an active stakeholder and contributor instead of an "instrumental solution" criticized by Gretzel et al. (2020). Moreover, this study contributes to the destination literature by first adopting CTA from the economic discipline to measure destination sustainability in terms of four significant capitals: human, social, natural, and manufactured. This study also expands the original CTA in tourist practices by emphasizing human capital and social capital in destination development.

#### 4.2 Practical Implications

The study provides a roadmap with a multi-stakeholder approach to destination sustainability. Stakeholders involved should create a favorable environment and conditions to generate such collaboration. The study confirms the theoretical possibility of solving the conflicts and urges all stakeholders to rethink tourist activities' value and reexamine their resources to exchange.

## 5 Limitations and Future Research

This study is not without limitations. It did not consider the different levels of destination development. Further, this study developed a conceptual framework but did not provide empirical evidence. However, real-world practices have shown the development tendency identified in the proposed framework. A collaborative app, i-Tourguide, was developed in China recently to offer tourists audio guide services. The government encourages and invites residents to contribute their expertise in exchange for economic gains, facilitating local tourism recovery. All identified stakeholders in the framework are geared to co-create value and benefit from the prorated profit-sharing mechanism in a sustainable pattern. Future studies should also consider assessing destination development at various levels when a destination implements the framework and collects either qualitative or quantitative data to validate the model.

## References

Teixeira SJ, Ferreira JJ (2019) Multilevel approach to competitiveness in the global tourism industry, IGI Global

Vargo SL, Lusch RF (2014) Inversions of service-dominant logic. Mark Theory 14(3):239–248

Wulfhorst E (17 July 2017) Progress too slow on global goals for sustainable development. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-un-globalgoals-progress-idUSKBN1A22A2

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## Smart Tourism Cities' Competitiveness Index: A Conceptual Model

Namho Chung1 , Hyunae Lee2 , Juyeon Ham2 , and Chulmo Koo1(&)

1 Smart Tourism Education Platform, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea<EMAIL_ADDRESS>2 Smart Tourism Research Center, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
Abstract. As smart tourism cities are becoming a blur boundary between residents and tourists at a spatial place (e.g., urban city or destination), innovation and technologies should be integrated with tourism applications and urban infrastructure. The idea of smart tourism cities is generated as incorporating tourism business or tourism context into everyday life, opening up opportunities in daily life and travel. We need to explore a possible concept of smart tourism cities and how urban cities can play a role of the duality emphasizing on the blurring boundaries and allowing both residents and travelers to co-create the value of the urban cities' competitiveness name as 'smart tourism cities.' This study aims to develop a competitiveness evaluation index for sustaining urban cities through tourism.

Keywords: Smart tourism cities Competitiveness index Urban cities Smart cities Smart tourism Evaluation

## 1 Introduction

In recent years, the global prevalence of smart technologies and devices has fundamentally changed the way of global urban cities are constructed, consumed and shared between visitors and residents, as well as mediated by technologies and tourism businesses. Tourists in urban cities are usually playing a variety of memorable tourism experiences during their local traveling. Travel activities such as accommodating, dining at a restaurant, shopping and entertaining are all taking place at urban cities that are called as tourism destinations [1]. In this way, tourists or visitors consume resources and infrastructure of the city that are all providing for citizens and residents.

How can the urban cities make a blended place of life and travel in spatial alike? Google Maps, mobility (e.g., Uber), and accommodations (e.g., Airbnb) play an

This paper was supported by Seoul Tourism Organization and was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2019S1A3A2098438).

W. Wörndl et al. (Eds.): Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2021, pp. 433–438, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65785-7\_42

essential role in making a city smarter and more accessible to people, which enable the blending of tourists and residents and foster the conversion of regular homes or cars into tourism and hospitality offerings. In order to enhance the smart tourism experience [2], urban functions, facilities, amenities, infrastructure of the cities can intertwine seamlessly urban life and needs of tourism in smart cities [3]. Therefore, it is necessary to have a guideline of how tourism context and urban life are overlapped in smart cities, and maximize smart tourism through effective and efficient use of the urban infrastructure and functions [4]. Therefore, last but not least, we try to conceptualize smart tourism perspective into smart city as one place that are blurred for both of residents and tourists [1, 4] and provide an index from which broader views of smart tourism and cities competitiveness [5] that can evaluate relatively smart tourism cities and measure its resources, capabilities, management, and policies.

## 2 Literature Review

#### 2.1 Smart Tourism and Urban Competitiveness

Smart tourism can refer to tourism that is technologically, economically and socially developed or growing by advanced smart technologies [2]. Gretzel et al. [2] conceptualized smart tourism as technological oriented on-site tourism experience at a destination. Meanwhile, the concepts of smart city are generating various definitions, including intelligent city, digital city, and ubiquitous city (U-city) [6]. Smart city is defined as a city equipped with ICT infrastructure to lead social and urban growth through reinforcement of economic level, citizens' participation and government efficiency [7]. Celino and Kotoulas regarded smart city as an urban ecosystem that utilize connected technologies to improve urban operations and make intelligent near real-time decision [8]. Isi lab addressed how smart city helps to resolve numerous urban problems as well as how advanced technologies implement into urban infrastructure [6]. To sum up, the attributes of smart city which commonly mentioned in these definitions are (1) connectivity through ICTs (2) efficiency improvement (3) sustainability (4) ecofriendliness (5) improved quality of life. We regarded smart tourism city as a combination of smart tourism and smart city. In smart tourism destination, automated tourism services and creative contents that induce tourists' desire are development. For tourism context, smart city can be defined as "a city using technologies innovatively to achieve resource optimization, effective and fair governance, sustainability and quality of life" [2, p. 179]. In this perspective, smart tourism cities are "an innovative tourist destination that guarantees sustainable development that facilitates and enhances visitors' interaction with experiences at the destination and eventually improves the residents' quality of life" [9, p. 6], and it has been regarded as a solution to various problems facing various smart cities (e.g., over-tourism).

#### 2.2 Competitiveness Index for Smart Tourism Cities

In the tourism field, the World Economic Forum (WEF) mainly evaluates tourism competitiveness (e.g., [10]), but it is insufficient to evaluate the smart tourism cities as it focuses on general tourism rather than, specifically, smart tourism. WEF's indicators only take into account ICT readiness, which focuses on building and using ICT infrastructure such as mobile and internet. However, considering the concept of smart tourism, developing various indicators that can enable smart tourism that maximizes the tourist's experience on-site from the viewpoint of smartization as a whole are required. Regarding smart tourism cities, the European Union (EU) has been conducting a project to support promotion and marketing activities of the city by evaluating the excellent smart tourism capitals in the EU every year. The evaluation area is largely divided into four areas: Accessibility, Sustainability, Digitalization and Cultural Heritage and Creativity [11]. However, considering the concept of smart tourism cities, first, the evaluation indices of the EU focus more on the point of view of tourists, and therefore, it lacks consideration of the various social issues experienced by residents due to tourism. In particular, smart tourism cities should consider sustainable development through symbiosis between citizens and tourists. Second, collaborative partnerships and building its ecosystems with various stakeholders related to smart tourism cities are also an important area that should be considered for building competitiveness of smart tourism cities, but the EU's indices lack consideration for these areas. Therefore, we believe that there should be a need for embracing evaluation indices and measurement items for smart tourism cities considering both smart tourism and smart cities' perspectives.

## 3 Conceptual Framework

Figure 1 illustrates the conceptual framework of this study. Based on the three components of smart tourism cities suggested by [2], the research frame work was comprised of three phases: smart destination, smart business ecosystem, and smart experience. First, smart experience in smart tourism cities is based on a concrete smart destination and business ecosystem [9]. Thus, smart destination can be categorized and assessed by four dimensions: attractiveness, sustainability, accessibility and digitalization readiness [11]. Again, these dimensions can be characterized into two aspects of smart tourism destination: tourism versus city. Secondly, smart business ecosystem is composed of numerous stakeholders who forms collaborative partnership with each other [5]. Finally, smart experience can be tourists' and residents' memorable experience enhanced by advanced ICT [6].

Fig. 1. Conceptual framework

## 4 Smart Tourism Cities' Competitiveness Index

After developing the first indicator based on the conceptual framework, we collected experts' opinion about that via Delphi survey for increasing objectivity and expertise. Delphi experts were composed of 12 experts in various field such as smart tourism, smart city and index development. Based on their opinions, we could develop the following smart tourism index comprised of 5 subcategories, 18 pillars and 48 individual indicators (see Fig. 2).

Based on the evaluation areas developed by EU [11] and results of Delphi survey, we defined the five subcategories as follows. Attractiveness is a degree to which tangible and intangible tourist attractions are provided through the Internet or ICTs. It is comprised of smart attraction, smart amenities, smart contents and online popularity. Accessibility is a degree to which touristic information and transportation system can be accessed by both of virtual and physical ways. It consists of smart convenience, smart mobility and barrier-free design. Digitalization readiness is a degree of data openness and infrastructure that can provide high-quality smart tourism information based on the cutting-edge ICTs. It is comprised of digital infrastructure, information openness, smart platform and smart service technology. Sustainability is a degree to which a smart tourism city has a foundation for sustainable social, economic and environmental growth. It is comprised of life and tourism environments, tourism creativity and innovativeness, tourism safety and city resilience. Finally, collaborative partnership is a degree of establishment of a smart tourism ecosystem for the symbiosis of numerous stakeholders in smart tourism cities. It consists of resident-tourist symbiosis, living lab activation and smart tourism governance.

