Assumpció Huertas

Universidad Rovira i Virgili | URV · Department of Communication

Resilience communication is a fundamental tool for destinations to improve their image and recover after a crisis. Social media are also important tools for tourism communication and for creating tourist experiences and destination image. Therefore, social media are key tools for crisis communication. Based on a series of hypotheses, this paper pro...

AI-based chatbots are an emerging technology disrupting the tourism industry. Although chatbots have received increasing attention, there is little evidence of their impact on tourists’ decisions to visit a destination. This study evaluates the key attributes of chatbots and their effects on user satisfaction and visit intention. We use structural...

La crisis provocada por la pandemia de la Covid-19 y las medidas gubernamentales tomadas a raíz de ella han tenido un efecto directo en la industria turística. Esta investigación tiene como objetivo conocer cómo las Oficinas Nacionales de Turismo (ONT) de varios países de Asia (Corea del Sur e India) y de Europa (Alemania y España) gestionaron su c...

Chatbots are transforming tourism communication and have been quickly adopted in the tourism industry. But despite its implementation in the sector, there are no studies that analyze the effectiveness of its use in the organization of trips. For this reason, this study measures the tourists’ perceptions during the use of the chatbot "Victoria la Ma...

Technology development and augmented reality (AR) applications emergence have transformed the experiential process in tourism. ar offers enormous potential and advantages to the tourism sector, especially after covid-19. However, this study aims to find and gain further knowledge of ar’s limitations. This research analysed the AR platform Imageen T...

The study analyses the searches for digital tourist information that different types of tourists, with different characteristics and connectivity preferences, make at destinations on the main topics they may require, allowing to know which digital sources they use, but also at what moment and in what situation. The study was based on an online surv...

Chatbots are a technology that is causing disruption in the tourism industry. Despite its implementation in destinations and services, there are no tourism studies that examine the informativeness, accessibility, interactivity, and empathy in behavioral intentions. Statistical tools such as exploratory factor analysis and the hierarchical regressio...

In order to enhance tourists’ experiences, Destination Management Organizations need to know who their tourists are, their travel preferences, and their flows around the destination. The study develops a methodology that, through the application of Artificial Intelligence techniques to social media data, creates clusters of tourists according to th...

Destinations increasingly use chatbots in the management and communication with tourists. This study analyzes the mediating effect of chatbot usage satisfaction on forming the destination’s image. As a case study, we use the Chabot “Victoria la Malagueña,” Spain. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equations were necessary to identify the r...

Este libro recoge aportes actuales al ámbito de confluencia del turismo, el marketing digital, la comunicación y la tecnología que ponen sobre la mesa las oportunidades y desafíos actuales a los que se enfrenta el sector turístico en el año 2021

Expectations about a destination influence the tourist experience during the travel process stages. In the post-COVID-19 normalcy, people are adjusting their priorities and social values. Therefore, it becomes crucial to identify tourists’ expectations before traveling. The objectives of this research were: (a) identify the preferences of tourists;...

This chapter discusses the challenges and opportunities destinations have when transforming their communication and marketing strategies in the social media world. Building on the principles of experience design for destinations, the chapter synergizes destination strategies with the principles of the emotional branding paradigm. Therefore, the cha...

Chatbots are an emerging technology that is disrupting the tourism industry. Despite their implementation in companies and at destinations, there is little research that evaluates chatbots’ smart tourism technologies (STTs) attributes and their influence on tourist satisfaction. This study seeks to examine the relationship between informativeness,...

Smart cities and smart tourism destinations integrate technological infrastructures and end-user devices with the aim of providing more satisfying experiences. They generate expectations of superior innovation, greater interactivity, participation and a better image. Therefore, they need to communicate their smartness and include it in their brandi...

Esta investigación analiza el fenómeno de los bloggers, en tanto que influencers, en el sector turístico español. El objetivo principal de este estudio es analizar su incorporación en las políticas de comunicación de una muestra de destinos turísticos y, el potencial comunicativo y relacional que sus perfiles en redes sociales ofrecen a dichos dest...

