Description
This study aims to examine, via social exchange theory and social representations, how
online vacation rentals (OVR) connect tourists and owners. It also aims to understand the dynamics and
representations between owners and tourists in Albufeira, one of the most popular counties in the south
of Portugal, supported on the theories of representation and social exchange. More specifically
this research is structured on the following question: how the consequents – engagement and
personalization – are materialized in the testimonies and descriptions posted on the vacation rentals
platform.
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
From information-sharing to vacation rental choices – the case of Albufeira, Portugal
J oana Afonso Dias Antónia Correia Francisco J osé Martínez López
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To cite this document:
J oana Afonso Dias Antónia Correia Francisco J osé Martínez López , (2014),"From information-sharing to vacation rental choices – the case
of Albufeira, Portugal", International J ournal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 8 Iss 1 pp. 35 - 47
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Frominformation-sharing to vacation rental
choices – the case of Albufeira, Portugal
Joana Afonso Dias, Anto´ nia Correia and Francisco Jose´ Mart? ´nez Lo´ pez
Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to examine, via social exchange theory and social representations, how
online vacation rentals (OVR) connect tourists and owners. It also aims to understand the dynamics and
representations between owners and tourists in Albufeira, one of the most popular counties in the south
of Portugal, supported on the theories of representation and social exchange. More speci?cally
this research is structured on the following question: how the consequents – engagement and
personalization – are materialized in the testimonies and descriptions posted on the vacation rentals
platform.
Design/methodology/approach – The initial assumption for this exploratory study is that OVR bring
both material and intangible advantages for the individual consumer and for the community of
homeowners. Drawing fromnetnography, using textual analysis, including the use of a corpus linguistics
software program(WordSmith v.6), the authors aimto capture the multidimensional meanings presented
by the tourists’ online reviews of their travelling experience and home rental.
Findings – The ?ndings suggest that sharing the same nationality can facilitate engagement and
in?uence the decision-making process (selection of property). Furthermore, ?ndings point to a sense of
place construed through affordances of place, home and a functional sense of place. Personalization of
services is perceived by tourists as a positive outcome, this being the result of a positive evaluation that
properties have received.
Originality/value – The innovative design of this research, combining textual analysis and netnography
of data reviews, and the analysis of this new form of tourism are the main contributions of this paper.
Keywords Engagement, Personalization, Social exchange theory, Netnography,
Online vacation rentals (OVR), Social representations theory
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Social networks are a vehicle for consumers not only for searching but also for sharing their
travel experiences by posting comments and opinions, all of which then serve as information
for others (Xiang and Gretzel, 2010). Interaction enhances co-operation and the sharing of
individual or inter-individual experiences, contributing to the building of social
representations that may contribute to form virtual communities. On the other hand, social
exchange theory assumes that social relations involve exchange of resources among
groups seeking mutual bene?ts from exchange relationships. The innovative use of social
networks in tourism, when based on a philosophy of learning, can stimulate communications
and interactions among and between different players. From this profound alteration in the
tourism market, whether from the perspective of the service provider or the consumer, these
elements have given rise to virtual communities. As Gro¨ nroos (2007) notes, when consumers
are looking for products or services they are also looking for solutions that will serve their own
processes of generating value. A growing part of tourism communication relationships
involve technical and symbolic means. Pearce and Moscardo (2002) argue that the theory of
social representations is an ideal theoretical approach to study tourism and its relations with
DOI 10.1108/IJCTHR-07-2013-0049 VOL. 8 NO. 1 2014, pp. 35-47, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182
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PAGE 35
Joana Afonso Dias is a
Junior Lecturer in the
Department of
Management and
Marketing, INUAF –
Instituto Superior Afonso III,
Localidade, Portugal.
Anto´ nia Correia is Assistant
Professor at the Faculty of
Economy, University of the
Algarve, Algarve, Portugal.
Francisco Jose´ Mart? ´nez
Lo´ pez is Full Professor at
Financial and Managerial
Information Systems,
University of Huelva,
Huelva, Spain.
Received 29 July 2013
Revised 12 January 2014
Accepted 20 January 2014
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the community, given the possibility of the theory of social representations re?ecting
common sense, opinions and knowledge of a particular group on a social object.
Engagement and personalisation are the tangible consequents of interaction and
communication processes that may be outlined with a qualitative research, such as this
one. Hence this study focuses on a virtual community, a private destination on the internet
(Homeaway.co.uk) that addresses the needs of its members by facilitating peer-to-peer
interaction and communication. HomeAway.com is the world’s leading online market place
for the vacation rental industry, consisting of a portfolio of web sites dedicated to many
holiday rental markets, located in more than 170 countries, and it is here that the virtual
renting of privatively-owned properties is undertaken. These social exchanges and content
cannot be underestimated in the interactivity and interaction inherent in social exchanges
between owners and tourists. Through this social networking and computer-mediated
platform, owners and tourists share testimonies that are engrained in their social
representations but also comprise social exchanges. This research aims to understand
the dynamics and representations between owners and tourists in Albufeira, one of the most
popular counties in the south of Portugal, supported on the theories of representation and
social exchange.