Fig. 2. Smart tourism cities' competitiveness index

## 5 Discussion and Implications

This study suggests smart tourism cities' competitiveness index. Through literature reviews, we proposed our conceptual model based on [2, 11]. In our conceptual model, we believe that we can be able to understand mutual aspects of smart tourism and urban cities as one 'smart tourism cities' and give a guideline for strengthening competitiveness index inclusive tourism context and urban cities. So, we provide a framework, dimensions, measurement indicators on the systematic flow and integration among smart tourism technologies and other components of destination competitiveness. With this index, we can expect to be able to diagnose the level of smart tourism in urban cities and measure their competitiveness in the future.

## References

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

### Part V: COVID-19

### Hear No Virus, See No Virus, Speak No Virus: Swiss Hotels' Online Communication Regarding Coronavirus

Laura Zizka(&) , Meng-Mei Chen , Effie Zhang, and Amandine Favre

Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne, HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, Lausanne, Switzerland

Abstract. Tourism is a lucrative business, and Swiss hotels rely heavily on international clientele to book their rooms. The Coronavirus pandemic has halted travel and hotel stays from March to June 2020. Based on Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), this paper investigates the messages Swiss hotels have posted on their official websites and Facebook pages to reassure guests that it is safe to book rooms in Switzerland again. The findings from 73 independent 4 and 5-star hotels show that most hotels did not publish messages regarding the Coronavirus or the measures they have taken; instead, the hotels posted positive messages about reopening their rooms and services. Official hotel websites emphasized deals and offers while the Facebook pages concentrated on enthusiastic 'welcome back' messages. The findings presented here contribute to the literature by offering the first results of a larger project on communication during the de-confinement stage of a pandemic.

Keywords: Swiss hotels Coronavirus De-confinement Facebook Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT)

## 1 Introduction

Tourism in Switzerland is a lucrative business, providing many jobs to the local communities and contributing significantly to the local economy. According to the official statistics published in 2019, there are 28 985 hotel and restaurant establishments with 175 489 full-time employees and 7845 trainees who generate CHF 44.7 billion in total revenue, CHF 16.6 billion from foreign tourists in Switzerland through hotels, restaurants, and transportation. The tourism industry is one of the largest export industries in Switzerland, with 4.4% of export revenue [1]. Thus, the tourism industry in Switzerland relies heavily on foreign travelers. In 2019, the Swiss hotel industry registered 39.6 million overnight stays across the country [2]. It was a profitable year for Swiss tourism, and the expectations for 2020 were positive until the first reports of the Coronavirus in China.

As word of the Coronavirus spread, the Swiss tourism industry began to make predictions regarding the 2020 tourism season. In a message published in January 2020, one tourism expert stated: "In the coming weeks, Switzerland Tourism expects a 30–50% reduction in the number of Chinese visitors to Switzerland" [3]. Based on 2018 figures, this could represent 70,000–100,000 overnight stays per month. As Chinese visitors are among the biggest spenders when holidaying in Switzerland, paying out on average CHF380 per person per day, this pandemic could be a dire situation for Swiss tourism affecting popular Swiss destinations such as Geneva, Zermatt, Interlaken, Lucerne, and Zurich. As hotels are heavily affected by international travel, they are likely to feel greater repercussions from the Coronavirus restrictions than restaurants [4].

By March 2020, a survey conducted by Valais University of Applied Sciences and Arts predicted that the tourism industry revenue could suffer an 18% loss due to the restrictions and, in some cases, closure of hotels and restaurants. While the study predicted up to 6 billion CHF losses for the tourism industry in 2020, the hotel sector alone would lose as much as 2 billion CHF between March and May (the time this study was conducted) [4]. In the same survey, bookings had dropped by 69% for March, 90% for April, and 73% for May. The President of the Swiss Hotel Association, Andreas Zullig, estimated that 5% of Swiss hotels (from 200–250) would not survive the pandemic [4].

This paper examines the messages during and after the confinement of 73 Swiss 4 and 5-star independent hotels to analyze how they communicated with their customers regarding the Coronavirus and whether they applied appropriate crisis communication strategies. The purpose is to gauge whether the hotel messages were effective in reassuring the customers that Swiss hotels are prepared and 'safe' to book during their holidays. Their messages posted on their official websites and their Facebook pages are measured against Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT). A content analysis of their messages was conducted to create word combinations and visuals through Wordji. This paper concludes with the implications of using social media and company websites to communicate with customers in the time of a crisis.

## 2 Literature Review

#### 2.1 Crisis and Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT)

Crises have been defined as "unpredictable events that can disrupt an organization's operations and threaten to damage organizational reputations" [5]. The priority in any crisis is to protect stakeholders from harm; therefore, public safety concerns should precede any reputational concerns [6]. Stakeholders will attribute responsibility of the crisis to the company, which can be grouped into three categories: Victim (weak attributions of organizational responsibility such as natural disasters or rumors), accidental (low level of responsibility such as challenges or technical-errors), and preventable (high level of organizational responsibility such as human-error or organizational misdeed) [7]. As industries are the victims of the Coronavirus pandemic and could do nothing to avoid it, the response strategies for managing this crisis will be based on the victim category.

According to Coombs Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), for each of the attribution clusters mentioned, there are communication strategies to employ to protect company reputation in three ways: 1) shape attributions of the crisis, 2) change perceptions of the organization, and 3) reduce the negative effect generated by the crisis [8]. When the organization has been attributed with weak responsibility as seen with the Coronavirus, the organization should implement an ethical base response consisting of instructing information (i.e., explaining the crisis to the stakeholders) and adjusting information (i.e., helping stakeholders cope with the crisis). However, it could also include bolstering messages such as ingratiation (i.e., praising stakeholders for efforts they have made) and victimage (i.e., reminding stakeholders that the organization is a victim of this crisis) [9]. Unlike bolstering, which focuses on communicating past good works a company has done, enhancing includes telling stakeholders about the company's current good works [10]. In the Coronavirus case, this could entail communicating the new safety measures put in place for both the employees and the customers. This paper examines how SCCT crisis responses were communicated online, particularly the enhancing strategy, by Swiss 4 and 5-star, independent hotels.

#### 2.2 Crisis Communication in the Hospitality Industry

Previous studies have examined crises in the hospitality industry that have significantly impacted specific properties or areas. From war and political instability to crime, terrorism, and health epidemics, safety concerns are a significant predictor of travel intentions [11]. Swiss hotels have circumvented major crises thus far. Their recent crises have included little or no snow during regular ski seasons, a hailstorm that destroyed some vineyards, and the financial burden of a strong Swiss franc. While researchers have recommended that hotels post messages regarding the crisis, irrespective of the crisis level, on their websites so that potential customers will read these messages when connecting to make their reservations [12], some hotels are reticent for fear of lowering the interest in their properties if their customers read messages about a crisis [9], particularly a health crisis like the Coronavirus. This study analyzes how many hotels effectively communicated these messages in the de-confinement stage of Swiss hospitality.

Previous studies have examined how and what companies communicate with their stakeholders in times of crisis. Specifically, in the hospitality industry, researchers have examined social media use through social media such as Twitter or Facebook and traditional media during crises. One study focused on the tourists' risk perceptions associated with health amongst others to gauge how frequently tourists resort to social media to gather their information to find that international tourists with high-risk perceptions had a high likelihood of seeking information through social media channels during a crisis [13]. The perception, particularly of risk associated with crises, can be mediated by using social media to give information and address the human needs of conversation and compassion [14]. Nonetheless, international travelers are more vulnerable due to linguistic communication, culture, and varying levels of social media savvy, which may affect their choice to use social media to seek information in the event of a crisis [15]. As Switzerland is dependent on international travel for their tourism, particularly for hotel occupancy, this study will analyze the messages on both the official hotel websites and their Facebook pages and address the following two research questions:

RQ1: What are Swiss 4 and 5-star independent hoteliers communicating on their official websites regarding the Coronavirus?

RQ2: Are Swiss 4 and 5-star independent hoteliers using social media to communicate about the Coronavirus crisis?

## 3 Methodology

A list of 4 and 5-star independent hotels in Switzerland was gathered to examine the messages posted on their official websites and Facebook pages. One criterion for inclusion in this study was total independence; thus, hotels that were part of chains or groups were not included. Of the 222 hotels on the original list, only 96 had Facebook pages. Of the 96, hotels that were part of a group (though not a chain) and hotels with no Facebook page were eliminated. Also, hotels that were not yet open were eliminated as the purpose was to analyze their reopening messages regarding the Coronavirus. The official company websites were accessed on June 12, 2020, when many hotels had officially opened. The Facebook comments were tracked from mid-crisis when many hotels were closed (March 13, 2020) to June 13, 2020, again, when many of the hotels reopened. Figure 1 shows the research methodology employed.

Fig. 1. Research methodology.

While Swiss hotels are located in various regions and are often set to the local language of the canton in which the hotel is situated (French, German, or Italian), most of these websites had a combination of the national languages, and all of them had an English language setting. This could be explained by the number of international tourists who peruse the official websites to book their accommodations. For this reason, the English setting was used on all of the official hotel websites, and the search for Coronavirus information was conducted. The homepage of each hotel website was scrutinized for direct messages that could be found. Some hotel websites offered a popup message with Covid-19 information directly on access.

Further, each website was searched using the keywords Coronavirus, and Covid-19 were entered into the search boxes when available. These two keywords were chosen to establish timely messages regarding the pandemic. While health and safety measures could have been used, hotels already have best practices in place. The purpose of this study was to identify the 'new' messages written precisely in response to the Coronavirus. For the Facebook pages, again, the messages posted in English were chosen for this research project to remain consistent with the international clientele who seeks information via the hotels' websites.

