Gastronomic (food) tourism is crucial for visitation and destination choices. Thailand tourism and its reputable cuisine can utilise the potential of online platforms as a channel to connect tourists to local communities. Despite massive online textual data in tourism, employing such insightful knowledge in theory and practice is still insufficient. This research explores gastronomic tourists’ experiences and their impacts on local communities in Thailand by conducting a qualitative approach to analyse local food experiences of gastronomic tourists’ reviews from five different online platforms. The results from 461 online reviews reveal positive tourists’ gastronomic experiences in Thailand. The gastronomic tourism offers and their contributions to local community destinations vary across online platforms. Additionally, all five online platforms facilitate the connection of gastronomic tourists and local people differently. In addition, the local online platforms offer a greater variety and uniqueness of gastronomic tourism experiences, including authentic food experiences, local interaction and community benefits, tailor-made cultural learning with locals, and social aspect of food that benefit local communities. This research benefits both tourism scholars and practitioners in filling the knowledge gap of employing available online tourism platforms to better understand, plan and design gastronomic tourism experiences in local communities.

Although food waste management has been significant for all stakeholders from all industries globally, research in hospitality food waste management and practices still needs to be further studied, especially in five-star hotels in developing countries. Using the Food Waste Hierarchy, this study proposes to contribute to the knowledge of sustainable food waste management and practices in five medium and large five-star hotels to promote the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Findings of in-depth structured questions from purposive and snowballing samplings show different aspects of sustainable food waste management and practices at these hotels supported by policies and implemented by practices at all levels, from top management to operations levels. The thematical analysis shows four emerging themes: food waste management policies; food service planning, procurement, and storage; food waste handling and operations in the kitchens, staff canteen and restaurants; and food waste management through reusing, recycling, donations, and disposal. The findings highlight these hotels’ challenges and suggestions for sustainable food waste management and practices. By providing the current situation of sustainable food waste management and practices, this study embellishes the guidance and recommendations for the hotels’ restaurants. It augments the industry practitioners with actual practices and solutions in implementing sustainable food waste management and practices in hotels’ restaurants.

Data-driven innovation (DDI) initiatives by microfinance institutes have transformed the global poverty alleviation landscape. Despite the fact that relationship building is one of the primary goals of DDI initiatives in microfinance operations, there has been little research on the dimensions of relationship quality. This study examines how DDI initiatives recognize and incorporate relational dimensions in their service offerings to alleviate poverty. Drawing on a systematic literature review, thematic analysis and interviews with 20 microfinance managers, this research explores the relationship quality parameters that need to be leveraged. Grounded in the resource-based theory, the findings of this study confirm trust and commitment as two key relationship capabilities. The findings contribute to a better understanding of how microfinance institutes can use DDI to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.

Purpose: Work integrated learning (WIL) activities, especially internships, are essential for career preparation and development. This paper applies career adaptability and capital theories to examine how international internships help undergraduate business students in their career exploration, preparation and development.Design/methodology/approach: This study used data from 20 interviews, including 15 undergraduate business students from two universities in Australia and Thailand who undertook internships in Asian countries, three internship administrators across two universities, and two overseas internship partners. Thematic-based analysis using the Nvivo program and duoethnographic reflections of the internship coordinators in Australia was applied for data analysis.Findings: The data analysis indicates that international internship experiences facilitate students to become culturally savvy, build their international professional networks, enhance the level of self-perceived competency and cultivate a globalised career adaptability perspective.Research limitations/implications: This study contributes to theory-building within the WIL literature, international internship experiences, students’ career adaptability and capital.Practical implications: Although international internship opportunities are available to students, few students are willing to challenge themselves in a foreign setting. The study’s insights provide a better understanding of how university administrators could set up a task force of academics and professional staff to consider a cohesive resourcing structure for the long-term sustainability of the international internship programs.Originality/value: This study highlights how the international internships enhanced students’ globalised social, cultural and human capital and their ability to adapt to culturally diverse business contexts. The international internship experience can also increase student’s confidence to enter the global labour market and seek opportunities beyond their original country of residence.

Tourist shopping expenditure is a vital ingredient which contributes significantly to the gross domestic product (GDP) of the nation. Past research has stressed the importance of specific demographic variables related to shopping behavior; however, it has not included interactions between or configurations among demographic variables, shopping related psychographics, and shopping destinations. This study seeks to address that gap. The data was collected from a large representative sample of 26,686 Australian domestic short-stay visitors. Binary logistic regression found that demographic variables and their specific interactions were significantly related to tourist shopping behaviors as well as psychographics, trip motivation, and their shopping destination propensity, when tested simultaneously. The findings assist destination marketing managers to identify and target specific domestic short-stay tourist shoppers.