Services marketing and tourism

Services Marketing and tourism Research

Explore our work in services marketing and tourism, one of the areas of expertise within our Marketing research

Tourism contributes at least 10% of most countries’ gross domestic product (GDP) and boosts the development of sectors such as transport, retail and cultural industries. In our research, we cover topics such as cultural tourism, online reputation, revenue management, frontline service relationships, pricing and tourist behaviour.

Our Services Marketing and Tourism research addresses contemporary challenges in any business that provides a service such as tourism, hospitality, car rental and restaurants. These challenges include how to price services appropriately, how to build and maintain a positive online reputation, and how to understand tourist behaviour to deliver the best user experience. We also work on national and social identity in tourism.

We regularly collaborate on research projects with industry partners. We helped a holiday lettings company, Home Away, increase their market share in Spain by investigating tourists’ decisions and behaviour in the context of hotel and holiday home stays. We conducted segmentation analysis and explored consumer preferences – in terms of services and prices – to help the company target customer segments more effectively.

Using hotel data from several European capital cities, we demonstrated that the more you apply dynamic price variability - or the more you change prices in real time depending on competitor conditions - the higher average revenue. The data for this research was provided by STR Global, a hotel benchmarking service, managing data for almost 7 million hotel rooms.

Our research has been published in journals including the Journal of Service Research, Tourism Management, the Annals of Tourism Research, the Journal of Travel Research, the International Journal of Hospitality Management, and the Journal of Service Marketing. We have also presented papers at international conferences.

Publication highlights

Paying Before or Paying After? Timing and Uncertainty in Pay-What-You-Want Pricing

Journal of Service Research 1-13, 2019, DOI: 10.1177/1094670519835308, Giampaolo Viglia, Marta Maras, Jan Schumann, and Daniel Navarro-Martinez
Tourists’ willingness to pay for an accommodation: The effect of eWOM (electronic word of mouth) and internal reference price.

2017. Marta Nieto-García, Pablo A. Muñoz-Gallego, Óscar González-Benito. International Journal of Hospitality Management.
National identity and cultural festivals in postcolonial destinations

Tourism Management Volume 73, 2019, pages 94-104, Carol Xiaoyue Zhang, Lawrence Hoc Nang Fong, ShiNa Li, Tuan Phong Ly

Discover our areas of expertise

Services marketing and tourism is an area of expertise in the Marketing research area. Explore the other areas below.

Advertising and branding

Discover the research we're doing in advertising and branding – across topics such as ethics and sustainability, gender stereotypes, and brand attachment.

Digital marketing

We're exploring how digital technology is changing the market place for entrepreneurs, businesses and consumers alike.

Marketing and society

We're looking at macro trends influencing consumer decision-making – from sustainability to health – and the relationship between marketing and society.

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Browse our postgraduate research degrees – including PhDs and MPhils – at our Marketing postgraduate research degrees page.