## 4 Results

### 4.1 Hotel Official Websites

The official hotel websites offered a varied amount of information regarding the Coronavirus. Figure 2 shows the relationships between the words in the messages found on the hotel websites. Twenty-nine of the hotels had a direct message, sometimes a pop-up, which appeared on their homepage regarding Coronavirus or Covid-19. Word pairs such as 'federal office,' 'federal public,' 'federal health,' 'office health,' and 'office public' appeared 12 times in the official hotel website messages. 'Disinfect hands' and 'wear protective' appeared 13 times before 'wear masks' and 'wear mask' (at 12 and 10 times, respectively). The highest number of word pairs was attributed to 'guests employees' (23 times), followed by 'hygiene measures' (18 times), 'hotel guests' (17 times), 'safety measures' (16 times), 'health safety' (15 times), and Public health' and 'public areas' (14 times). The number of unique pairs was 363, with an average pair frequency of 4.440771 and pair entropy (or level of uncertainty or randomness) of 5.765317.

For the frequency of individual words, the most common word in the messages were 'guests' (126 times). The word 'hotel' (81 times) was followed by 'employees' (58 times), 'safety' (53 times), 'measures' (52 times), 'hygiene' (40 times), and 'distance' (34 times). The majority of the individual words were tabulated less than ten times. Out of 440 unique words, 342 (77%) were used less than ten times in all of the messages combined. The average word frequency was 8.1, and the entropy was 5.690377.

Fig. 2. Wordji image of the messages on the official hotel websites.

### 4.2 Hotel Facebook Comments and Hashtags

The messages on Facebook were also analyzed both for the individual words used and the word pairings. Figure 3 shows the relationship between unique words (71) found in the Facebook posts. Only three word pairs appeared ten or more times in the analysis: 'forward welcoming' (15 times), 'forward back' (10 times), and 'dear guests' (10 times). As seen in Fig. 3, trio relationships can be seen through words such as 'safe,' 'health,' and 'employees,' 'welcome,' 'back,' and 'soon,' and 'love,' 'Switzerland,' and 'Zurich.' The only words that specifically refer to the Coronavirus pandemic were 'health' and 'safety.' The average pair frequency was 4.450704, and the pair entropy was 4.174661.

Figure 4 shows the results from the hashtags associated with the Facebook comments.

As seen in Fig. 4, the relationships between the words used in the hashtags were also examined. Relationships were established between 'Switzerland' and 'love' and 'stay' and 'home.' Only 'stay' and 'home' could be linked to the current Coronavirus pandemic. Further, just ten unique word pairs appeared less than five times in the hashtags (average pair frequency of 3.2). The pair entropy was calculated as 2.295203. The individual words found in the hashtags resulted in 20 unique words for an average word frequency of 4.15 and entropy of 2.91938.

Fig. 3. Wordji image of the words used in the messages posted on Facebook.

Fig. 4. Wordji image of the words used in the hashtags.

## 5 Discussion

For the official hotel websites, only 29 out of the 73(39%) 4 and 5-star independent hotels examined in this study published a message regarding Coronavirus measures or corrective actions on their sites. As mentioned in the literature review, this could be explained by the fact that this was not a unique crisis affecting an individual property or region; instead, this crisis affected all hotels and regions equally. There was minimal responsibility attribution allocated to the hotels; thus, their response could be justifiably minimal. However, in this study, the vast majority of the hoteliers seemed to employ the ignore strategy of crisis communication, i.e., if we do not talk about it, it will go away on its own. Hoteliers may not have felt the need to remind guests of the pandemic at a time when they were trying to reserve a holiday to escape the last few months of worry. Out of sight, out of mind could have been the strategy employed by these hotels. Further, there was little, if any, use of the victimage strategy, i.e., reminding customers that the hotels are victims of this crisis. This could be explained by the fact that the customers are victims in this pandemic; thus, one victim telling another victim that they are a victim could be counter-productive.

RQ1: What are Swiss 4 and 5-star independent hoteliers communicating on their official websites regarding the Coronavirus?

Compared to social media communication, some hoteliers did communicate information regarding the Covid-19 pandemic. As seen in Fig. 2, the hoteliers who did publish messages that focused on hygiene, safety, health, and protective measures implemented part of Coombs' base response of SCCT, i.e., providing instructing information or giving information about the situation to the stakeholders. The hotels also employed the enhancing strategy or telling guests the 'good' actions they are taking, such as disinfecting areas and wearing masks. While the instructing information aligns with the base response of SCCT, the adjusting information, i.e., that of the caring response, appeared to be missing from these messages. This is not to say that it never appeared in any message; instead, it did not appear often enough to be significantly recognized. At times, the hoteliers referred to external third parties, such as the Swiss government, to justify the measures they were taking. Nonetheless, no hotel overemphasized the measures taken by the hotel. This could be explained in two ways: 1) hoteliers did not want to increase the risk perception of travel for potential tourists, or 2) hoteliers are reticent to discuss negative situations when promoting the positive side of staying in their hotels.

The messages communicated on social media (Facebook) pages contained much less information regarding the Coronavirus. The focus on the Facebook messages was on welcoming back the clientele after a long period of closure and included words of the services they offer, such as 'bar', 'lounge', and 'terrace'. The hoteliers posted messages that were upbeat and positive as if trying to convince the clientele that the opportunity to return to their properties had finally arrived. These messages did not inform the guests that the experience could potentially be different from previous stays; instead, the messages focused on getting the clients back. This could be interpreted as an application of the reminder strategy, i.e., reminding the clientele of the great experience they had the last time they stayed in the hotel. The hashtags echoed this same spirit. Even the hashtag 'stay home' could be interpreted as staying in the home country, this case, Switzerland, i.e., targeting local customers who will choose domestic destinations this year instead of traveling abroad.

RQ2: Are Swiss 4 and 5-star independent hoteliers using social media to communicate about the Coronavirus crisis?

The response to this question confirms previous results on how hotels effectively or ineffectively use social media at any time, crisis, or not. To summarize, there is a lack of interactive dialogue between Swiss hoteliers and their guests via social media. The results from this study demonstrate that hoteliers were not using social media, at least not Facebook, to communicate their actions in regards to the Coronavirus pandemic. Although the literature suggested that international travelers are the most likely to use social media to gather information in times of crisis and most hotel guests in Switzerland are international, this study showed that hoteliers in Switzerland did not provide this information through the social media channels. Hoteliers may have missed an opportunity to show compassion or empathy that is so important during any crisis, regardless of attribution level.

### 6 Conclusion/Implications

Coombs' SCCT outlines the importance of preparing strategic messages that align with the crisis a company faces by establishing the level of attribution, the past crises a company has faced (i.e., a history of crises), and the reputation a particular company has in dealing with crises. Based on the SCCT theory, crisis communication teams can brainstorm potential crises for their industry and proactively prepare crisis communication templates for each type of potential crisis. Before Covid-19, the hospitality industry has endured other global health crises such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), as well as terrorist attacks, hurricanes, and tsunamis. However, these crises affected one property, one region, one industry, or one country. A pandemic such as the Coronavirus that affected the entire hospitality industry worldwide has yet to be seen in this century.

Unlike previous crises, this pandemic has made it impossible to claim the 'victim' status. As seen in this study, hotels cannot play the victim card because their competitors are equally victims. While taking precautions and communicating them to the clients, some hotels may be protecting themselves against the worst-case scenario, i.e., an outbreak in their hotel that affects their clients and employees. In the case of an outbreak, the 'silent' hotels may be attributed responsibility as the 'victim' crisis would be perceived as a 'preventable' one. Hoteliers need to make strategic decisions on how many corrective actions are put in place and how they will communicate these actions to the stakeholders. Without such, hotels are putting themselves and their reputations at risk for the future.

From March to June, the number of new cases of Covid-19 dropped to approximately a dozen; the number of hospital cases and deaths have declined as well. Unfortunately, by mid-June, the number of new cases began to rise again. On August 12, the announcement that events with more than 1000 people would again be permitted on October 1, a new spike in cases has reversed this decision. On October 18, the Swiss government announced a new set of measures beyond social distancing and hygiene rules, such as mandatory mask-wearing in all public places, including train stations, airports, shops, and restaurants [16].

Since the completion of the initial phase of this study on domestic tourism, Swiss tourism has survived the summer season. In an article published by swissinfo.ch on October 21, 2020, the authors summarized what has happened since June. According to the Federal Statistical Office, domestic guests helped fill the void of international guests for Swiss hotels, which fell by 60.3%. Compared to August 2019, Swiss hotels in 2020 welcomed more domestic guests (approximately 1/6 more than the previous year). Nonetheless, by mid-August, the Swiss hotel industry slowed down, with hotel occupancy declining by 28.1% compared to 2019. Overall, the Swiss hotel industry witnessed a 40.9% decline in overnight stays in the first eight months of 2020, mainly by international travelers (down by 61.7%) [16]. At the moment, with the new spikes in and the second wave of Covid-19 cases, the future looks bleak for Swiss tourism and, particularly, Swiss hotels. Unless Swiss hoteliers can convince their customers to return to their hotels, Mr. Zullig's predictions, i.e., the closing of 5% of Swiss hotels, may become a reality.

## 7 Limitations/Future Studies

This study had several limitations. Firstly, the hotels were limited to 4 and 5-star properties that are independent and had Facebook pages. Future studies could evaluate all categories of hotels in Switzerland to gauge how other categories communicated their pandemic measures to their customers. Secondly, the language used for analysis was English. Although justified by the international clientele that most frequents these establishments, further studies could analyze the other languages and their messages. Thirdly, the study was limited to Swiss hotels. Comparative studies against other countries could be preferable to identify best practices in communicating about a crisis on an industry level. Fourthly, the analysis of this study's message was one-sided, deriving only from the hotels' official websites and Facebook pages. A further study should investigate the dialogue between the hotels and the stakeholders. Other social media channels such as Twitter or Instagram could be analyzed as well. Finally, this study did not investigate messages they may have been communicated within the hotels upon arrival. Hoteliers may have had posters or brochures at the reception, in the rooms, or in the public spaces outlining the hygiene and safety measures guests were expected to follow.

