Customer online engagement is crucial to online travel websites which depend online reviews to attract new users and maintain current ones. The distinctive features of public attractions in tourism and the unique webdesign of TripAdvisor create an empirical environment for this study to explore the influence of customer experience and satisfaction on their engagement in posting reviews regarding public goods. Based on a sample of TripAdvisor-listed attractions and considering the information from over 37,000 online reviews, the empirical findings suggest that (1) customer online engagement is stronger (weaker) on paid (public) attractions, and (2) the positive effect of satisfaction on customer engagement in posting reviews is more evident among public attractions rather than paid attractions. This study concludes by offering managerial implications to regulators of public attractions, operators of travel websites, and managers of paid attractions.

The growth of the Chinese outbound market has been phenomenal during recent years and still highly concentrates on neighboring Asian destinations. In particular, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region heavily depends and focuses on the Chinese tourism market. Recent calls for a possible diversification of the tourism market have nevertheless failed to shed light on how Hong Kong residents perceive the benefits of mainland Chinese tourism. In order to mend this gap, this study collected 850 online questionnaires with Hong Kong residents. Subsequent cluster analysis has shown that there are 3 segments in regard, namely “low”, “moderate” and “high” perceived benefits. A significant age gap among these 3 clusters was identified, with older respondents generally perceiving the highest benefit. Fifteen semi-structured follow-up interviews have shown the reason to be predominance of idealism in younger generations of Hong Kong, while older generations tend to be pragmatic. Possibilities for future studies are finally highlighted.

The branding concept has been burgeoning from product branding and extending to service, corporate, and further nation branding (Papadopoulous & Heslop, 2002). The concept found in the tourism literature has been mostly adapted to a tourism destination (e.g., Gartner & Konecnik Ruzzier, 2011; Im, Kim, Elliot & Han, 2012). However, unlike characteristics of a manufactured product, a tourism destination has difficulties in terms of definition, measurement, and conceptualization (Murphy, Moscardo & Benckendorff, 2007). As a consequence, there has been a shortage of empirical research relating to the application of the branding concept to tourism destination management organizations spanning from national to local tourism organizations (Blain, Levy & Ritchie, 2005; Pike, 2010). To understand tourism destination branding, recently, studies have been conducted in the context of destination branding as a part of destination marketing strategy (Morgan, Prichard & Pride, 2001), brand identity and personality (Morgan et al., 2001; Murphy, Moscardo & Benckendorff, 2007), and brand logos and slogans (Blain et al., 2005; Hem & Iversen, 2004). The concept of the destination brand equity will be applied to Hong Kong tourists who are traveling to Switzerland. Switzerland is becoming a hot spot for Chinese long-haul trips following European destinations like UK, France, or Italy. Since a decade the core countries of the European Alps Switzerland concentrates more specifically on the Chinese market and with a time lag of a few years the overnight stays have started growing (Schmid, 2012). Since 2008 the overnight stays of Chinese touristsindicated a double- digit jump over the last five years and resulted in an accumulated growth rate of 246.9 percent, that is, the overnight stays per year climbed from 214,000 (2008) to 744,000 (2012) (BFS, 2009 & 2013). The Swiss Tourism Board estimated 2 million overnight stays from China in 2020. In this case China would overturn the neighboring country Italy as one of the key source markets for Switzerland (Schmid, 2012). The high increase in Chinese tourists led to marketing efforts of Switzerland Tourism and the Swiss Hotel Association hotelleriesuisse with their initiative “Hallo China” (Switzerland Tourism, 2004). At first, the main purpose of this study is to conceptualize destination brand equity. Second, it is to propose a destination brand equity model. Third, it is to test the model using a sample of Hong Kong tourists who travel to Switzerland. Fourth, it is to investigate characteristics of tourism products preferred by Hong Kong tourists. Fifth, it is to explore how their preferences for tourism products are different according to their travel-related or demographic variables. This study expects those outcomes and benefits. Frist, components consisting of destination brand equity model and conceptual model will be generated. Second, brand equity of Switzerland as perceived by Hong Kong tourists will be tested. Third, better understanding of Hong Kong tourists regarding their perception of Swiss image, level of awareness, overall quality, loyalty, and overall brand equity will be facilitated. Fourth, most previous studies focused only on preference, behavior or attitudes of Hong Kong tourists who travel in a short-haul distance. On the contrary, this study attempts to understand Hong Kong tourists to a long-haul tourism destination, here Europe. Fifth, according to specialization theory, more specialized tourists tend to select more far-way and more risky destination because their knowledge is growing and a range of their selection is diverse. In an increasing future trend in demand of overseas Chinese tourists, this study attempts to identify long-haul Hong Kong tourists’ preference, attitude or behavior in Europe.

This study develops a model of the market life cycle of package tours, explaining that such tours inherently have low tourist satisfaction which results in a decrease in market share. The model is based on the proposition that tourist satisfaction depends on the extent to which their preferences are fulfilled at the destination, which in turn is determined by their knowledge of its attributes. An analysis of data on China’s outbound tourism market from 1993 to 2010 shows that as tourist satisfaction at the destination increases, the market share of inclusive package tours declines. This suggests that tourist satisfaction can predict tourists’ subsequent choice of a package tour. As tourist satisfaction increases due to the improved information in the market, such package tours will be gradually substituted for independent travel or entirely new packages, or replaced by travel to a new destination.