Purpose: The present study aims to synthesize and conceptualize, through a systematic literature review (SLR), the current state of gamification knowledge in the tourism and hospitality (T&H) sector, providing a roadmap for future research recommendations for service research and practice.Design/methodology/approach: The research is based on a systematic literature review and adopts a systematic quantitative approach to summarize existing evidence on gamification usage in the T&H sector, focusing on relevant service literature on gamification. The authors analyze 36 papers published between 2011 and 2019.Findings: The authors synthesize existing knowledge into five themes describing gamification's role in T&H (Edutainment, Sustainable behavior, Engagement factors, Service provider-generated content and User-generated reviews). Then, a cross-analysis of the five themes reveals the pivotal elements (affordances, behavioral and psychological outcomes, and benefits) generated by gamification mechanics in T&H, simultaneously highlighting potential implications and relevant insights for service literature. The review identifies critical issues affecting gamification research and provides a future research agenda, considering opportunities for T&H and service research.Originality/value: The study provides the first SLR investigating gamification in T&H. The findings present potential implications and relevant insights for T&H contributing to the construction of a more holistic understanding of gamification adoption in service research.

This editorial examines the notions of identity, visitor experience, values and technology in the context of heritage tourism. In particular, in highlighting the contributions of the special issue, it points out how important these concepts are within the context of heritage cuisine-based tourism and identity meaning-making in leisure and family-oriented consumption of traditional foods. As well, it focuses on the use of technology in enhancing the visitor experience and how visitors identify with heritage places, museum branding as a means of fostering identity and a sense of belonging and the use of crowdfunding as an alternative means of heritage funding that can enhance the heritage identity and facilitate a more democratic way of managing heritage resources.

Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of innovation in service ecosystems by focussing on the role of values resonance in relation to the integration of brands, service systems and experience rooms.Design/methodology/approach: – An empirical, explorative case study of an innovative service system is carried out using a narrative approach and presented in the form of a saga.Findings: – Insights gleaned from the empirical study are used for conceptual developments. Analysis of the empirical case study is presented as four lessons linked to values, brands, service systems and experience rooms.Originality/value: – The paper extends a conceptual framework of innovative resource integration in service ecosystems. The paper also contributes four propositions to inform theory: values resonance is a basis for service innovation, the innovative integration of brands based on values resonance can foster innovation, the integration of resources across service system boundaries grounded in values resonance can enable innovation and the integration of experience rooms into a coherent servicescape based on values resonance can support novel forms of resource integration and value co-creation efforts in service ecosystems.

The main purpose of this study is to propose a visitor centric perspective that can support museums towards sustainability. The main premise of this study is due to a concept of economic and social sustainability of museums, defined as the possession of sufficient resources to maintain the existence of an organization, and achieve their goals in the future, ensuring a certain flow of visitors. A great number of museums are characterized by a low number of visits; therefore, in order to become sustainable, museums should pay attention to audience and its internal diversity. In this way, a cultural site can plan tailored strategies to increase the number of visits and re-visits and to achieve community support. For this reason it is necessary to understand the cultural needs of visitors, acquiring appropriate monitoring tools, such as qualitative and quantitative ones. Generally, quantitative analyses are more reliable and complete, even if they require a considerable number of observations for the reliability of the results. Moreover, qualitative analysis provides more in depth information, even if their data do not allow us to make generalizations. The qualitative and quantitative methods for the detection of satisfaction are usually used separately, but their integration may bring significant added value in terms of the wealth of information. This study follows the analysis of the potential of the integration of qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques customized with respect to different types of targets. The results of the experimentation performed on ethnographic museums shows a consistency of the results obtained by the two different tools that increase the capacity information of survey instruments.