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Luxury Niche Tourism: The New Frontier for India's DINK Travelers
Abstract
This research explores factors influencing intentions to invest in sustainable luxury tourism. The authors analyzed demographic variables, travel motivations, environmental awareness, and technology usage. Gender, age, and income did not significantly impact investment intentions, suggesting universal appeal. Specific travel motivations and environmental awareness also showed limited influence. Personal values and ethical considerations play a more pivotal role. Marketing strategies should prioritize personalized approaches. The authors used descriptive statistics, ANOVA, and regression analysis. Results indicated moderate agreement on sustainable luxury travel's importance. Travel motivations, environmental awareness, technology usage, and social influences did not significantly drive investment decisions. This research highlights the need for a deeper focus on personal values to promote sustainable luxury tourism effectively. The target audience for this research includes stakeholders in the tourism industry, policymakers, marketers, and researchers who are focused on sustainable luxury tourism.
This chapter examines the shift in historically exclusive luxury tourism and proposes a transformation to a regenerative model that is more sustainable than social development. In relation to sustainable tourism, regenerative extends environmental concern beyond what is merely being maintained and encourages healthy habitats, promotes a social justice of equity between local hosts and visitors. The case study methodology was used to analyze global initiatives, namely the Aman Resortssix Senses SongSaa, Soneva hotels and the Belmond Hotel das Cataratas tourism company, which interweave luxury with regenerative practices. These examples show practical ways in which the sector can align business interests with environmental and social objectives, such as biodiversity conservation, cultural appreciation and community inclusion. Finally, the chapter highlights the challenges and implications of regenerative tourism as green branding opportunities from eco-worst practices of greenwashing or with institutional constraints, incorporating the objectives of the global SDG targets.
The past few decades have seen a remarkable rise in DINK households-couples with a double income and no kids. While the DINK lifestyle first emerged in the 1980s during a recession when the costs of raising children soared, it has now gone mainstream. As marriage and birth rates decline in developed countries, voluntary childlessness is becoming increasingly common. These childfree couples are having an outsized impact on economies due to their greater disposable incomes and higher savings rates compared to families with children. This paper explores the economic influence of the growing DINK demographic. It traces the origins of the term to the 1980s when the recession and rising child-rearing costs led more couples to forego having kids. Since then, cultural perceptions of voluntary childlessness have shifted, making the DINK path more socially acceptable. Data reveals DINK households' higher median net worth and savings rates compared to families with children. Freed from the expenditures associated with raising kids, DINKs spend more on consumer goods, dining out, travel, and recreation-shaping industries that cater to their tastes. The rise of DINKs intersects with declining fertility rates in many developed nations. High child-rearing costs are a key factor driving lower birth rates. This has governments concerned about aging populations and shrinking workforces. While some see DINKs as self-centered or materialistic, others view child freedom as a legitimate personal choice. There are challenges too-from lack of family support systems in old age to societal disapproval. Still, the DINK lifestyle promises to increase in the decades ahead. This paper synthesizes research on the economic clout of the childfree demographic. It brings together data on incomes, savings rates, spending habits, and consumer preferences to highlight the outsized impact of DINKs. Their economic choices will likely transform economies, especially service sectors like travel and dining. However, governments may undertake policy changes to incentivize childbearing to counter aging populations. The rise of DINKs reflects shifting cultural norms, bringing both opportunities and challenges. Their economic influence will only grow in the years ahead.
Dual income, no kids (DINK) is a phrase for a household in which there are two incomes and no children. In India, the number of DINK couples is now slowly increasing. It has been observed that around 65% of newly married couples don't prefer to go for a child (Investopedia 2021). This research paper is a humble attempt to understand the psyche of the DINK community from Pune region. The research paper aims to throw light on changing cultural and social framework of family structure in 21st century and its impact on the spending pattern. The paper will also assess the uniqueness in spending pattern of DINK. The research methodology intended to include discussions along with interviews by developing a structured questionnaire which would also result in comparative analysis. DINK could be potential targets for the marketers for niche products and services. There is lot of scope for this target audience for promoting expensive cars, vacations and many. By analysing various articles related to DINK, the paper concluded with common trends of spending pattern by the DINK community, their characteristics as well as gaps in research with potential directions for future DINK research in India.
Tourism contributes to mental health. We could: recognize, measure, value, and market those contributions; analyze components and design products to maximize mental health benefits; and use mental health benefits in tourism industry marketing and lobbying. If we measure benefits to health-research standards, then tourism could also gain commercial opportunities within the health sector. Currently, there are widely differing bodies of evidence within different tourism subsectors, reflecting historical research emphases. Music, museums, and shopping malls have been identified as therapeutic for some. Nature tourism therapies have been tested extensively, with a higher standard of evidence. Adventure tourism has been analyzed principally from a phenomenological perspective, indicating powerful psychological effects. Many mental health therapies require continuing behavioral change. Tourism research could contribute to these therapies, since it includes detailed data on the effects of program design and guiding, and individual personalities, interests, capabilities, motivations, experiences, emotions, and satisfaction.