## References

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## Virtual Reality as a Travel Substitution Tool During COVID-19

Daniel Sarkady1(&) , Larissa Neuburger2 , and Roman Egger1

1 Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Urstein Süd 1, Puch Urstein, Salzburg 5412, Austria<EMAIL_ADDRESS><EMAIL_ADDRESS>2 Department of Tourism, Hospitality and Event Management, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
Abstract. The pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 has profoundly affected the global leisure and tourism industry, with international travel bans affecting over 90% of the world's population. Widespread restrictions on community mobility have resulted in a projected decline of international tourism arrivals up to 30%. The rapid development of Virtual Reality (VR) and its effectiveness in the simulation of real-life experiences provides an opportunity for virtual holiday making especially when actual travel is not possible. Based on a quantitative study with 193 participants, the role of VR as a substitute for physical travel during the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 was examined, more specifically by looking at the relationship between perceived risk to travel and technological acceptance of VR. The findings suggest that tourists use VR as a travel substitute during and even after a pandemic. However, perceived risk does not play a significant role when it comes to using VR.

Keywords: Risk perception Virtual travel Health crisis Virtual reality COVID-19 Technology acceptance model

## 1 Introduction

The tourism industry has experienced many crises and disasters over the past decade, ranging from terrorist attacks to infectious diseases [1]. An unknown virus, most likely originating from the Chinese city Wuhan and subsequently named COVID-19, was discovered in December 2019 [2]. At the beginning of July 2020, there were 19,381,455 confirmed cases worldwide and 721,409 deaths according to the John Hopkins COVID-19 Resource Center with over 274.000 new COVID cases confirmed every day [3, 4]. Similar to SARS that developed in 2003, COVID-19 is an airborne transmitted illness that is highly contagious [5]. This resulted in major disruptions on the stock market, with many companies going through upheavals and over 35 million jobs at risk, expected to increase to 100 million by the end of 2020. Due to the nature of traveling that facilitates the spread of the pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) and national governments imposed the closure of borders resulting in a disruption of tourism activities worldwide [6, 7].

However, the wish to travel and escape from everyday life still prevails, with novel possibilities offered by information and communication technologies (ICTs). Immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) enable users to travel virtually using computer generated images or videos, simulating real-life experiences and offering a travel alternative [8, 9]. However, there is a paucity of research dealing with the question of whether VR is capable of replacing physical travel [8, 10, 11].

Therefore, the goal of this paper is to investigate the ability of VR to replace physical travel in times when travel possibilities are limited due to travel restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic using structured equation modeling (SEM), building upon the theory of the technology acceptance model by including additional variables such as presence, perceived risk and perceived severity.

### 2 Literature Review

#### 2.1 Perceived Risk

The perceived risk to travel in times of crises is one of the most important factors in the decision-making process to travel in general as well as to choose a specific destination [12, 13]. A decision is considered a risk, when the consequences connected to the decision are negative, undesirable or uncertain compared to other options [14].

The risk of the tourism industry is that services or products cannot meet the expectations of tourists or that negative experiences happen on-site. Previous studies have revealed, that risk perception is multidimensional and heavily depend on peoples' characteristics [14]. Thus, tourists are willing to change their destination choice if they perceive travel as dangerous or unpleasant due to actual or perceived risks [15]. Often, travel plans are made according to constraints such as time, physical distance or budget whereas this study focuses on the health related aspect of risk perception particularly due to COVID-19 [12, 16]. Health problems are frequently reported with infectious diseases being the most common [1].

As consumer anxiety and uncertainty is becoming a big challenge for tour operators, alternative forms of travel must be adopted. Virtual Reality is gaining momentum in this context, as it enables travelers to visit the remotest areas in the world from their living room, leaving huge potential to use it as a travel substitute [17, 18].

#### 2.2 Virtual Reality (VR)

VR is defined as an immersive technology that uses realistic computer-generated 3D virtual environments (VE) in which users can navigate and interact with objects, resulting in a strong sense of a three-dimensional perception [8]. The technology allows the incorporation of the participant as a part of the environment where users receive multi-sensory information – such as auditory, visual or kinaesthetic – that enable realistic responses from the environment that the user is embedded in [19, 20]. This induced mental state, in which the user feels completely physically present in the VE is called 'presence' [21]. While presence is a term related to the subjective feeling of the individual, immersion is the objective degree to which the user is isolated from the real world. Immersion depends on the degree of which a VR system is capable of providing natural sensorimotor for perception such as the resolution, frame rate, latency or the device itself [22].

#### 2.3 Applications of VR in Tourism

The proliferation of VR has transformed different industries such as healthcare, recruitment, training, and education [23]. Through its capacity of creating and manipulating three-dimensional spaces, the travel and tourism industry has found VR useful as a collaborative and commercial tool for travelers as well as tourism providers to communicate [24].

The most common use of VR in the tourism sector is to enhance tourism experiences for tourism sites and attractions. Already in 1962, theme parks started to establish multisensory experiences such as simulated rides in 3D [8]. In addition, VR has enjoyed a surge in popularity especially when it comes to educational purposes during a trip. Using VR leverages the user's spatial perception abilities and the feeling of presence assists the learning process [8]. HMD are frequently used in museums or exhibitions to convey additional information or make objects interactive such as the example of Virtual Stonehenge [8].

Another benefit of VR is the increased accessibility of tourist destinations. Accessibility describes access to specific touristic sites that are hard to enter due to remoteness, costs, undeveloped conditions or physical limitations of the tourists themselves. The opportunity to investigate virtual re-creations of destroyed sites equates to increased accessibility [8].

VR has been proposed to be used as a substitute for travel and certain products of the tourism industry which brings several benefits [25]. In this study, the terminology substitute is used in the context of replacing the visit to a destination which brings several advantages [10]. Destinations can be chosen freely, VR is effective in reducing emissions while traveling and locations can be visited that are not accessible [8, 26].

When it comes to VR as a tool for travel substitution, few studies have examined whether VR is capable of replacing the travel to a destination itself. Sussmann [10] tested the feasibility of VR according to whether tourists perceive VR as a complement to actual travel. However, the results suggested that the sample did not perceive VR as a real holiday replacement [10]. Another study conducted by Prideuax in [27] affirmed similar conclusions. The lack of spontaneity, the inability to purchase things as well the lack of relaxation were factors mentioned as to why the prospect of using VR as a substitute for actual travel is limited [8]. However, most of these studies focused on VR in its early stage of development and adoption, which is not comparable to the performance that current HMDs offer [27].

#### 2.4 Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)

This study is predicated upon three concepts: the technology acceptance model (TAM), perceived risk to travel and presence. TAM has been used in immersive technology research to analyze the acceptance of new ICTs such as mobile gaming, virtual worlds or Augmented Reality in tourism as well as Virtual Reality in tourism marketing [24, 28]. There are several extensions of the model such as the TAM2, UTAUT, IDT or the TPB, adding and removing different components to the initial concept. After reviewing the different models in the context of VR, it became apparent that the original TAM was the most reliable model to predict and explain user acceptance in the special context of being used as a travel substitute during the COVID-19 crisis [28–30]. The theory initially proposed by Davis [31], postulates two axioms of user acceptance which are perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEU) to explain behavioral intention (BI) [28]. PU refers to the extent "[…] that people believe information technology will help them perform their jobs better." [24]. PEU on the other hand refers to the technology's ease of use, where the benefits are outweighed by the efforts of using the device [24]. PU is affected by PEU in a way that the easier a system is to use, the more useful it is [32]. Based on TAM, the proposed model of this study adds another component and extends the classical approach by including the perceived risk (RISK) and presence (PR) of VR.

### 3 Hypothesis Development

Studies have been conducted to analyze the relationship between PEU and PU, showing that both constructs are related to the BI and the consumer acceptance of ICTs [28, 33]. This means that BI is jointly determined by both the PEU as well as the PU. The relationship implies, that everything being equal, people create intentions to perform a specific behavior that they have a positive affinity to [31]. Therefore, these two variables determine the framework for this study and from this, the following two hypotheses can be formulated:

H1. Perceived ease of use (PEU) has an effect on behavioral intention (BI)

H2. Perceived use (PU) has an effect on the behavioral intention (BI)

High usability does not only influence the behavioral intention to use VR but also the perception of its usefulness [34]. Several studies have already successfully confirmed the relationship between PU and PEU and in the present context, it is therefore assumed that a person perceives a VR device as more useful if the operating difficulty is low [30, 35].

H3. Perceived ease of use has an effect on perceived usefulness

Perceived risk affects the situation where the probabilities of the outcome are uncertain. As most of the studies used perceived risk as an antecedent of PU, it is expected that RISK directly affects PU and that they are therefore related whereas they are independent of one another [36, 37]. This means, if the potential reward outweighs the potential risk, it can be expected that the system tends to be adopted [38]. As mentioned aforehand, the perceived risk to travel is considered from the perspective of the traveler, in the context of traveling during COVID-19 and its travel behavior. Perceived severity on the other hand measures the extent of individual concern about negative consequences when catching the disease [15, 39]. To include two dimensions of risk, the effect of perceived severity on perceived usefulness was tested separately [40].