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04041-7

We have examined retracted publications in different subject fields and attempted to analyse whether online free accessibility (Open Access) influences retraction by examining the scholarly literature published from 2000 through 2019, an incidence of the recent 20 years of publications. InCites, a research analytics tool developed by Clarivate Anal...

Los atentados terroristas suponen crisis para los destinos turísticos. Por ello, el objetivo de este artículo es verificar cómo las Organizaciones de Marketing de los Destinos de Londres, Manchester y París (OMDs) gestionaron dicha crisis durante y después de los atentados en 2017, desde una perspectiva de las Relaciones Públicas. Para ello, se rea...

Resumen La crisis sanitaria de la Covid-19 está afectando a diversos sectores económicos, especialmente al turístico. Esta investi-gación persigue conocer cómo las oficinas nacionales de turismo (ONTs) de España e Italia gestionaron su comunicación de crisis ante la Covid-19. El estudio se llevó a cabo mediante el análisis de contenido de los mensa...

Purpose – The goals of this study are to find out which factors contribute to AR applications generating satisfactory tourism experiences; analyze the impact of AR on destination brand communication; and examine whether the act of communicating the destination brand also increases satisfactory tourist experiences. Design – The research is based on...

Airbnb is one of the most transformative developments in the traditional accommodation system. Due to the social impact it entails, Airbnb is currently a present topic in the press, although studies on how Airbnb is treated in the press are very scarce. Thus, this article aims to analyse the treatment of Airbnb controversial issues in the press and...

Destination image is a key factor for attracting tourists and wealth to destinations. With the spread of Web 2.0 and traveller-generated content, destination management organisations do not control the information regarding destination image formation through its cognitive, affective and conative components. The aim of the study is to analyse, usin...

This study analyzes how the national tourism organizations (NTOs) of Spain and Italy managed their crisis communication to deal with Covid-19. The study examines the messages published by the Twitter accounts of the NTOs from the beginning or the detection of the first patient until one month after the official declaration of the pandemic by the Wo...

Instagram permite a los usuarios compartir fotografías y vídeos y es una herramienta clave para crear imagen de los destinos. Actualmente los destinos compiten entre sí para tener una buena imagen y un buen posicionamiento. Por ello, los objetivos de este estudio son: analizar las publicaciones georreferenciadas de fotografías y vídeos de los usuar...

Since the emergence of Online Travel Reviews (OTRs), the collective co-creation of a destination brand image has been more evident than ever before. Stories and emotions expressed in these platforms by experienced tourists can significantly influence other users’ intention to visit. This study explores the extent to which political matters like the...

RESUMEN Instagram permite a los usuarios compartir fotografías y vídeos y es una herramienta clave para crear imagen de los destinos. Actualmente los destinos compiten entre sí para tener una buena imagen y un buen posicionamiento. Por ello, los objetivos de este estudio son: analizar las publicaciones georreferenciadas de fotografías y vídeos de l...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the destination marketing organizations (DMOs) of Barcelona and Cambrils communicated information about the terrorist attacks they suffered and what they have done to recover their image. The tweets posted on the Barcelona and Cambrils profiles were examined following a content analysis method focusin...

In this paper, the communication of destination brands through social media (Twitter and Facebook) is investigated with a focus on the use of emotional adjectives. Based on ten of the most popular destinations in Europe, more than 15,000 tweets and 6000 Facebook posts and users’ reactions to those messages were analysed. The study shows that DMOs a...

The following study analyzes the emotional brand communication of the 10 most popular DMOs in Europe according to TripAdvisor (2017) by observing user responses across Facebook and Twitter. The paper presents a matrix of successful and promising values that DMOs should integrate into their social media communication strategies regarding their desti...

There are three phases in the use of online social media by tourists: before, during and after the trip. The aim of this study is to determine what social network users use to find information before and during the trip, the type of information they search, and where they share information. The study also identifies the relationship this has with t...

Communication through social media is an effective way to position a destination brand. In particular, the emotional values of a brand trigger a positive reaction from potential visitors. It is important for destinations to align their emotional communication strategies on different social media platforms to enhance their online image. The lack of...