The luxury tourism industry immediately conjures up thoughts of exclusivity, with access to it confined to a small and elite group of travelers often located within their own social bubble. Our systematic literature review seeks to understand how tourism scholarship has addressed the issue of luxury travel based on social media pronouncements and the areas of concentration in which earlier studies have been conducted. Literature was sourced using the following key terms “luxury tourism”, “elite travel”, “social media”, and “sustainability” in various combinations using the OneSearch online platform, the Proquest Database, and Google Scholar. Only peer-reviewed journals were used for the critical analysis. Three main thematic areas were identified and reviewed: (1) the role of social media in luxury tourism; (2) the behavioral attributes of luxury travelers’ when using social media; and (3) the methodologies employed in the extant literature, given the limitations of accessing specific data for the luxury tourism market. The selected period for the journals and articles reviewed was the last ten years, from March 2010 to March 2020. NVivo version 12 was used to decipher the themes and focus areas as well as quantify the significance of social media to luxury tourism. Drawing from these literature review outcomes, the study explores future research areas and issues that require new theoretical and methodological frameworks to further our understanding of the intersection between social media and the luxury tourism business.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to develop a typology of social media messages in order to compare the effectiveness of different message strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 1,837 messages from 12 hotel brand Facebook pages were content analyzed. Applying both Correspondence Analysis and Multivariate Analysis of Variance, the study compared message strategy across hotel scale levels and explored the effectiveness of different message strategies.
Findings
A typology of four-type message format and six-type message content was developed. The picture message was the best message format. Product, brand, and involvement messages were shown more effective than information, reward, and promotion messages. Promotion message was the least effective message content type.
Research limitations/implications
The major limitation of this study is the generalizability due to the sample selection process. There is also limitation on exclusion of control variables, selection of the three effectiveness measures, and evolving social media technology.
Practical implications
The typology of Facebook message strategy developed in the study provided guidelines for hotel marketers to create messages on Facebook pages and track effectiveness. Hotels should also take full advantage of picture format and product, brand, and involvement contents.
Originality/value
This study created a new typology of social media message strategy consisting of two dimensions. It also provided empirical evidence to support the application of message strategy theory in the hotel social media marketing area.
During the past two decades we have witnessed a rather impressive growth of theoretical innovations and conceptual revisions of epistemological and methodological approaches within constructivist-qualitative quarters of the social sciences. Methodological discussions have commonly addressed a variety of methods for collecting and analyzing empirical material, yet the critical grounds upon which these were reformulated have rarely been extended to embrace sampling concepts and procedures. The latter have been overlooked, qualifying only as a 'technical' research stage. This article attends to snowball sampling via constructivist and feminist hermeneutics, suggesting that when viewed critically, this popular sampling method can generate a unique type of social knowledge—knowledge which is emergent, political and interactional. The article reflects upon researches about backpacker tourists and marginalized men, where snowball sampling was successfully employed in investigating these groups' organic social networks and social dynamics. In both studies, interesting interrelations were found between sampling and interviewing facets, leading to a reconceptualization of the method of snowball sampling in terms of power relations, social networks and social capital.
The use of influencers in marketing is not new. However, the advent of the internet, and more recently various forms of social media have both accelerated the use of influencers in marketing, and also democratized its use considerably. In this paper, we explore the nature of influence and power. We describe a study directed at understanding the promises and perils of influencer marketing from both the firm- and influencer perspectives, with the objective of identifying three key tensions that exist for marketers in the management of influencer relationships. We outline and explain these tensions and the lessons that can be learned from them, and then illustrate the lessons with a series of positive and negative cases. We close by speculating on the further evolution of influencer marketing.
National polls reveal stark and growing political divisions on the issue of climate change within the United States. However, few studies have explored whether these trends generalize to communities of color, who experience disproportionate environmental risks. Synthesizing over a decade of nationally representative survey data (2008–2019; N = 23,707), we conduct a conceptual replication and extension of previous research on the “racial/ethnic gap” in U.S. climate change opinion. Consistent with prior work, we find that African Americans and Hispanics/Latinos. show less political polarization—including both weaker ideological and partisan divides—across a diverse range of belief, risk perception, and policy-support measures. Further, we find that this differential polarization has remained largely stable over time and is robust to effects of other sociodemographic variables, such as education and income. Notably, across the political spectrum, people of color were more likely to report that global warming poses a danger to themselves. Racial/ethnic differences were generally more pronounced among the political Right than the political Left, are generally larger for beliefs and risk perceptions (vs. policy support) and are only partially accounted for by racial/ethnic differences in ideology or party sorting. These results offer comprehensive evidence that climate change is less polarized among people of color in the U.S. Increasing cultural diversity in the environmental sector and conducting more research on cultural differences in environmental responses (including other racial/ethnic groups such as indigenous populations) are both important to promoting equity in decision-making, addressing environmental disparities, and potentially bridging political divides in the U.S.
