This article investigates the concept of customer-based brand equity for a tourism destination, which has been introduced into the tourism literature only a few years ago. Specifically, it investigates whether differences between renewal and repeat tourists exist in their evaluation of a tourism destination. A theoretically proposed model, encompassing the dimensions of awareness, image, quality, and loyalty, was empirically verified for the European tourism destination Slovenia from the perspective of German tourists. The results imply that the dimensions of image and quality play the most important role in tourists’ evaluation of a destination, regardless of whether they are first-time visitors or repeaters. Results also reveal differences in importance for the dimensions of awareness and loyalty between renewal and repeat tourists. Drawing on the results, the article offers some implications for tourism organizations in developing and implementing destination marketing strategies in foreign markets.

This study examines the existence of a long-run relationship between indigence or extreme poverty reduction and agricultural, manufacturing and tourism development in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. An econometric methodology consisting of an autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach to co-integration is used. For Costa Rica, agricultural and manufacturing (not statistically significant) and tourism development are negatively related to indigence poverty with estimated elasticity values of −0.50 for agriculture, −0.17 for manufacturing and −0.58 for tourism. For Nicaragua, the estimated elasticity values are −0.40 for agriculture, −0.13 for manufacturing (not statistically significant) and −0.64 for tourism. Tourism's rate of poverty reduction was statistically significantly greater than that of agriculture for both countries. The main contribution of this paper lies in the understanding of sector contributions to alleviating poverty. The methods utilized can be undertaken by most countries in the world, thereby providing insights into developing targeted investment policies and strategies to achieve higher rates of poverty reduction.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of extrinsic cues on wine consumer’s willingness to pay (WTP) based on a blind tasting experiment conducted in Hong Kong. Using data from a three-stage blind wine tasting experiment, the authors examine how an average consumer’s WTP for a bottle of wine changes as a result of knowing prior to tasting extrinsic information such as the country of origin or grape variety of an otherwise identical product. The findings of this study align with previous research that finds subjective utility experienced by tasters can be significantly influenced by the belief or information given prior to the tasting. Sub-group analysis using a stratified sample based on the frequency of wine consumption and the wine taster’s prior experience with wine (grouped into expert and novice categories) suggests that it is the novice consumers that have a stronger response to the pre-tasting knowledge when evaluating wine. Experienced wine consumers, on the other hand, do not seem to respond strongly to the pre-tasting knowledge of the extrinsic attributes in their evaluation of wine. The studies of taste preference and role of extrinsic characteristics in wine evaluation and consumption in the rapidly growing Asian market is increasingly important for the wine industry. The evidence from this study suggests the importance for producers and marketers to consider consumer heterogeneity and product differentiation when pricing and distributing their wine.

This work presents a model of intangible cultural heritage from a knowledge-based view that studies its role in destination competitiveness. Firstly, the concept of intangible cultural heritage and its relationship with tourism are reviewed. Next, the importance of destination competitiveness in the intangible heritage context and the potential to be analyzed under the framework of the knowledge-based view are addressed. As the concept of sustainable competitive advantage is key in that setting, the conditions of scarcity, relevance, place-embedded authenticity, short-term protection, and transfer of the underlying knowledge of intangible cultural heritage are discussed. Intangible cultural heritage-based sustainable competitive advantages are the basis to generate rents, but those rents should be at least partially appropriated by the local community/key stakeholders at the destination.