#### H4. Perceived risk has an effect on perceived usefulness

H5. Perceived severity has an effect on perceived usefulness

Although there exists a large body of literature discussing virtual reality and virtual environments, the classical approach of the technology acceptance model is not readily applicable to interactive technology. It can have a significant influence on the flow effect during the exposure and therefore change the outcome and the way how the technology is perceived [41, 42]. This study therefore includes the presence as an extension to the TAM model [43, 44].

H6. Presence has an effect on perceived usefulness

## 4 Methodology

The study was based on a quantitative research design with a self-administered questionnaire, consisting of nine sections. Measurement items were previously validated and structured into four different parts. The first part focuses on demographic attributes, the second part on the perceived risk and perceived severity, the third part focuses on presence while the last section focuses on the TAM. The study employed 44 items for the four different constructs. The items used in the study were then contextualized based on prior research with necessary wording and validation changes. The questionnaire was validated and pre-tested to ensure its validity and reliability.

#### 4.1 Data Analysis

An online survey was used and distributed in several social media groups related to VR in a bid to address people who own a HMD themselves. It was an essential part of this study to recruit people who already experienced VR-content on their own devices, meeting the requirement to receive tourism VR content to exclude any novelty effects. After administering the survey from March 14 to May 12 in 2020, 193 valid respondents participated in this study. Participants were instructed to watch a static, noninteractive 360-degree video of several iconic places in the world such as Amsterdam, Dubrovnik, a beach in Mexico or Cadiz in Spain. After the exposure, the participants were directly led to the questionnaire. The recruitment of the sample was performed in several social media groups such as Facebook, Discord, Reddit or Instagram. The participants profile consisted of 69% male respondents, aged 29 years on average with over 50% being between 25 and 55. The largest country of origin was Austria (9.8%), followed by Germany (8.8) and America (7.8%).

The data analysis of this paper was executed using SPSS 20. The reliability of the constructs was measured by analyzing indicator reliability as well as composite reliability [45]. The validity of the model was assessed by using convergent validity and discriminant validity. The SEM requires the data to be multivariate normal distributed, therefore the bias as well as the kurtosis was validated. In order to test the validity of the model, several fit indices were identified and analyzed [45]. Finally, to negate bad fit indices, several post hoc modifications were made by deleting insignificant paths and adding several covariances [46].

In the second stage, the model fit indices for the proposed SEM were evaluated, followed by the testing of the hypothesis using Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS 25). For the primary criteria to evaluate the model, R2 was chosen to report variance.

### 5 Results

An indicator reliability analysis was conducted to evaluate the consistency and stability for each of the proposed latent constructs. Based on their corrected item-to-total correlation and their improved alpha values, several items were deleted to justify the model [47]. All items below the value.30 were deleted.

The five items of the latent variable perceived risk showed a Cronbach Alpha coefficient of a = 0.43 with an increase to a = 0.74 by excluding the variable "I would feel very comfortable traveling right now" (M = 3.85, SD = 0.99). Perceived severity had a measured Cronbach Alpha coefficient of 0.71. Even though all the four items had a high coefficient, the removal of one variable resulted in an increased Cronbach Alpha of 0.81 (M = 2.20, SD = 1.05). The nine items of the construct Presence had the highest Cronbach Alpha coefficient of 0.9 with no increase if any of the items were deleted (M = 3,42, SD = 0,99). Looking at the TAM-constructs, the perceived usefulness was reported to have a coefficient of 0.67. With the removal of the variable "The satisfaction provided by VR makes me want to travel again" the value increased to 0.72 and therefore being suitable (M = 3, SD = 1,20). Perceived ease of use had a Cronbach Alpha value of 0.83 by removing one variable (M = 4,12, SD = 0,84). Finally, behavioral intention had a coefficient of 0.85 with no improvements by removing an item. With the proper adjustments, all coefficients exceed the recommendation of 0.7 [48]. The coefficient for all variables reached a value of 0.85 (M = 3,70, SD = 1,14).

After testing the indicator reliability, confirmatory factor analysis was performed in order to confirm the factor loadings of the six constructs (perceived risk, perceived severity, presence, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and behavioral intention) as well as the model fit [49]. Extraction method used in the study was the Maximum Likelihood method and the Promax method was chosen for rotation. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was.85 and therefore above the recommended value of 60. The Bartlett's test of spherity was highly significant (v2 (378) = 2836.48, p < 0.00).

In addition, the construct reliability estimates ranged from 0.72 to 0.90, which exceeds the recommended value of 0.7, indicating a satisfactory estimation, seen in Table 1. The AVE of all constructs ranged between 0.47 and 0.61 with two of the constructs between 0.47 and 0.49. According to Fornell and Larcker [50], the AVE may fall short as "On the basis of pn (composite reliability) alone, the researcher may conclude that the convergent validity of the construct is adequate, even though more than 50% of the variance is due to error" [50].

Table 1. Convergent validity

The SEM was estimated by using a maximum likelihood estimation method as well as a correlation matrix as input data. All fit indices are shown in Table 2.

The model shows an overall significant fit (v2 = 332.474, df = 274, p < 0.00). As v2 is sensitive to a large sample size, it frequently rejects well-fitted models with an increase in the sample size as it is the case in this study [49, 51]. Therefore, the normed v2 (i.e. v2/df) is used to examine the model fit, showing an acceptable fit with v2 = 1.26 [51]. To increase the indices, two items were removed due to their factor loadings being below 0.4. The other goodness of fit indices are GFI = 0.89, AGFI = 0.85, CFI = 0.97, RMSEA = 0.03, and TLI = 0.97. Comparing the values to their critical corresponding values, the hypothesized model can be assessed as fitting.

Table 2. Goodness of fit

Table 3 provides details about the results of the hypotheses tests. Out of six proposed hypotheses, four were supported. PEU has a positive and highly significant effect on PU (b = 0.57, t = 4.25, p < 0.001) but not on BI (b = 0.23, t = 1.62, p < 0.10), therefore supporting H3 and rejecting H1. Perceived usefulness had a positive and highly significant effect on behavioral intention (b = 0.83, t = 5.90, p < 0.001) and thus supporting the second hypothesis H2. Presence has a medium strong but highly significant positive effect on perceived usefulness (b = 0.33, t = 4.30, p < 0.001), supporting H6. Perceived risk has no significant effect on PU (b = -0.00, t = -0.61, p < 0.90) whereas perceived severity loads highly significant on perceived usefulness (b = 0.26, t = 3.41, p < 0.001) therefore rejecting H4 but accepting H5.

Table 3. Hypotheses testing

### 6 Discussion

The aim of this study was to investigate the potential of VR to replace real travel when physical travel is restricted due to external circumstances, as in the specific case of this study the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19. Another contribution of the study was to validate the use of TAM in the tourism context as a framework to understand the use of VR [24]. The unique addition to the theory was the consideration of the perceived risk to travel and its potential to affect the PU of participants, as neither TAM nor TPB have provided explanations about behavioral predictions [52]. Thus, this research provides new perspective for researchers by identifying several factors that influence the intention to use VR as a substitute for physical travel during COVID-19.

The results suggested that the measured constructs have an adequate reliability and validity. Out of the six proposed hypotheses, four were confirmed as summarized in Table 3. Results revealed that perceived usefulness has a strong direct effect on behavioral intention, indicating the intention of tourists to use VR to travel virtually during and even after a crisis such as the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19. This result contrasts prior findings reported by Sussmann and Vanhegan [10] indicating that tourists will not replace real traveling by using VR. However, the aforementioned study was not conducted based on a situational crisis such as a global pandemic outbreak.

The finding that perceived risk has no significant effect on participants' perceived usefulness of VR during a crisis can potentially be explained by other factors that were not considered in this study such as hedonic travel motives, positive emotions or the state of flow [24, 53]. VR can convey a sense of escapism to the user, allowing one to travel virtually, dissolving the link between an infectious disease and travelling [54].

Looking at the relation between perceived severity and perceived usefulness, the hypothesis was confirmed showing a significant effect, implying that personal risks are more meaningful than natural ones or risks associated with destinations when making a decision to use VR as a substitute to travel [40, 55]. Furthermore, presence significantly influenced perceived usefulness suggesting that the higher the degree of spatial presence, the higher the perceived use of VR to substitute physical travel. This indicates that it is imperative to use a sophisticated headset and to negate any distractions [25].

The relatively high value of PEU can explain user acceptance of VR systems and its significant effect on PU. Thus, the easier a system is to use, the more likely it is that people use it to travel virtually. The testing of the first hypothesis is also according to their findings, as evidence for a significant effect of PEU on BI was not provided [28]. A reason could be the rather experienced sample size, as all participants owned a personal VR headset, resulting in the general high mean. Besides hypothesis testing, it became apparent that the general urge to travel increased after the exposure as the variable 'The satisfaction provided by VR makes me want to travel again' showed a generally high mean.

## 7 Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research

The study has several limitations that can be addressed in further and future research. Firstly, the study was conducted with a relatively homogenous sample size as all participants have had previous experience with VR headsets before, which limits the generalizability. Future studies can further validate the findings of this study in a different field with participants who have never used VR before. As perceived risk was found to have no significant effect on perceived usefulness, future research should try to discover other factors such as hedonic travel motivation that might explain the allure of using VR to travel virtually. Furthermore, other sensory modalities apart from auditive/auditory and visual feedback can stimulate the imagination. Subsequent studies can therefore include other sensory information and utilize an environment with a higher degree of interactivity, thereby integrating the effect of immersion on perceived usefulness. Finally, another direction that future researchers can undertake is to further investigate the dynamics of social interaction in a VR experience that is being used in a tourism context.