Participative branding is a process by which DMOs, locals and visitors contribute, through their activity in social media, to the definition of the emotional values associated to a destination. From the communicative point of view it is particularly important that DMOs and local citizens work together in the transmission of a set of coherent values...

Since the development of mobile technology, the growth of live videos has been a social and economic phenomenon in recent years (Hu et al., in Comput Hum Behav 75:594–606, 2017). Seeking to analyse their potential in the field of tourism, this paper aims firstly to find out the reactions of users towards different live videos, and secondly to find...

The aim of this study is the comparative analysis of how destinations use social media and what contents publish in their communication strategies and how do users use these social media and what do they look for in there when they organize a trip. The used methodologies are: interviews with communication directors of destinations, surveys to commu...

Videos are influential image creators and video-sharing sites like YouTube offer new opportunities to DMOs to communicate the identity and the brand of the destinations they represent. The aim of this article was to gain an insight into how Spanish DMOs use YouTube to communicate their promotional videos and to study whether these videos communicat...

The opinions and feelings expressed by users in their comments through social media have a great influence on those of others users and their tourism-related decisions. This study, based on a novel sentiment analysis methodology, has analysed 3,000 tweets by local residents and 3,000 tweets by tourists at 10 major destinations in Europe with the ai...

The opinions and feelings expressed by users in their comments through social media have a great influence on other users and their tourism-related decisions. This study, based on a novel sentiment analysis, has analysed 3,000 tweets by local residents and 3,000 tweets by tourists at 10 major destinations in Europe with the aim of finding out their...

La comunicación de los destinos turísticos y sus marcas a través de los medios sociales recoge las conclusiones del Proyecto de I+D+I del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, “Uso e influencia de los social media y la comunicación 2.0 en la toma de decisiones turísticas y en la imagen de marca de los destinos. Aplicaciones de utilidad para los...

Facebook es una red social que fue creada por Mark Zuckerberg en el 2003. Actualmente posee más de 1350 millones de usuarios y cuenta con traducciones a 70 idiomas. En España Facebook es el medio social más utilizado tanto por los usuarios, a nivel personal, como por los destinos turísticos.

En este capítulo se muestran las 5 metodologías que hemos utilizado para las diversas investigaciones del proyecto en cada una de sus fases. Y en los anexos se encuentran las plantillas de análisis, las guías para las entrevistas en profundidad o los grupos de discusión y los cuestionarios de las encuestas.

Emotional values play a key role in the creation of destination brands. Nowadays destination management organizations (DMOs) want to make sure that they transmit a set of attractive, distinguishing values and that they are correctly perceived by their visitors. This paper presents a new methodology for the automated, unsupervised semantic analysis...

With the aim of communicating their identities and brands, tourist destinations have started to use social media. However, many do not know very well how to manage them in order to improve their online communication. Several studies have shown that a high level of interactivity generated with users in social media leads to greater engagement and a...

Tourist destinations convey content through social media to communicate their identity and brand. Therefore, based on Spanish destinations, the aim of this paper is to use content analysis to determine if they communicate both their attraction factors and their emotional values via the different platforms, and if different contents are communicated...

Destination branding has improved the management and communication of tourist destinations. Nowadays most destinations try to transmit their brands through social media and they need to evaluate their communication. This document presents a methodological framework for the automatic analysis of the communication of emotional brand values through so...

Social media, which are important tools of public relations, have revolutionized the communication of tourist destinations. Photographs are one of the elements that communications managers of destinations can use to communicate their brands. But how are these photographs used via social media? The results of this study show a more frequent use of p...

Official websites are important communication tools for tourist destinations. However, it is difficult to make a systematic and complete evaluation of their quality due to their diversity of functionalities, which makes them complex to analyse. This paper proposes the complementation of the WQI assessment system for Destination Marketing Organizati...

Se ofrecen recomendaciones para mejorar el modo en que los destinos turisticos emplean las redes sociales en su comunicacion. Mediante herramientas de medicion online se analizan las cuentas de Facebook y Twitter de 5 destinos turisticos espanoles. Se comprueba que los destinos descuidan en las redes la construccion de la identidad de marca-lugar y...

