Mike Peters

• Professor Dr.
• Professor (Full) at University of Innsbruck

Tourism’s vulnerability to crises underscores the need for new or adapted tourism policies that prioritize sustainable tourism development across ecological, economic, and stakeholder dimensions. While past research has highlighted the relevance of sustainable policies for tourism crisis recovery, the research gap lies in the actual implementation...

Purpose The vulnerability of the tourism industry to an array of risks, encompassing family-related, small- and medium-sized enterprise-specific, strategic, tourism-specific and external factors, highlights the landscape within which small and medium family enterprises (SMFEs) operate. Although SMFEs are an important stakeholder in the dynamic tour...

The COVID-19 crisis and the related nationwide lockdowns reduced the available types of physical activity, especially in the winter season. Besides closed indoor sports facilities, some outdoor sports were also inaccessible because of curfews and/or the closure of outdoor sports facilities. However, in Austria, the operation of alpine ski areas was...

During the Covid-19, more and more consumers complete transactions on mobile devices and enjoy their orders at home. However, it is unknown whether mobile payment will become normal when they return to restaurants. Results show that the perceived inconvenience of cash, the perceived convenience of mobile payment and deal proneness facilitate the in...

The link between sports and tourism has been widely researched. In this context, many studies have focused on sports event (SEs), finding that SEs provide a multitude of opportunities but also face many challenges at a local level. Despite the academic interest in the sports event tourism field, there is still little synthesis and no overview of re...

Purpose Organisational learning drives tourism organisations towards more sustainable tourism. Digital transformation also provides opportunities for sustainable tourism development. This study aims to combine these perspectives and explore how digital transformation enables organisational learning to contribute to sustainable tourism, following or...

Dieser Beitrag stellt den Innovationslehrgang Digital Tourism Experts (DTE) vor, der von 2019 bis 2021 an der Universität Innsbruck durchgeführt wurde. Unternehmen und Hochschulen in Österreich werden im Rahmen von Innovationslehrgängen zusammengeführt mit dem Ziel, Wissen rund um aktuelle Forschungsthemen zu vermitteln. Konkret wurde im DTE im Ber...

With employees’ leisure pursuit increasing, this study assesses the potential of organizational leisure benefits in hospitality job advertisements as a signal for otherwise non-observable attributes, like organizational leisure support and staff appreciation. Drawing upon signaling theory, a fictional job advertisement was created. A total of 210 j...

Purpose Using the job demands-resources (JD-R) model as a theoretical foundation, this study aims to explore the potential of organizational leisure benefit programs in the interplay of job demands and perceived work-life balance. Design/methodology/approach This article is based on qualitative data collected from semi-structured interviews with 2...

Purpose This study aims to address customer focus as an important component of total quality management (TQM) and explore the key drivers of member satisfaction in tennis clubs via a novel theory-based member satisfaction index (MSI) model with high explanatory and predictive power. Furthermore, the study aims to investigate the relationship betwee...

Although information and communication technologies (ICTs) possess a multitude of possibilities to improve and enhance access for people with disabilities to tourism services, their added value, which is of both a social and economic nature, continues to be neglected by the industry. While existing literature considers stakeholder collaboration as...

Purpose: Hiking is a popular tourism activity across the globe. Although hiking is considered a ''soft'' adventure activity with little risk and challenge, hikers are also confronted with dangerous situations where risky behavior can lead to fatalities. This study aims to understand the moderating role of hiking motives on hikers' precautionary beh...

Kurzfassung Aktuelle und kommende demografische Entwicklungen führen zu einer großen Anzahl von Unternehmensübertragungen gerade in familiengeführten Klein- und Mittelbetrieben. Als zentrale Herausforderung im Lebenszyklus eines Unternehmens untersucht die vorliegende Studie familieninterne und familienexterne Nachfolgeprozesse mit dem Ziel Chancen...