## 8 Conclusion

This study examines the ability of VR to substitute real travel during the COVID19 pandemic. By using TAM with additional variables, namely perceived risk, perceived severity and presence, this study identified the role that VR plays as a substitute to real travel in times when travel is restricted due to external and environmental circumstances. Results suggested that perceived usefulness positively influences the behavioral intention. Perceived usefulness on the other hand is positively affected by presence, perceived severity and perceived ease of use. The most important finding of this study is the significant relationship between perceived usefulness and behavioral intention, suggesting that there is an intention to use VR to travel during and even after the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, findings suggested that there is no significant correlation between perceived risk and perceived usefulness, indicating that other unobserved influential factors need to be examined. In this study, it appears that the perceived risk to travel is not impactful compared to the individually perceived severity, such as the fear of contracting the disease. Nevertheless, in order to experience real tourism with the help of VR, it is necessary to provide targeted stimuli to other sensory modalities besides auditive/auditory and visual exposure. The aspect of interaction is also crucial for a positive travel experience, a theme that future researchers might wish to pursue.

The findings of this study demonstrate the potential of VR to be used as a virtual imagery tool to induce travel experiences and potentially substitute travel. Political or environmental instabilities may force customers to make new decisions and adapt their traveling style to the circumstances by using VR for instance [10]. In order to enhance its power, it is imperative to add economic value to it. It is up to marketeers to recognize and use the possibility to create virtual reality content and provide a realistic preview of the destination which eventually translates into a purchase intention. A challenge is to plan activities that take advantage of the technology, even though its used to substitute travel while maintaining the attractiveness of actual traveling and encouraging wanderlust [56].

## References

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## Covid-19 and Instagram: Digital Service Innovation in Top Restaurants

Aarni Tuomi1(&) , Iis Tussyadiah2 , and Mark Ashton2

> 1 Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, Pajuniityntie 11, 00320 Helsinki, Finland

<EMAIL_ADDRESS>2 University of Surrey, Stag Hill, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
Abstract. Governments across the world have imposed strict rules on social distancing to curb the spread of Covid-19. In particular, restaurants have been impacted by government-mandated lockdowns. This study adopts a mixed methods approach to explore how Finnish high-profile restaurants used Instagram as a means for service innovation and diffusion during nine weeks of government-mandated lockdown. Comparatively analysing 1,119 Instagram posts across two time-stamps (2019 and 2020) and across 45 restaurants, as well as conducting five semi-structured interviews with restaurant managers, it is found that while the overall number of Instagram posts and likes on posts stayed relatively similar to the year prior, the number of comments increased significantly, suggesting a move towards a more didactic and dyadic form of Instagram communication. In addition, four digital service innovation strategies are identified: launching new service offerings and introducing new elements to existing service offerings, fostering social relationship with customers, exploring novel streams of revenue, and reinvigorating the brand's image. Implications to service innovation theory and practice are discussed, along with suggestions for future research.

Keywords: Covid-19 Instagram Digital service innovation Restaurants

## 1 Introduction

2020 has been a very difficult year for the hospitality industry. The advent of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, more commonly referred to by the illness the virus causes, Covid-19, has forced governments around the world to impose strict restrictions on individual rights, particularly around the freedom of movement [1]. As the virus spreads primarily through human-to-human transmission, experts have concluded that the best way to curb infection rates is to introduce measures for social distancing. Hospitality, an industry which relies heavily on people moving around and interacting with each other, has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic [2]. In many countries, restaurants have been told to close or at the very least reduce the amount of covers served to meet social distancing requirements. In addition to scaling down operations and mass-furloughing staff, some food service operators have taken the crisis as an opportunity to innovate with new business models and service offerings. Information communications technology, in particular, has been seen as a potential tool for producing and providing socially distant services [3]. While the role of technology in innovation has been widely researched [4,5], previous studies mostly focus on disruptive changes brought by technology-driven (business model) innovation (such as Airbnb), and how incumbent firms are affected by and have responded to these changes [6]. Further, literature contrasts technology-driven vs. Market-driven (technology-push vs. Demand-pull) innovations in terms of their competitive and disruptive effects across the industry [5,7]. Service innovations we are witnessing today from hospitality firms are driven by the drastic change in the business environment (i.e., restrictions on physical operations), hence might not fit the mould of technology-push or demand-pull innovation. Furthermore, these innovations represent emergent strategies rather than planned, often involving a pivot to new business models at speed. This presents conceptual and practical challenges to better understand how technology and digital media play a role in the development of innovation for firms' survival and competitiveness in the hospitality sector.

This study adopts a mixed methods approach to explore digital service innovation in Finland's top 50 restaurants amidst Covid-19. In particular, the study addresses the following research question: How did Finland's top 50 restaurants leverage technology to innovate their service offering and business model amidst government-mandated lockdown measures? Drawing from the literature on service innovation and organisational change, this study provides insight on the agility of largely low-tech, smalland medium sized companies' innovation efforts, and offers important lessons learned as the sector prepares for the 'new normal' post-Covid-19.

### 2 Service Innovation and Organisational Change

As discussed by Trott (2012) [8] innovation is, at the most basic level, about change. Change can be big or small, and it can take on different forms. For example, Voss and Zomerdijk (2007) [9] argue that service innovation may consider different elements of service: the service environment, the service employee, the service delivery process, fellow customers, or the back-office functions. Snyder et al. (2016) [10] see that service innovation may also involve the transformation of entire service products or service processes, leading to either incremental or radical innovations. Helkkula, Kowalkowski and Tronvoll (2018) [11] characterise service innovations into four archetypes: outputbased service innovations, process-based service innovations, experiential service innovations, and systemic service innovations. Witell et al. (2017) [12] conclude that service innovation is fundamentally about the combining and recombining of an organisation's available resources to improve its practices in novel, unforeseen ways.

Organisations go through change because the environments within which they operate are in constant flux. Dobbs et al. (2015) [13] see that modern companies are forced to change because of four key drivers in particular: urbanisation, technology, an ageing population, and globalisation. Besides these general megatrends of the 21st century, Taleb (2008) [14] argues that sometimes change is due to what he calls a 'black swan' event. These are events that are rare, random, unexpected, and as such, extremely difficult to predict or plan for [14]. The emergence of Covid-19 could be characterised as a 'black swan' event because of its devastating impact on the global food service sector. Given the rapid pace and gravity with which hospitality operators have had to adapt to the new operating environment, an upsurge in emergent service innovation might be expected.

To conceptualise the roles of technology in innovation, extant research has largely agreed on the definition of technology-driven and market-driven innovations [5]. Technology-driven (technology-push) innovations happen when R&D experimentation precedes market opportunities, thus the potential market and applications are usually unknown [15]. Market-driven (demand-pull) innovations, even when involving technology, often result from radical changes in the value propositions made to existing customers [5]. Regardless of which came first, it is vital to align technology with user needs (demand) for innovations to be successful. Studying technology-driven innovations amongst retailers in the food sector, Esbjerg et al. (2012) [16] found that when implementing new (food) technologies, managers were driven by benefits to customers, confirming the importance of technology–demand alignment. Consequently, when this alignment is a challenge, firms, especially startups, are forced to redefine their competitive advantage and pivot their business model [17]. Garćia-Gutiérrez and Martinez-Borreguero (2016) [18] suggested the innovation pivot framework to guide firms navigating great uncertainty associated with internal and external factors. The framework assists in fostering the creative process of generating promising applications for an innovation by interrogating the links among the innovative technology, the sources of sustainable competitive advantage, and the innovative business model. Covid-19 presents an external challenge to existing firms due to the extreme narrowing of market and reduction in scale that has not been conceptualised fully in the literature on innovation and business model pivot. To address this gap in extant research it is important to examine the interplay between technological innovation and new demand exploration underlying service innovation and business model pivots in the hospitality industry as spurred by the pandemic.

## 3 Methods

This exploratory study adopted a sequential mixed methods approach, choosing as its sample 50 high-profile restaurants across Finland. "Finland's 50 best restaurants" is an annual compilation of the country's top food service operators [19]. The prestigious ranking is produced in consensus with hundreds of Finnish hospitality professionals, from chefs to sommeliers, and from food critics to researchers. The 50 best restaurants list was deemed an appropriate sample for this study as it includes a wide variety of food service organisations that differ in size, service concept, business model, and geographical location. All restaurants on the list are also independent, i.e. not part of a large chain or a clear central brand. This was assumed to make the organisations particularly agile in implementing change and innovation and thus well-suited for this study.

Data were collected between June-July 2020, using two methods: (1) web scraping and (2) semi-structured interviews. After a comprehensive desk research phase to analyse all available online channels (e.g. website, social media platforms), it was concluded that the chosen sample of restaurants was most active on one digital channel in particular: Instagram. Put together, the restaurants have over 150,000 followers on the platform, with each individual organisation having thousands of followers and posting content several times per week. Others (c.f. [20]) have also found Instagram a rich source of information for hospitality research.

To understand how the restaurants' business model and service offering changed during government-mandated lockdown measures, the restaurants' Instagram posts were manually scraped across nine weeks pre-lockdown and during the lockdown: 30 March - 31 May 2020 (lockdown, calendar weeks 14–22) and 1 April - 2 June 2019 (normal operation, calendar weeks 14–22). In total, 1,119 posts (including the number of posts, likes, and comments as well as post captions) were scraped for analysis (2020: n = 554, 2019: n = 565). Number of posts, likes, and comments were compared weekby-week between 2019 and 2020, and the qualitative data found in captions were analysed thematically, identifying recurring patterns of behaviour/themes [21,22]. The analysis moved between deduction and induction [23], and drew from a priori themes established in recent innovation literature [11]. Out of the 50 restaurants, four were not found on Instagram or any other social media platform and thus were excluded from the study. One restaurant was found to have posted nine times the overall average in 2019 and not at all in 2020 and was thus marked as a clear outlier and excluded from the study. The final list of included restaurants (n = 45) along with their follower counts is shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Restaurants included in the study.