This study empirically investigated a theoretical model predicting the direct and indirect effects of memorable tourism experiences (MTEs) on behavioural intentions via destination image and tourists' satisfaction in yoga tourism. This research was conducted using data collected from 502 tourists visiting Rishikesh in India. Using confirmatory factor analysis and SPSS macro (PROCESS), findings confirmed that MTEs influenced behavioural intentions both directly and indirectly via destination image and tourists' satisfaction. MTEs were found as the strongest influencer of behavioural intentions in yoga tourism. This study opposes those researchers and practitioners who argued tourists' satisfaction alone as the most significant influencer of destination performance.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate how hotels practice corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication through social media, including which content type and media type receive the highest level of engagement. Two major aspects are considered, namely, CSR communication activity and stakeholder engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis is conducted for Forbes four-star to five-star hotels in Hong Kong. Facebook data are extracted from the property pages of the sample hotels by Netvizz, which is a Facebook data extraction application. The data analysis includes three steps and combines qualitative and quantitative approaches.
Findings
The results indicate that the type of information has a significant influence on engagement and has even more of an affect than the message strategy. Although the number of CSR-related posts is significantly lower than marketing-oriented posts, they achieve a comparable level of popularity and engagement. Posts encouraging CSR practices show the highest level of engagement among CSR-related posts. In terms of media and content types, video achieves the highest engagement, and posts related to discounts achieve the highest engagement.
Originality/value
This study fills the gap in the current literature by conducting a comparison between marketing and CSR communication strategies on social media. It also provides insights on how to draft more effective CSR messages.
Augmented reality (AR) is increasingly used as a marketing, information and experience channel within the tourism industry. However, little is known with regards to the actual value of AR for the tourism industry, with most research still in its infancy. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to explore the perceived value of AR for the tourism industry from the perspective of tourism experts. Using a qualitative and exploratory approach, this study conducted fifteen interviews with tourism experts in order to explore tourism specific AR value dimensions. Interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. This study revealed five value dimensions including marketing, economic, tourist, epistemic and organisational. Commonalities and differences between different perspectives are discussed. These findings provide important implications for strategy development, AR implementation, and tourist experience design.
The aim of this paper is to understand consumers’ perception of luxury hotel brands. To this end, the research evaluates consumers’ “big” visual data on TripAdvisor through a machine learning approach. Results shed light on the significant part of non-textual elements of the hotel experience such as pictures, which cannot be explored through traditional methods as content analysis. In particular, the analysis of 7,395 consumers’ pictures leads to the identification of the attributes that had the higher impact on their experience. These attributes emerged as specific features of interior elements of the hotels (rooms and restaurant).
Finally, the study shows how big data analytics and machine learning algorithms can (i) help monitoring social media and understand consumers perception of luxury hotels through the new analysis of visual data, and (ii) turn into better brand management strategies for luxury hotel managers.
This paper investigates the role of process coordination dynamics and information exchanges in maritime logistics. To this aim, a case study in a mid-sized port supported by a Port Community System (PCS) was developed. Exploiting data retrieved from the PCS, the methodology combined three data-driven techniques – Process Mining (PM), Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Text Mining – to draw handover social networks among the port logistics players, and to assess the export process efficiency and significant process deviations. Then, two sets of regression models were developed to explore the effects of network dynamics on process performances. Preliminary results point out that the process fragmentation and the frequent communication switching among the port actors could negatively affect the export process efficiency and effectiveness. Finally, the study proposes practical solutions for reducing process fragmentation and improving information exchange among port actors.
This research evaluates social media’s role in shaping perceptions of reputation during crisis management in a cruise line setting. Data were collected from respondents in the United States and Germany (N = 334) to explore the influence of speed and clarity of corporate response, brand familiarity, and cultural values on the perception of corporate reputation of a cruise line experiencing a crisis. Results indicated that speed of response using social media, brand familiarity, and cultural values of the respondent affected perceptions of corporate reputation of a cruise line after a crisis.
Luxury and sustainability: An uneasy relationship.
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Environmental attitudes and behaviours among DINK travelers.
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Global Sustainable Travel Association
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Technology adoption in travel planning: Insights from DINK couples.
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