Research on digital influencers’ role in marketing strategies under ongoing development. This study explores the role of digital influencer marketing on consumer purchase intention in fashion products. The goal is to investigate the direct and indirect relationships of trustworthiness, expertise, content quality, similarity, para-social interaction, and attitude towards sponsored posts on purchase intention. A mixed-method approach was conducted combining interviews with five digital influencers and a consumer-based survey with a sample of 206 fashion consumers, among them 96.1% were women and 51.5% were between 18 and 31 years old. Results indicate that blog content quality and para-social interaction positively influence purchase intention in fashion brands. Additionally, blog content quality plays a mediating role between trustworthiness and purchase intention. Moreover, consumers’ attitude towards sponsored posts influences directly and positively purchase intention and mediates the relationship between trustworthiness and purchase intention. Consumers’ attitude towards sponsored posts was also found to mediate the relationship between expertise and purchase intention. This study highlights the digital influencers’ marketing characteristics, which affect the fashion consumer purchase intention, enriching the research in this area and providing recommendations for further investigation. The results also highlight the importance of aligning communication strategies of fashion brands with influencers’ lifestyle.

Gastronomy experiences are becoming a fundamental factor that influences the making of a decision regarding choosing a travel destination, as well as being a crucial factor in shaping tourists’ satisfaction regarding their overall travel experience. The aim of the study is to identify and explain the simultaneous impact of the key factors that influence a gastronomic experience and their impact on tourists’ satisfaction with a trip and the destination’s brand. These issues were addressed within the context of Ukraine, as this is an overlooked area of academic research, and an online survey was conducted, targeting domestic and international tourists. Structural equation modeling was used to assess and reveal the proposed hypotheses in the model. The study contributed to the theoretical understanding of the key factors that increases the occurrence of a memorable gastronomic experience and the relationship between the experience of food and its role in the satisfaction of and the perceived brand of a destination. Moreover, the finding showed that past experience and prior knowledge have a positive influence on the gastronomy experience, while tourists’ prior knowledge effects the perceived quality of a destination’s cuisine, as well as the food activities in the destination. Linkages in the model were empirically supported by statistical analyses. Nonetheless, the various level of the tourists’ involvement with gastronomy might be used as an input to examine and improve the memorable gastronomic experience on-site. The research simultaneously highlighted the importance of gastronomy to tourist destinations for positioning on international and domestic markets. The paper not only provides theoretical but also practical implications. The hospitality and tourism businesses benefit from acknowledging the importance of local food and the local food market. The findings of this study are also deemed to assist destination marketers who observe that tourists have become more demanding in search of unique experiences offered by destinations.

The agenda of researchers and practitioners in the tourism industry has focused on the demand for sustainable practices. Luxury hotels have also followed this trend, although studies are still limited. The aim of this study is to understand what environmental and social sustainability practices luxury hotels are adopting and how their management perceive the benefits and results from their adoption. This empirical research is based on a case study that triangulates data from semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and observation. The results show that luxury hotels have implemented environmental practices that address energy efficiency measures that reduce water consumption, waste, and carbon emissions and that control, protect, and maintain fauna and flora to promote of unique natural landscapes. They have focused on social practices that address the relations with charitable institutions, provide consumers high-quality services, and create a safe and healthy work environment. Luxury hotels have successfully implemented these practices to reduce operational costs. The study’s findings provide practical guidance for hotel managers who seek to implement sustainability practices.

Tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs’ (TLEs) businesses are associated with sustainable business models (SBMs) due to a link to the place. This link is a source of essential local knowledge that provides differentiation, competitiveness, and sustainability. Given the importance of local knowledge to SBMs, this article explores knowledge management by examining how TLEs acquire and integrate knowledge as well as its effects on innovativeness and self-efficacy. We use a sequential mixed-methods approach in which we first conducted a qualitative study with four in-depth semi-structured interviews with TLEs, followed by a quantitative study through a survey of 115 TLEs, and third we conducted another qualitative study based on four semi-structured interviews. The results indicate that entrepreneurial communication has a significantly positive and direct effect on both the innovativeness and self-efficacy of TLEs. A community-centered strategy has a positive influence on innovativeness and self-efficacy but via the indirect effect of entrepreneurial communication. Local knowledge assimilation plays a mediating role between the acquisition of local knowledge and innovativeness and self-efficacy. These findings provide a general understanding and framework about how TLEs link the elements of an SBM to greater innovativeness and self-efficacy.

Every day, companies are exposed to various risks arising from their environment, and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the most affected. This study emphasizes innovation and resilience as the starting points to understand how SMEs are influenced by external factors which are independent of the managers’ will. To date, we have seen several extreme factors that have conditioned businesses and entrepreneurs of these types of companies, such as the financial crisis of 2008. However, last year, in 2020, we saw the beginning of a worldwide pandemic: COVID-19. Thus, this research seeks to understand the extent to which this pandemic influenced the resilience and innovation of SMEs in the tourism area. Thus, eight hypotheses were raised based on four independent variables: access to finance, risk taking, working conditions, and personal network. The study of these variables was developed from an online questionnaire and in-depth interviews. After analyzing the results, it is possible to infer that the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in consequences never observed in previous crises, to such an extent that the study showed that: (1) a company’s network positively influences its resilience; (2) risk taking influences innovation and resilience of these SMEs.