(continued)

Table 1. (continued)

To shed further light on the studied restaurants' innovation strategies during the lockdown, theoretical sampling was conducted, whereby 20 of the most innovative restaurants were contacted to arrange a formal interview. In the end, representatives from five restaurants (three restaurant managers and two executive chefs/owners) took part in a semi-structured interview. The interviews lasted for 35 min on average and were conducted via phone and a video conferencing application. Questions focused on themes identified when analysing scraped posts, and dug deeper into the impacts of Covid-19 at a particular venue throughout the lockdown period. In particular, the researchers were interested in better understanding the challenges and successes of implementing innovation. The interviews were recorded, automatically transcribed, and as before analysed drawing on a priori themes established in recent service innovation literature [11]. Figure 1 provides a summary of the data collection and analysis procedures adopted herewith.

Fig. 1. Data collection and analysis procedure.

## 4 Findings and Discussion

As illustrated in Figs. 2 and 3, restaurants' general post frequency and the overall number of likes per post did not significantly change between the lockdown and the year prior, although some variance was observed (i.e., some individual restaurants posted more during lockdown, while others posted less). However, the thematic content analysis highlighted a clear shift in the way in which Instagram was used as a customer-facing communication channel. While in 2019 posts were mainly promotional in nature, in 2020 posts were more dyadic, didactive, and often centred around the launch of a new service process or offering. As illustrated by one interview participant: "Instagram quickly became our primary means of staying in touch with our guests. We would post about anything and everything, stuff we wouldn't normally […] wouldn't normally post".

The shift in Instagram usage is well illustrated by the peaks of post frequency, whereby in 2019 posts peaked during Finnish public holidays that fall within the studied time period (Easter on week 15/16, Labour Day on week 18, and Mother's Day on week 19), while in 2020 post frequency was more constant with only slight peaks at the beginning and the end of the lockdown. The week-by-week number of comments per post provided further support for this, whereby a stark increase (32%) in comments was observed between 2019 and 2020 (Fig. 4). Posts towards the end of the lockdown (weeks 21–22) were commented particularly often, indicating a focus on reestablishing customer relationships and building trust.

Fig. 2. Total posts across the studied period (2019: n = 565, 2020: n = 554).

Fig. 3. Total likes across the studied time period (2019: n = 58,829, 2020: n = 56,537).

Fig. 4. Total comments across the studied time period (2019: n = 497, 2020: n = 731).

Further noting the significance of Instagram as a two-way communication channel, one restaurant manager commented: "Our Insta really blew up during the lockdown, we gained so many new followers, most organically. When the lockdown hit we basically lost all our reservations and catering orders overnight. We had no choice but to change our business and be damn quick about it. Insta effectively allowed us to stay in touch with our guests throughout the process."

In terms of the innovative service processes and offerings launched during lockdown, as observed from the thematic analysis of restaurants' Instagram posts and the five semi-structured interviews with decision-makers, four distinct forms of digital service innovation were found: (1) launching completely new service offerings or introducing new value-adding elements to existing service offerings, (2) experimenting with new ways of fostering social relationships with customers, (3) exploring novel streams of revenue, and (4) focusing on revamping and reinvigorating the brand's visual image or broader servicescape. These forms of service innovation resonate well with Helkkula, Kowalkowski and Tronvoll's (2018) [11] four service innovation archetypes. As will be illustrated, in the first two types of digital service innovation identified herewith, Instagram forms a key part of the innovation itself and is thus used directly as an enabler of innovation, while in the latter two types of innovation Instagram is used primarily as a means of promoting the innovation to customers.

#### 4.1 Innovation Archetype 1 and 2: Output- and Process-Based Service Innovations

In terms of new service offerings, several high-end restaurants transformed their traditional tasting menus into a delivery-friendly format, either a ready-to-eat takeaway offering or a vacuum-packed meal kit. For example, Helsinki-based Ora transformed its Michelin-starred kitchen into a 'sushi factory', while Demo introduced a luxurious finish-at-home tasting menu complete with video instructions, wine pairings, and a specially curated Spotify-playlist to create the'right' ambiance. Besides new offerings, restaurants also explored ways of bringing added value to the stay-at-home experience. Helsinki-based Savoy used the lockdown to educate their Instagram followers about the history of the restaurant, while Turku-based C took the opportunity to highlight the importance of working with local suppliers at a time when global supply chains are being disrupted. One of the most creative approaches came from Finnjävel, which decided to offer its customers a complimentary two-week access to an online course promoting and providing tools for taking care of mental health amidst the pandemic. In these cases, digital platforms (chiefly Instagram) play a role as enabler of innovation, allowing these restaurants to pivot their business model and generate new service offerings (e.g. reservation app for takeaway and delivery). Further, the availability of technology (e.g. a combination of Instagram videos and Spotify playlist) also allows businesses to afford implementation of emergent strategies to react quickly to the drastic change in the business environment. In other words, technology allows firms to quickly redefine their competitive advantage by exploring alternative use of their resources (i.e., capabilities, assets, knowledge) or pivoting the ways they reach customers and, consequently, operate.

### 4.2 Innovation Archetype 3: Experiential Service Innovations

As highlighted by the shift to a more dyadic use of Instagram, restaurants fostered social connection through, for example, holding regular raffles or competitions. For example, Porvoo-based Sicapelle invited its followers to share pictures of their takeaway picnic setups, whereas in Turku Restaurant Mami held frequent raffles in collaboration with a local leafy green producer. In terms of more direct outreach, Sikke's organised virtual champagne tasting events, while Penélope introduced virtual, home cooking-centred Instagram Live sessions and IGTV videos hosted by executive chef Hans Välimäki. Similar to the previous type of innovations, Instagram (and similar consumer-facing platforms) is used as a channel to enable the implementation of innovations as firms' emergent strategies. Again, it signifies the role of technology as enabler of firms' dynamic capability to stay highly flexible in the business world.

#### 4.3 Innovation Archetype 4: Systemic Service Innovations

Hospitality is a business with notoriously thin margins, and making ends meet even with new service offerings and innovative ways of staying in touch with customers is difficult. For this reason, the majority of the top 50 restaurants also experimented with additional revenue streams. From gift certificates to wholesale of branded products such as spice mix, beer, or hoodies, restaurateurs explored creative approaches to stay afloat. Several restaurants started a collaboration with a local supermarket to offer a branded ready-to-eat offering, while some turned to crowdfunding. Operators with multiple venues tended to focus their assets on one. Even though across the board many organisations were forced to furlough and lay off staff to cut costs, some came up with creative ways of utilising new-found time and manpower. Joensuu-based Local Bistro turned to volunteering and provided free meals for frontline healthcare staff, while in Helsinki Ultima took the opportunity to renovate premises and redesign customer journeys to facilitate a more low-touch post-lockdown service experience. As noted by one restaurant manager: "The changes we implemented are here to stay. We simply cannot sustain our business at just half capacity once we're allowed to take customers in again. We have no choice but to go with a more resilient hybrid model". The role of Instagram is less pronounced in these systemic service innovations. In fact, these emergent strategies are born from the lack of economic incentives in the business world, forcing businesses to realign their revenue model and mobilise their value network differently (e.g. supporting social causes) to remain sustainable. Whereas in other types of service innovation Instagram played a key part in enabling the innovation, in the case of systemic service innovations Instagram was used primarily for promotion.

## 5 Conclusion, Limitations and Further Research

The coronavirus has managed to both devastate and develop the hospitality sector. On one hand, several restaurateurs have been forced to scale down operations, furlough and lay off staff, or even close. On another, the virus has hastened digitalisation efforts across entire industries, with food service operators that remain open having to come up with innovative new offerings and business models. This mixed methods study explored how Finland's top restaurants reacted and adapted to a period of radical, exogenous 'black swan' event, specifically focusing on the roles of technology in these innovations. The innovations found in this study fit the categories specified in the literature [11]: output-based, process-based, experiential, and systemic process innovations. These innovations are the manifestation of emergent or discovery-driven strategies [5] largely enabled by the availability of technology and digital social media platforms. This suggests the vital role of technology in fostering dynamic capability of firms facing a drastic change in the business environment. As the lockdown period drastically reduces the scale of operations and the size of market (due to physical distancing), technology allows firms to explore alternative uses of their resources and identify different ways to secure their market foothold.

Despite offering important theoretical and practical insight on digital service innovation in the face of the unexpected, the study has limitations that need to be considered. First, only high-profile independent restaurants were analysed here. Extending the study to include operators with multiple centrally branded sites would have provided interesting insight into digital service innovation across large, less agile organisations. The study also focused solely on restaurants located in Finland. Replicating the study in other cultural contexts with different norms and conventions on service culture would produce a fuller picture of innovation efforts. Third, the study only focused on Instagram. Even though a set of interviews was conducted to gain a deeper account of the phenomenon studied, conducting content analysis on Instagram is inherently problematic. This is because of the ever-evolving nature of the platform, whereby there is no straightforward way of knowing whether old posts have been edited or deleted, when a particular post (old or new) has been liked or commented on, or how changes in the follower base (increase or decrease) might impact the overall number of likes or comments on a particular post. A more comprehensive look into different digital platforms used to generate and communicate service innovations in the hospitality sector will shed more light into the role of technology in service innovations.

