Machine translation (MT), i.e., automatic translation, is a growing field in artificial intelligence with huge impacts on societies and businesses. Despite its importance for traveling and tourism communication, it has not been approached within tourism research. This study aims to fill this gap in knowledge by analyzing how attitudes toward machine translation are related to tourists’ profiles, travel behaviors, and language mindsets. It comprises two parts. The first one concerns a sample of 2535 individuals, while the second concerns a sub-sample of 907 language tourists (LTs). Specific research goals are set for each study: (1) to compare individuals with opposing viewpoints on the importance of MT in terms of profiles and attitudes toward languages; and (2) to understand how LTs’ profiles and travel experiences differed according to their agreement with the importance of MT in their most significant language trip. Statistical exploratory and inferential analyses have been conducted. We conclude that those with more positive views of MT tend to be younger and less educated, report poorer language skills, and attribute greater importance to the role of English as a lingua franca. Concerning LTs, those who rate MT as less important are more likely to have acquired language skills formally, engage more in cultural activities, and have closer contact with locals during their language trips. Acknowledging the role of MT in their most significant language trip is neither associated with a more unfavorable attitude towards the role of language in tourism nor with perceived diminished travel outcomes.

This study approaches immersion experiences in the context of language tourism. Immersion is here understood as tourists’ extensive engagement and interaction with the members of the host culture. Previous studies have pointed out that language tourism implies a deeper contact with locals; however, other studies have observed that many language programmes abroad are not always as immersive as expected. These contradictory findings suggest that there may be a tremendous variation in contact with locals in the context of language tourism. Hence, the present mixed methods study uses interviews with 22 language travellers, and 1,011 survey answers to address the question of how language tourists who had an intense contact with local residents differ – in terms of profile and travel experiences – from those language travellers who did not have such an intense contact. There are significant differences between these groups. Those who had a more intense contact with locals are more likely to be intrinsically motivated by an interest for the local culture, to travel alone, to report higher levels of fluency, more frequent accommodation at homestays, and greater engagement in a wider range of activities at the destination.

Human values are a central component in understanding individuals’ choices. Using the Schwartz’s Values instrument, this study aimed to identify patterns of human value priorities of 35,936 participants across 20 European countries and analyse their relations with subjective well-being (SWB), subjective general health (SGH), social life, and depression indices in Europe. A hierarchical cluster analysis of data from the seventh European Social Survey (ESS) round 7, based on the higher order dimensions of the Schwartz values model, allowed identifying four European groups with distinct indicators. Indices of SWB, SGH, social life, and depression showed statistically significant differences among the four different sociodemographic groups. The graphical representation of the monotonic correlations of each of these indices with the value priorities attributed to the ten basic human values was ordered according to the Schwartz circumplex model, yielding quasi-sinusoidal patterns. The differences among the four groups can be explained by their distinct sociodemographic characteristics: social focus, growth focus, strong social focus, and weak growth focus. The results of this study suggest a rehabilitation of the notion of hedonism, raising the distinction between higher and lower pleasures, with the former contributing more to well-being than the latter.