境外在线旅游研究新进展

Review of International Online Tourism Studies

在线旅游已经逐渐演化成为旅游行业的显话题。国内外已有综述研究是把信息、通讯技术与旅游剥离,侧重分析技术对旅游业的影响,而文章把在线旅游作为一个独立的旅游行业分支进行综述。文章利用Web of Science和百度学术检索对近10年关于在线旅游的研究文献进行整理,从文献概况、研究内容进行了综述,将研究内容分为旅游者在线行为研究、在线旅游社区研究、在线旅行社研究、在线旅游分销研究等4个方面。在此基础上,文章提出该领域未来还应从在线旅游消费者行为、在线旅行社服务质量、在线旅游业态竞合关系、在线旅游分销渠道与供应商的关系等方面进一步研究。

Tourism growth relies on information; thus, the proliferation of information and communication technology has brought strategic oppommities and challenges to tourism. Online tourism is an economic phenomenon produced by the application of information and communication technology to tourism on the Internet, which led to innovations in conventional tourism enterprise business models and extremely rapid changes in information dissemination and consumers＇ travel behavior. Following the rapid growth of the online travel market, online tourism has become a hot topic in the tourism literature. Previous research reviewed information and communication technology and tourism, and emphasized the impact of technology on the tourism industry, discussing information and communication technology separately from tourism in online tourism studies. This paper concerns that the situation does not match the status of online tourism, which has been a top economic contributor to the tourism industry, From a perspective of online tourism as an independent sector of the tourism industry, this paper reviews the contributions of 72 online tourism-related studies, which were collected from the past ten years of internationally published studies listed by Web of Science and Baidu Scholar. The dimensions of time, space, basis for theory, and methodology were reviewed in these studies. This paper summarizes four aspects of international online tourism studies： online travel behaviors, online travel communities, online travel agencies, and online travel distribution. Online travel information searches and online travel purchases are the two main subtopics under online travel behavior. Information source preferences, query key words, tourists＇ search-engine interactions, and the impact factors of online travel information searches were studied. Online travel purchase studies are mainly concerned with the impact factors of online travel purchases from the perspectives of consumers, travel websites, and products. Studies of online tourism suppliers were most concerned with online travel communities and online travel agencies. Online travel community studies explored membership behavior and information credibility, while online travel agency studies focused on service quality and marketing strategy. Online travel distribution studies examined the relationship between hotels as suppliers and online travel agencies and online travel information platforms as distributors. In conclusion, this paper suggests that future research should focus on more meaningful topics, such as online travel behaviors, the quality of service provided by online travel agencies, online travel business coopetition （i.e., simultaneous cooperation and competition）, and the evolution of the relationship between online travel distribution channels and travel suppliers. Consumers＇ product preferences, behaviors, and characteristics should be discussed in more depth by online travel behavior studies. The analysis of online agencies＇ quality of service should shift from online to offline to identify innovations in their competitive advantages. The development of information and communication technologies leads to more innovations in online travel intermediaries; therefore, online travel studies should be concerned with the coopetition between online travel booking agencies and online travel information suppliers in addition to the coopetition between online and conventional travel agencies. Online travel distribution studies may also refer to the relationships between online travel businesses and all suppliers of travel segments, but are not limited to hotels.