## References

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

### The Sustainability of Using Domestic Tourism as a Post-COVID-19 Recovery Strategy in a Distressed Destination

Erisher Woyo(&)

Namibia Business School, University of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
Abstract. Tourism is a critical contributor to the gross domestic product, especially among developing countries like Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is a tourist destination that relies more on international travellers, a market which has been affected by the novel coronavirus. The purpose of this study is to establish the perceptions of domestic travellers and tourism managers on the sustainability of using domestic tourism as strategic responses to the impacts of the coronavirus. This study employs a qualitative methodology to examine the perceptions of the demand and supply side regarding the recovery options for Zimbabwean tourism post-pandemic. Online interviews with demand and supply participants were conducted. Data were analysed using thematic analysis, and the results were discussed. Results show that domestic tourism as a recovery option is unstainable due to the challenges that Zimbabwe is facing, beyond the coronavirus.

Keyword: Distressed destination Coronavirus Tourism recovery Domestic tourism Resilience

## 1 Introduction

Coronavirus (COVID -19) is a global health pandemic that has triggered an unprecedented crisis in the tourism industry globally [1], making it the most powerful phenomenon of the 21st century [2]. The pandemic saw the growth of the tourism industry revised downwards, and it is estimated that 75 million jobs have been lost following the suspension of international travel by March 2020 [3]. It is further estimated that the industry is likely to lose more than US\$2.1 trillion in revenue [3] due to the closure of national borders and lockdowns. Therefore, the impacts of COVID-19 on destinations that overly rely on tourism are devastating.

Though COVID-19 is not yet contained, countries including Southern African countries are easing the lockdown through the opening of national borders to restart international travel. The easing of restrictions has been necessitated by business and political voices that are pushing for the opening of economies as soon as possible [4]. In anticipation of the resumption of travel, destinations developed tourism recovery strategies for an industry that contributes much to the gross domestic product (GDP) of most developing economies. Zimbabwe launched its tourism recovery strategy in August 2020 intending to promote domestic tourism as a strategic option and means of building destination resilience.

Domestic tourism promotion as a recovery strategy is not new in literature. It has been a default response in several destinations during crises in countries like Kenya, following post-election violence in 2008, and Malaysia during the Asian financial crisis1997/98 [5]. Though extant research has evaluated the vulnerability of destinations following natural disasters [6], research focusing on the promotion of domestic tourism as a destination recovery and resilience building strategy during pandemics in destinations with prolonged political and economic crises like Zimbabwe is limited. Understanding the sustainability of promoting domestic tourism as an alternative following the decline of international tourism demand due to the impacts of COVID-19 is required. Globally, due to COVID-19, the tourism industry is confronted with severe demand and supply challenges. These challenges vary from one country to another. Generally, the aspects of perceived health, social and psychological risks top demand challenges, while the supply side is confronted with challenges including deficits, low occupancies, job losses, company liquidation, and human capital depletion [1, 2, 7]. Based on this, the objective of this study is to examine the sustainability of using domestic tourism as a recovery and resilience building strategy using both demand and supply-side views in a destination with ongoing political and economic challenges.

### 2 Literature Review

Tourism is a sensitive industry [8], especially to disasters and crises [9]. Due to the growing amount of disasters, literature discussing disasters is also growing [2]. It has been established that natural disasters do not result in permanent effects on tourism compared to the effects of incidents like violence and terrorism [10]. Disasters and crises are terms that are often used interchangeably in the literature, though fundamental differences exist [11–13]. On the one hand, a crisis is a disruptive event or outcome occurring within a system and has the potential to threaten the system's [14]. Following the contested land reform programme, political and economic crises, have been a common occurrence in Zimbabwe [8]. These crises threatened the operations of tourism, resulting in dwindling arrivals and income [8]. On the other hand, a disaster is an event that confronts a system with unpredictable catastrophic changes over which a system has no control [13]. Thus, crises have an internal outlook that makes them more manageable, while disasters are external and less predictable [15].

It is not clear in literature if COVID-19 is a disaster or crisis. Zenker and Kock [2] argue that it is either a disaster or crisis, depending on the lenses one uses to analyse its impacts. While the classification of COVID-19 is contestable, it is beyond the scope of this study. However, its categorisation is critical to better our understanding of the past [2] and improve the formulation of tourism recovery and resilience strategies postpandemic. Though COVID-19 is new, several of its aspects have been experienced and affected travel and tourism [16, 17]. COVID-19 in this study is treated as a unique disaster based on its scale and impacts on the global economy. COVID-19 is a natural disaster that degenerated into a socio-political, tourism and economic crisis [2].

The impacts of COVID-19 on the tourism industry globally are yet to be fully developed and measured [18]. However, what is clear is that following the closure of borders, the demand for international tourism plummeted [1]. The recovery of global tourism, regardless of the type of the crisis, depends mostly on the scale, type, and size of the crisis [15]. With no vaccine in sight, it appears that the pandemic will be around for a long-time, with some countries already been hit by a second wave. Therefore, the tourism recovery efforts must be formulated based on dealing with an ongoing pandemic. This is being reflected in how countries are opening their economies and national borders. Despite an increased stream of literature investigating disasters and crises in tourism, these studies are limited in terms of scope and depth [6, 19], and the promotion of domestic tourism as a means of recovery and resilience building, is hardly discussed. Furthermore, though the focus of most studies has been post-crisis/disasters, they have not dealt with a pandemic with socio-economic impacts that are so devastating like COVID-19. Thus, the understanding of the role that domestic tourism promotion plays in helping destinations with ongoing crises and negative reputations reduce vulnerability and building resilience is critical.

Debate on what constitutes resilience is ongoing [20], suggesting that it is another elusive term in tourism research. Resilience is an essential construct in disaster and crises management research because it provides destination managers with the means of enhancing capacity to adapt and deal with changes [21, 22]. Though there is a lack of universal measurement, resilience has been approached using three significant perspectives: engineering, ecological and adaptive perspectives [23–25]. Resilience from an engineering perspective measures how rapid a system can return to its normal state. In contrast, the ecological view measures resilience using the system's ability to absorb the impacts of disruption without altering its identity, functions, and structure [25]. Adaptive resilience refers to the systems' ability to experience the impacts of changes without losing the ability to manage its resources. Thus, in a destination context, resilience is concerned with how quick the destination can return to its previous normal conditions following a shock [25], such as COVID-19. Adaptive destinations can adjust to, learn from, and manage changes [26]. Applying adaptive resilience thinking during disasters and crises provides "great utility, namely, the ability to react to external stimuli and modify behaviour accordingly" [27 pp. 4]. COVID-19 presents an opportunity for the promotion of domestic tourism to destinations such as Zimbabwe that relies heavily on international tourism. Whether this strategy could prove to be useful to a destination with ongoing crises [8] remains relatively unknown. Thus, the recognition by destinations of vulnerabilities and being able to plan for eventualities is critical tourism recovery and building a resilient destination. Destinations that can adapt are thus considered more resilient and can recover from disasters and crises quicker [28].

The capacity of a tourist destination to respond to pandemics is framed in stages [4]. Despite knowing that tourism is a victim of crises and disasters [27], the conceptualisation of recovery and resilience building strategies is generally informed from a reactive point. COVID-19 has long-term impacts on both international and domestic tourism. Thus, how destinations with ongoing political and economic crises respond to the pandemic in shaping long-term tourism recovery and resilience building strategies depends on how well-thought and planned the strategies are. Following the decline in international tourism demand, spearheading tourism recovery and enhancing the resilience of the sector through the growth and promotion of domestic tourism is timely and critical, especially for destinations that overly relies on international visitors.

## 3 Methodology

The study examines the perceptions of demand and supply participants regarding the promotion of domestic tourism as a post-pandemic recovery and resilience building strategy in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is a Southern African tourist destination with several world-class attractions including the Victoria Falls, Hwange National Park, Gonarezhou National, Eastern Highlands and Great Zimbabwe Monuments [29]. International tourism, which is the biggest market to Zimbabwe, has shown some resilience after it was disrupted in 2000 due to the contested elections, violence, and the land reform programme [8, 29]. These pre-COVID crises in Zimbabwe are not new in literature. However, COVID-19 presents a situation which is novel and not much is known regarding this ongoing virus. Based on this, Strauss and Corbin [30] argue that a qualitative methodology is appropriate in cases where newer problems for which nuanced understanding needs to be developed. Thus, a qualitative research approach was employed.

Data were collected using online interviews (in English) between May and July 2020. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, online interviews are becoming a standard method of data collection. Online interviews were conducted using Zoom Video Conferencing Platform with both the demand side (domestic tourists) and supply-side (managers from tourism establishments) participants. These interviews were conducted separately. Questions used in the interviews were based on the review of the literature. Demand interviews focused on the perceptions and challenges faced by domestic travellers in Zimbabwe. Supply side interviews focused on the feasibility of using domestic tourism as a means of restarting tourism, challenges of using domestic tourism and adoption of technologies.

Thirty demand respondents were approached using WhatsApp messages, where the aims of the study were explained. Twenty participants accepted to participate (66.7% response rate). Demand participants were supposed to have visited major attractions such as the Victoria Falls, Great Zimbabwe and big national parks including Hwange and Gonarezhou in the last three years to participate in the study. 28 managers were initially approached using emails, and 12 accepted to participate in the study (42.8% response rate). Both demand and supply participants were sampled using convenience sampling. Occasional email and WhatsApp reminders were sent to participants. Participants were informed of the content, aims, their rights to anonymity, and withdrawal of participation. Interviews were recorded using the Zoom cloud facility, averaging 20– 30 min. Tables 1 and 2 summarises the participants' profiles.

Table 1. Supply side profile

\* At the time of writing, USD\$1 = ZWL\$50