This empirical study explores visual attention to carbon labels on restaurant menus. Carbon labels can support consumers in making deliberate low-carbon menu choices if, and only if, consumers pay attention to such labels. Using eye-tracking, we investigate how much attention consumers pay to carbon labels. We also compare how much attention they pay to carbon labels compared to labels indicating the benefit of each menu item to the local community. Results indicate that both carbon labels and labels communicating local community benefits attract little attention, suggesting that they are insufficient to direct patrons towards ordering low emissions menu items. Directing patrons toward more environmentally friendly menu items could significantly reduce the negative environmental impact of tourism and hospitality.

Harnessing a mathematical computation approach to analyze data solicited from 354 website stakeholders (including 200 hotel customers, 83 hotel managers, and 71 hotel website designers), this study presents an up-to-date and robust evaluation model for assessing the functionality of hotel websites. The modified model was also empirically used to assess the functionality performance of the websites of all the hotels in Hong Kong. Results from the non-parametric Kruskal–Wallis and Mann–Whitney tests revealed a difference in performance, with higher star rating hotels performing better than those with a lower star rating. As one of the first attempts to incorporate the perceptions of multiple website stakeholders into hotel website evaluation, this study provides hoteliers with practical advice on website development.

In response to the growing wellness trend, the tourism and hospitality industry has offered various wellness services and facilities. Despite the significance of emotion in wellness, research on emotional wellness is surprisingly scant. The present empirical study examined the underlying dimensions of emotional wellness and the influence of guest room colour on emotional wellness via hypotheses testing. Results indicated that calmness is the most dominant dimension of emotional wellness. Results also suggest that a cool colour-themed guest room, particularly green, is preferable. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed, and future research suggestions are provided.

Tourist experiences are the product of a temporally extended series of events and activities. The temporal distance from actual experiences distorts the recalled evaluation of their experiences so tourists photograph to record their experiences and consume the place. Tourist photographs build a positive image of a destination when they effectively evoke positive feelings (i.e. affective image) and provide clear information about the physical and functional characteristics (i.e. cognitive image) of the destination. Despite its strong evocative power in constructing a meaning and assessing the place and experience, colour receives little attention in existing tourist photograph literature. Assuming colour as a proxy of tourist experiences, I explore whether, and how, colour in tourist photographs represents tourist experiences and destination consumption. The psychophysical paradigm, which proposes that the quality of the scenery or landscape reflects not only its intrinsic attributes but also the eyes of the beholder, provides a theoretical foundation. A purposely developed colour extraction and analysis tool identifies colour distribution patterns from 2,131 tourist photographs and Leximancer discovers word-like concepts (e.g. regular nouns and adjectives) from the corresponding comments and tags collected from the Facebook of Queensland Tourism Board in Australia. Findings reveal five distinctive groups based on colour distribution patterns and associated concepts. For example, tourist photographs of Fraser Coast show dominantly blue and secondarily orange whereas photographs of Sunshine Coast show balanced blue and orange. Tourist photographs from the destinations sharing similar geographic characteristics often display dissimilar colour patterns. It suggests that destinations can be grouped together by colour patterns and conceptual similarity, instead of geographical characteristics. The results further support that colours in tourist photographs are a significant representamen of tourist experiences and destination image.

To date, no research has been undertaken to examine what constitutes high citation counts. This study examined the quantifiable characteristics in publications and investigated their associations with citation per year. That is, this study empirically examined the relationships with length, authorship, and collaboration and citation counts in the 300 most cited publications in tourism and hospitality journals. The results reveal a negative relationship between the length of a title and citation per year.