By carrying out experimental research, the authors aim to explore the influence of animosity on tourists’ travel intention. Although animosity is proven to have a direct negative impact on consumer’s purchase intention in many other product categories in the consumer marketing domain (Moufakkir, 2014), little has been investigated into its impact on tourists’ behavioural intention within the tourism context. It is a first study in tourism using experiment method to examine the relationship between Chinese tourists’ animosity triggered by different scenarios and their outbound travel intention. By analysing and comparing types of animosity and price promotion, the research contributes to the existing literature in both consumer behaviour and tourism via better understanding the impact of attitude (animosity) on behaviour (travel intention) and the relative marketing application (price promotions). This study has discovered that although animosity triggered by unexpected incidents and political disputes will lead to significant decrease in travel intention, even deep price cut cannot reverse the unwillingness to travel to those destinations when animosity exists. This research is particularly important for countries/regions that are seeing an increasing number of Chinese tourists and investing heavily to provide tailored products and services to this target market, negative feelings, particularly animosity should be taken into consideration when developing tourism strategies (Richter, 1983).

• Qionglei Yu(University of Kent, UK)
• Dorothy Yen(University of Brunel, UK)
• Rong Xiang(Zhejiang Gongshang University, China)