This article explores the role of stewardship practices related to entrepreneurial leadership in turning entrepreneurial orientation (EO) into family firm performance while considering its environmental context. Family business research has not fully investigated how the EO–financial performance relationship depends on configurations of internal an...

Regional business development is driven by family firms, which are generally deeply embedded in their region, particularly in rural areas. This study explores how family entrepreneurs’ embeddedness drives an entrepreneurial ecosystem as a regional context for innovation. For this purpose, the study brings together entrepreneurship research on embed...

Recognising opportunities and risks are central for every business to stay successful in the long-run and a mandatory capability to create realistic management strategies. Recent papers argue strategic planning is sustainable in the long run. However, little is known about the owner-managers' attitudes and perceptions of challenges and opportunitie...

Purpose: Tourism employment is very diverse ranging from precarious, exploitative study to high-quality workplaces. However, poor employment images dominate the tourism industry, which makes attracting employees difficult. This study aims to examine the processes that lead to such image construction. Design/methodology/approach: Using a qualitativ...

Zusammenfassung Krisen können Veränderungsprozesse in Unternehmen und Tourismusdestinationen stimulieren. Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist, die COVID-19 Krise als potenziellen Treiber von Innovationen im Tourismus zu untersuchen. Als Fallbeispiel werden Skigebiete in Niederösterreich verwendet, welche im Winter 2020/21 im Gegensatz zu vielen Skigeb...

This study locates the COVID-19 pandemic in the realm of crisis management and by applying a novel paradox and sensemaking perspective, we illustrate how tourism organizations dealt with tensions between maintaining business as usual and preparing for the uncertain in the midst of an imminent winter season. We argue that it is not so much the novel...

Family-run businesses are key players in the hotel industry and provide accommodations in many tourism regions such as the Austrian Alps. To date, research has failed to see the family firm status as a source of competitive advantage for the hospitality industry, despite often being used in practice to attract customers. Through the theoretical len...

Winter sport destinations received increased attention from worldwide media due to their Covid-19 superspreader status. Using a critical media discourse analysis (N = 1036) for the case of Ischgl, Austria this paper 1) identifies crisis-specific media discourse patterns, 2) analyzes the embedding of discourses in prevailing public debates and 3) di...

This study offers a cross-cultural perspective to better understand how time orientation shapes owner–managers’ perceptions of innovation capability in small and medium sized enterprises (SME) in tourism. We synthesise the extant literature and determine SME owner–managers’ internal and external innovation capability. Distinguishing between short-...

Tourism is facing an unprecedented crisis whose sheer scope is dictating global transformation of the industry. The aim of this paper is to explore how different countries and destinations responded to the initial blow of the COVID-19 pandemic, and what is expected in the recovery and restart phases. A crisis management model was developed using da...

Responsible tourism implies that all actors involved in tourism take responsibility for their actions. The concept of responsible tourism has been extensively addressed in tourism research and practice. However, studies analyzing the tourists’ contribution to responsible tourism have been neglected. Considering that tourists have the potential to c...

This study advances a differentiated understanding of job ad pre-hire effectiveness. It analyzes the utility values for varying levels of job ad attributes through a hierarchical Bayesian approach to conjoint analysis. This method allows not only to measure the relative importance of different attributes on the individual level but also to explore...

Zusammenfassung Die Beherbergungsbetriebe sind ein zentraler Faktor des Tourismusangebots, weil – sieht man von Camping- und Zeltplätzen ab – ohne entsprechendes Bettenangebot ein Großteil des Tourismus praktisch nicht stattfinden kann. Mit dem Wachstum des internationalen Tourismus steigt auch die Zahl der Beherbergungsbetriebe und der verfügbaren...

Family firms in tourism and hospitality (FFTH) are often characterized by their long-term orientation and strong “familiness” and embeddedness in tourism destinations. Families however are often confronted with and have to adapt to global change and can sometimes struggle with drastic changes in the tourism industry. And while the current COVID-19...

