12 August 2016

Call for papers: "E-tourism and Stakeholder Engagement: Theories and Practices"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Digital Culture and Electronic Tourism.

It is recognised that we have not sufficiently explored the roles and influence of stakeholder relationships and interactions, based on the diverse managerial perspectives and different knowledge streams of the tourism and hospitality education and industry, in order to fully exploit the potentials of stakeholder engagement for the progress of the sector. This view is well supported by Ellis and Sheridan (2014) from the perspective of tourism strategy, Waligo http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517712001884 - aff1 et al. (2013) from the perspective of sustainable tourism, and Del Chiappa and Presenza (2013) and Strobl and Peters (2013) from the perspective of tourism destination management. We will investigate how E-tourism would be instrumental to uphold the stakeholder engagement processes in diverse managerial perspectives and different knowledge streams of the tourism and hospitality education and industry, which includes but not limited to tourism strategy, sustainability and destination management. The purpose here is to understand the contemporary theoretical and practice-based implications of e-tourism in stakeholder engagement processes, in order to reinforce our current knowledge on how the tourism sector could design and deliver its products and services, in a way that is expected and accepted by the diverse stakeholders (Shams and Kaufmann, 2016; Shams 2016a), including the customers.

E-tourism is defined as the application of ICTs (information and communication technologies) on the tourism industry (Buhalis, 2003). Buhalis (2003). It is suggested that e-tourism reflects the digitisation of all processes and value chains in the tourism, travel, hospitality and catering industries. At the tactical level, it includes e-commerce and applies ICTs for maximising the efficiency and effectiveness of the tourism organisation. At the strategic level, e-tourism revolutionises all business processes, the entire value chain as well as the strategic relationships of tourism organisations with all their stakeholders. (As cited in Buhalis and Hyun Jun, 2011, p. 6)

From this perspective of e-tourism, this special issue invites conceptual and empirical research papers for peer review that analyses the influences of e-tourism on the cause and consequence of stakeholder relationships and interactions as stakeholder causal scopes (Shams, 2016b, 2016c) to understand how we could better engage the different tourism and hospitality stakeholders in the value-delivery network of the sector, in order to proactively “tackling the varying market issues, challenges and needs” (Kaufmann and Shams, 2015, np). Value is defined as: an anticipated outcome of any sort of planned and organized activity. The activity could be derived from monetary, psychic, or physical resources. The more the outcome meets initial anticipation, the more the possibility of win-win outcomes or value optimisation for all involved stakeholders (Shams, 2013, p. 244).

From this context, the submitted articles should focus on the implications of e-tourism to enhance stakeholder engagements for the better outcome of the planned and organised strategies and tactics in the tourism and hospitality sector.

Innovative studies that span theoretical boundaries, disciplines and cross-functional areas to develop new insights on e-tourism and stakeholder engagement are particularly welcome to submit.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and tourism and hospitality strategy
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and tourism and hospitality sustainability
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and tourism destination management
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and tourism and hospitality marketing
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and tourism and hospitality HRM
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and tourism and hospitality corporate governance and social responsibility
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and tourism and hospitality entrepreneurship and innovation
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and value co-creation in the tourism and hospitality sector
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and tourism and hospitality and the cross-border markets
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and tourism and hospitality PR
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and tourism and hospitality social businesses
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and performance measurement, governance and intangible assets in the tourism and hospitality sector
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and voluntary-tourism
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and wedding-tourism
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and eco-tourism
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and sports-tourism
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and pilgrimage-tourism
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and corporate-tourism
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and education-tourism
  • E-tourism, stakeholder engagement and cultural heritage and so forth

Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 15 October, 2017 (earlier submission is highly encouraged)
Notification to authors: 15 February, 2018
Final versions due: 15 April, 2018


References
Buhalis, D. (2003). E-Tourism: Information technology for strategic tourism management. London: Pearson (Financial Times/Prentice Hall).
Buhalis, D. and Hyun Jun, S. (2011). E-tourism. In Cooper, C. (Ed.), Contemporary tourism reviews (pp. 1 - 38). Oxford: Goodfellow Publishers Limited. Del Chiappa, G. and Presenza, A. (2013). The use of network analysis to assess relationships among stakeholders within a tourism destination: An empirical investigation on Cost Smeralda-gallura, Italy. Tourism Analysis, 18 (1), 1 - 13.
Ellis, S. and Sheridan, L. (2014). A critical reflection on the role of stakeholders in sustainable tourism development in least-developed countries. Tourism Planning & Development, 11 (4), 467 - 471.
Kaufmann, H. R. and Shams, S. M. R. (2015). Entrepreneurial co-creation: A call for fresh ideas and innovative perspectives. Retrieved from http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/call_for_papers.htm?id=6334
Shams, S. M. R. (2012). Stakeholder causal scope centric market positioning: Implications of relationship marketing indicators. In Kaufmann, H., and Panni, M. F. (Eds.), Customer-Centric Marketing Strategies: Tools for Building Organizational Performance (pp. 245-263). Hershey, PA: Business Science Reference.
Shams, S. M. R. (2016a). Sustainability issues in transnational education service: A conceptual framework and empirical insights. Journal of Global Marketing, Published online ahead of print, 10.1080/08911762.2016.1161098.
Shams, S. M. R. (2016b). Capacity building for sustained competitive advantage: A conceptual framework. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 34 (5), 671 - 691. Shams, S. M. R. (2016c). Branding destination image: A stakeholder causal scope analysis for internationalisation of destinations. Tourism Planning & Development (formerly Tourism and Hospitality Planning & Development), 13 (2), 140 - 153.
Shams, S. M. R. and Kaufmann, H. R. (2016). Entrepreneurial co-creation: A research vision to be materialised. Management Decision, 54 (6), 1250 - 1268.
Strobl, A. and Peters, M. (2013). Entrepreneurial reputation in destination networks. Annals of Tourism Research, 40 (1), 59 - 82.
Waligo, V. M., Clarke, J. and Hawkins, R. (2013). Implementing sustainable tourism: A multi-stakeholder involvement management framework. Tourism Management, 36 (1), 342 - 353.

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