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on Tourism Economics |
| By: | Uma V. P. Shrivastava |
| Abstract: | Tourism Industry in India is one of the most lucrative industries in the country and contributes substantially to foreign exchange earned. In the past couple of decades with good supported promotion this industry has developed as an important means of employment generation. In fact during 2010, seven million tourists visited India and spent US $ 13.9 billion, thus making India one of the major global tourist destinations. Augmented tourism in India has created jobs in a variety of associated sectors, both directly and indirectly. Tourism is one of the success stories of the 20th century and is concerned more with the satisfaction of individual rather than with the scientific and technological achievements. Almost 20 million people are now working in India’s Tourism Industry. India’s tourism is thriving, owing to a huge flow in both business and leisure travel by foreign and domestic tourists and is expected to generate approximately US$ 275.5 billion by 2018. There has been an increase in environmental awareness and pressure of urbanization. Now, urban masses look for new get away locations, where they can get involved in active outdoor recreation. Thus, national parks and sanctuaries have emerged as the favourite destinations. The visitors to these national parks are usually the youth in 18 to 30 years of age group. They are driven by the motivation to do something “adventurous”. This study was conducted in two cities with different set of respondents; since they are in the close proximity of the National Parks and Wild Life Sanctuaries. The prime objective of study has been to understand the reason of preference of Wild Life Tourism and the expectations of the tourists about various aspects during their course of travel and stay. The basic procedure adapted was tourist interviews through convenient sampling. The total respondents were about 326 between the age group of 20 years to 45 years. This included males and females SEC A1, A2, B1 and B2. It is assumed that the people of these SEC have the buying capacity as an influence of and reaction to word of mouth and advertisements. Both quantitative and qualitative data was collected for analysis. Key words: Tourism, Wild Life Tourism, Tourists |
| Date: | 2015–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vor:issues:2015-06-14&r=tur |
| By: | Moisescu, Ovidiu-Ioan |
| Abstract: | The paper investigates the extent to which the largest Romanian travel agencies, in terms of net turnover and profitability, adopt CSR practices. The analyzed data regards a set of relevant Romanian travel agencies, which during the last five years have been present at least once in an annual ranking regarding the highest net turnover and/or profits of such specialized businesses. In order to evaluate the level of CSR practices adoption in the investigated travel agencies, an online survey was conducted among their top managers mostly marketing managers (one respondent for each travel agency). The questionnaire was adapted based on the recent European Commission’s awareness-raising questionnaire regarding CSR, and comprised several sets of items reflecting employee and workplace policies, environmental policies, marketplace policies, community policies, and, respectively, company values and their dissemination among employees, customers, business partners and other stakeholders. The results of the current research show, on one hand, a relatively high engagement of the top Romanian travel agencies in certain CSR activities, but, on the other hand, a relatively low adoption of specific practices in some domains. Although the literature regarding the impact of perceived CSR in the tourism industry suggests a significant level of influence on corporate reputation and, indirectly, on consumers’ behavior, trust, loyalty and other important commercial aspects, the investigated travel agencies don’t seem to pay a high importance on communicating their CSR practices to customers, or to the general public. The paper also tries to correlate the results regarding the extent to which CSR practices are adopted and communicated with the financial/commercial performance in terms of turnover and profitability. |
| Keywords: | CSR policies; net turnover; net profit; tourism distribution; Romania |
| JEL: | M31 |
| Date: | 2014–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:65310&r=tur |
| By: | Moisescu, Ovidiu-Ioan |
| Abstract: | The paper investigates the extent to which the largest Romanian travel agencies, in terms of net turnover and profitability, adopt and communicate CSR practices, as reflected by the contents of their websites. The analyzed data regards a number of twenty Romanian travel agencies, which during the last five years have been present at least once in an annual top 10 of the highest net turnover and/or most profitable such specialized businesses. The website of each company was analyzed considering several variables related to the adoption and communication of CSR practices: the existence of a website section dedicated to CSR, the presence of CSR aspects within the section dedicated to the company’s mission, vision, values etc., mentions of relevant stakeholder groups, CSR domains, actual CSR activities etc. Although the literature regarding the impact of perceived CSR in the tourism industry suggests a significant level of influence on corporate reputation and, indirectly, on consumers’ behavior, trust, loyalty and other important commercial aspects, the results of the current research show a relatively low engagement of the top Romanian travel agencies in CSR activities, at least considering the extent to which they communicate these aspects through their websites. |
| Keywords: | website-analysis; tourism; travel agencies; Romania |
| JEL: | M31 |
| Date: | 2014–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:65288&r=tur |