Services marketing and tourism
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
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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
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2017. Marta Nieto-García, Pablo A. Muñoz-Gallego, Óscar González-Benito. International Journal of Hospitality Management.
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Our members

Dr Elaine Rust
- Job Title Senior Lecturer in Marketing
- Email Address elaine.rust@port.ac.uk
- Department Marketing
- Faculty Faculty of Business and Law
Miss Georgiana Busoi
- Job Title Teaching Fellow
- Email Address georgiana.busoi@port.ac.uk
- Department Marketing
- Faculty Faculty of Business and Law

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Professor Giampaolo Viglia
- Job Title Professor in the Marketing Subject Group
- Email Address giampaolo.viglia@port.ac.uk
- Department Marketing
- Faculty Faculty of Business and Law
- PhD Supervisor PhD Supervisor

Mrs Liz Sharples
- Job Title Senior Teaching Fellow in Marketing
- Email Address Liz.Sharples@port.ac.uk
- Department Marketing
- Faculty Faculty of Business and Law

Dr Marta Nieto-Garcia
- Job Title Senior Lecturer in Marketing
- Email Address marta.garcia@port.ac.uk
- Department Marketing
- Faculty Faculty of Business and Law
- PhD Supervisor PhD Supervisor

Professor Yuksel Ekinci
- Job Title Professor
- Email Address yuksel.ekinci@port.ac.uk
- Department Marketing
- Faculty Faculty of Business and Law
- PhD Supervisor PhD Supervisor
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