The social media have become important tools for the communication of destinations and their brands. Multiple studies have demonstrated that the interactivity generated in this communication leads to greater engagement and better brand image among users (Munar, 2011), but the aim of this study is to unveil what contents generate the most reactions...

Social media are public relations tools that are fundamental for the communication of tourist destinations and their brands. Due to their novelty and, sometimes, due to the lack of awareness of social media managers about their communicative potentialities, there is a need to evaluate their communicative management. However, today, there is not a c...

The World Wide Web has become the primary instrument used by tourists in order to search for information. As a result, tourism websites pertaining to destinations need to be appealing and must convey their brand image in an appropriate, effective manner. However, there is no methodology in place to assess the quality and communicative effectiveness...

El estudio que presentamos es parte de un proyecto de investigación sobre la excelencia de las organizaciones en España según las teorías de James Grunig y ha sido financiado por la Cátedra Repsol-URV de Excelencia en Comunicación. El estudio de la excelencia comunicativa de las organizaciones de Grunig tuvo lugar entre los años 80 y 90 y se llevó...

Study of ranking in Google and Yahoo of big Spanish municipal corporation websites while searching by city tourist brand. Analysis of whether city tourist brands are promoting properly in the internet. Results of the daily ranking monitoring in Google and Yahoo are shown, for the searches made in 2009 by touristic brands of Spanish provincial capit...

En un contexto de creciente competitividad y popularización del uso de la Web, los destinos deben contar con una presencia virtual adecuada, y ello pasa especialmente por el diseño y mantenimiento de un sitio web capaz de comunicar a los públicos diversos las fortalezas de la marca. Según la literatura académica reciente, se hace necesario trabajar...

City marketing tries to position cities in the mind of the public, although the process of creating and communicating city brands is still at an early stage of its development. One of the main tools for the communication of these brands is now the World Wide Web. This chapter describes the results of two combined studies (qualitative and quantitati...

City marketing tries to position cities in the mind of the public, although the process of creating and communicating city brands is still at an early stage of its development. One of the main tools for the communication of these brands is now the World Wide Web. This chapter describes the results of two combined studies (qualitative and quantitati...

City marketing tries to position cities in the mind of the public, although the process of creating and communicating city brands is still at an early stage of its development. One of the main tools for the communication of these brands is now the World Wide Web. This chapter describes the results of two combined studies (qualitative and quantitati...

El objetivo de este artículo es poner de manifiesto una situación paradójica en la comunicación farmacéutica. Aunque las marcas, su comunicación y su imagen son consideradas unos activos muy importantes en la construcción de una sólida imagen corporativa de las compañías farmacéuticas, por otro lado, la controversia pública entre la conveniencia de...

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of public relations work in the tourism industry and to defend its role for its practical application. The study is empirically based and adopts a case-study approach through qualitative methods. It reveals the development of public relations activities and the great need that exists for...

Although there are ever more weblogs on the Internet, this is an area that has been little researched in public relations, and where they have been analyzed it has been as a tool for communication rather than a primary information source in the public relations body of knowledge. This paper provides an exploratory study of the structure and content...

In this qualitative study conducted at the Rovira i Virgili University we show that there are clearly two speeds for the implementation of public relations in Spain: one in the big cities (basically Madrid and Barcelona) and one in the smaller cities or regions of secondary economic importance, such as Tarragona, where the degree of professionalisa...

In recent years, a noticeable increase in the use of non-con- ventional TV advertising has taken place. However, hardly any studies have been carried out to understand how these for- mats influence young viewers. This article presents the find- ings from an experimental study on the influence of product placement on children (aged 8, 10 and 12 year...

This paper is based on the analysis of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a public relations tool in Tarragona, a local community in the N.E. of Spain. The results show that depending on the business sector of the company carrying out to CSR and on their communicative necessities and on the relation that they establish with their local public...

In recent years, a noticeable increase in the use of non-con- ventional TV advertising has taken place. However, hardly any studies have been carried out to understand how these for- mats influence young viewers. This article presents the find- ings from an experimental study on the influence of product placement on children (aged 8, 10 and 12 year...