Touristische Überentwicklungen können positive oder negative Auswirkungen in Destinationen mit sich bringen und somit den ursprünglichen Lebensraum beeinträchtigen. In diesem Zusammenhang ist eine verantwortungsvolle touristische Entwicklung getragen von UnternehmerInnen und somit von Entrepreneurship, für die Destinationsentwicklung von zentraler...

Die Tourismus-Branche ist von den Auswirkungen der COVID-19 Pandemie sehr stark betroffen (Gössling et al., 2020; Hall et al., 2020). Krisen und Katastrophen sind jedoch für den weltweiten Tourismus an sich nichts Neues (vgl. 9-11, Tsunami im Indischen Ozean, SARS, globale Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise etc.). Während Katastrophen verstanden werden k...

Purpose: Adventure activities have become the core products of many tourism destinations. Hiking, which is known to be a soft adventure activity, represents an especially important product for many tourism destinations around the globe and in the European Alps. However, little research has explored hikers' underlying motivation and experiences, whi...

Studies from the field of smart city development show that smart cities attract more people from the nearby countryside along with an increasing number of tourists. While many smart tourism concepts focus solely on the development of technology, people, and institutional logic, the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EES) approach helps to strengthen smart...

Increasing concerns about disability, accessibility and universal environments for travel and destinations have reached the academic and industrial attentions worldwide, especially for the understanding of the role of technology in tourism. This study presents a qualitative study to the objectives of: (1) understanding different types of barriers e...

Entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE) offer a novel approach to rethinking entrepreneurship in tourism destinations. Previous literature highlights the importance of quality of life and socio-emotional wealth as essential factors for entrepreneurial activity. In this context, hospitality entrepreneurs’ quality of life (HE-QoL) is an important factor that...

Purpose Quality in foodservices has become essential, and new methodological ways of determining service quality enable a better representation of service processes and help to increase revisits. This paper focuses on the foodservice context and explores the relationship between staff-related service dimensions, atmosphere, food quality and revisit...

Purpose Offline retail stores have been working on improving their in-store customer experience; they have begun to realise the physical advantage they have over online channels. Especially sports products have a number of unique features, such as high emotional involvement or a sense of community; additionally, sports customers put emphasis on mul...

Analyzing residents’ support for events has become popular in sports tourism research. Based on the social exchange theory and the theory of reasoned action, this study tests a model of support for the 2018 UCI Road World Championships (N = 2,265). The findings show that the perceived image fit between an event and a place significantly influences...

Previous research has shown that crowding represents an essential factor in driving overtourism and highlighted the negative effects of crowding. However, there is limited knowledge of how crowding affects skiers' experiences and what variables drive the crowding-satisfaction relationship. Our findings show that individual skill levels and the beha...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lag behind larger firms when it comes to digitalization. This has negative impacts on firm performance. Despite the economic importance of SMEs, little is known about the antecedents, consequences, and challenges of SME digitalization. We have set three objectives to address this knowledge gap. Drawing on t...

Recognising opportunities and risks are central for every business to stay successful in the long-run and a mandatory capability to create realistic management strategies. Recent papers argue strategic planning is sustainable in the long run. However, little is known about the owner-managers' attitudes and perceptions of challenges and opportunitie...

The Web 2.0 has significantly changed how consumers plan for and book trips. For example, online content showing climate-induced, unfavorable conditions at a destination might influence overall attitudes toward that destination. Two experimental studies confirm that when consumers learn of unfavorable conditions in a destination (e.g., snow deficie...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the perceptions of visitors in terms of multiple aspects of smart cities to allow wise decisions to be made about smart tourist destinations by municipal governments and tourism authorities. Design/methodology/approach This study takes a sample of inbound visitors ( n =205) from Hong Kong as an em...

This paper provides an updated review of tourism innovation literature. For this purpose, it builds on a systematic literature analysis that provides a structured and systematic way to analyze previous contributions. Since the last literature reviews on tourism innovation, a plethora of studies emerged and highlighting the need for an updated revie...

This book on winter tourism consists of three parts. Part I is addressed to current challenges in winter tourism including regional planning, socio-cultural conditions, climate change and economic challenges. Part II gives an overview of behavioural research in winter tourism. The authors present case studies and methodological concepts for both un...

A Brand Strategy Gap refers to a deviation of the projected destination image of the Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) from the perceived image of residents. This gap can be represented by the perceptions of the city’s most salient features and unique attractions by government officials and local residents. Given the difference in sample s...

Small-scale events represent an important asset for the development of tourist destinations. As local stakeholders play a major role in conceptualizing and developing small-scale events, this study sheds light upon stakeholders’ perceptions toward such events. The current study was carried out through qualitative interviews based on the case of the...

Customers value the services and products of family firms. Especially the rural hospitality industry is dominated by family firms and shaped by high-contact services, where hosts and guests co-create value. Hypothesizing that behavioural and relational qualities of family firms are a central source for value co-creation and that a perceived family...

Tourism firms’ financial performance is determined by a complex interplay of factors, both internal and external to the firm. Predominant internal factors are their entrepreneurial behavior and financial resources. External factors refer to the network of actors contributing to the tourism product as well as market and competitive uncertainties. Em...

cite as: Pikkemaat, B., Peters, M., Schoppitsch, K. (2006). Erfolgsfaktoren von Erlebniswelten. In Reuber, P., Schnell, P. (eds.), Postmoderne Freizeitstile und Freizeiträume (159-180), Erich Schmidt: Berlin.

Barriers of Succession Planning and Management in the Hotel Industry.

Due to its characteristics, such as small and medium sized tourism organizations, low economics

The marketing-related behavior of family firms has recently gained scientific attention, as family firms increasingly use visual and textual cues such as the name, pictures of the owning family, or the owning family's values to communicate their family firm image via multiple marketing channels. Despite the relevance of online marketing in a digita...

Analogisierung als Folge zunehmender Digitalisierung im Tourismus

Management literature is currently giving growing conceptual and empirical attention to the peculiarity and relevance of entrepreneurial attitudes in family firms, with divergent outcomes. Aiming at concretizing the effects of these attitudes, denoted by the Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) construct, on family business performance and considering...

Strategic decision-making (SDM) processes in family firms represent a complex task involving family managers, family members and, in most cases, non-family managers. Drawing on the concept of socio-emotional wealth (SEW), this study aims to explore the characteristics of SDM processes in family firms, which groups of stakeholders they involve, and...

Local residents are always the recipients of economic, environmental and socio-cultural impacts from tourism development. Residents’ perceived impacts, attitudes towards tourism and the resultant supportive or opposing actions collectively affect the success of tourism, but are not thoroughly understood especially in small regions with rapid growth...

This article draws upon a new framework, proposing that family firm financial performance does not depend on single distinctive antecedents, but rather on the combination (configurations) of multiple entrepreneurial, governance- and family-related factors (innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking, transfer intentions and family involvement). Draw...

Freestyle snowboarders show a strong identification with their sport’s community and are closely engaged in improving sports equipment and material. However, research focusing on the relationships of constructs such as community involvement, novelty-seeking and lead-user behaviour in the field of (extreme) sports communities is scarce. This contrib...

Even though coopetition in the context of tourism is not new, research lacks concrete examples within the leisure business and about its effects on local communities. Hence, this study investigates a super-regional alliance of tourism and leisure suppliers as well as its effects on the community in the region of Tyrol, Austria. In the framework of...

The hospitality industry is dominated by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).They are often led by entrepreneurs who face the challenge of simultaneously managing business decisions and their own wellbeing. The competitiveness of tourism destinations often depends on these entrepreneurs and therefore understanding their motivations and work...

This study explores tourism destination innovativeness as perceived by leading entrepreneurs in order to derive implications for destination management organizations (DMO). The paper examines the need, drivers and obstacles of innovation as reported by a sample of 37 interviews conducted with tourism entrepreneurs and DMO representatives in Tyrol,...