Therefore this study aims to examine, via social exchange theory and social representations,
how tourists and owners interact and communicate in online vacation rentals. More
speci?cally this research is structured on the following question: How the consequents –
engagement and personalisation – are materialized in the testimonies and descriptions
posted on the vacation rentals platform.
This research ?lls a gap in the literature in three ways. At a theoretical level, engagement and
personalisation are still constructs that deserve more research as they are not consensual in
the literature (Shen and Ball, 2009; Sawhney et al., 2005). Further, by bringing together the
theories of social representations and social exchanges (State et al., 2012) this research
made advances on the grounds of the interactions and communications in the virtual world
supporting the formation of the consequents of this relation, materialized by engagement
and personalisation. At a methodological level, qualitative research allows us to explore
thoroughly the formation of both constructs. At a practical level this research focuses on a
relatively new market segment (Anderson, 2006) that is emerging and which is one of the
most promising in tourism development – online vacation rentals (Frommer, 2010).
The paper is organised as follows: in the next section, the theoretical framework of the study
is laid out, including an outline of the principles of social exchange theory and social
representations theory. The following section introduces and integrates the phenomenon of
OVR in the tourism context by reviewing the key concepts. Then the methodology is
presented, followed by a discussion of the results and, ?nally, the conclusions, including a
summary of the main contributions and limitations of the study and suggestions for future
research.
Theoretical insights
The basis of this research relies on social exchange theory and social representations.
Social exchange theory explains how attitudes relate to other people and are largely
dependent on perceptions that are based on the balance of the relationship, the type of
relationship expected and the opportunity to have a better relationship with others
(Andereck et al., 2005; Emerson, 1976; Wallace and Wolf, 2006). It is based on the premise
that human behaviour – or social interaction – is an exchange of activity, both tangible and
intangible (Homans, 1961), comprising rewards and costs (Homans, 1961). Furthermore,
social exchange theory examines the processes of the creation and maintenance of
reciprocity in social relations, or mutual grati?cation among and between people, which
gives rise to the engagement needed to set a certain deal. The main assumption of
exchange theory is that individuals establish and maintain social relations based on their
expectations that such relations will be mutually advantageous. In tourism studies, this
theory has recently been receiving more attention (Woosnam et al., 2009; Andereck et al.,
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2005; Claiborne, 2010; Jurowski et al., 1997; McGhee and Andereck, 2004; Perdue et al.,
1990; Sirakaya et al., 2002) with particular focus on the attitudes of local residents towards
tourism. Social exchange theory has not been applied yet in online contexts to the authors’
best knowledge. On the other hand, social representation is an implicit concept that orients
people’s actions, making up an important dimension via which rational thoughts about an
object are consistently organised. Moscovici (1961, 1976), argues that social representation
is the knowledge that produces and determines behaviours, since it de?nes the nature of the
stimuli that surround us as well as the signi?cance of responses. Social representations
relate to the ways in which consumers perceive the symbolism of their consumption, in
relation to other social perceptions for the same forms of consumption. Thus, social
representations serve as code and interpretation systems, provided by society, which
project values and social aspirations (Jodelet, 1990). Social representation theory describes
how and what people think in their everyday experiences and how a wider social reality
in?uences their thoughts (Moscovici, 1981). Previous researchers employed social
representations theory and social exchange theory either as a quantitative paradigm
(Fredline and Faulkner, 2001) or a qualitative one (Andriotis and Vaughan, 2003, Yutyunyong
and Scott, 2009).
These theories provide the basis for this research which aims to understand how the social
representations possessed by tourists and second home owners are embedded in the
information exchanged in an online environment, and how this social exchange moderates
the information they decide to share. The consequent of this exchange is assumed as
engagement whereas the social representations materialized in the posts are the result of a
personalisation of their experiences. Generally speaking, engagement is achieved via posts
that lead tourists to a number of perceptions, and in which it is feasible to explicitly or
implicitly share social representations about and around the property. Further it may be
assumed that tourists’ and owners’ social exchanges are maintained based on the
expectation that this relation will be advantageous for both. In the online vacation rentals
process, it is not only the testimonials or suggestions obtained at the end of service provision
that enhance its value. Requests or questions posed, even before the tourists stay, can lead
to a greater involvement and enhance the creation of value associated with the process. This
‘‘virtual courtship’’ forms an engagement sustained by personalised responses, and
enriches the future stay. These owners’ attitudes relate to tourists dependent on perceptions
that are based on the balance of their relationship and what type of relationship they
expected (Andereck et al., 2005; Emerson, 1976; Wallace and Wolf, 2006). Moreover the
reviews under analysis are written to implicitly or explicitly support the social representations
in and around the property available on the OVR platform, which bestow on the property the
level of personalisation which tourists are looking for.
The posts under analysis are written to implicitly or explicitly evidence social representations
in and around the property announced, which bestow on the property the level of
personalisation which tourists are seeking.
Conceptual framework
This paper integrates social exchange theory and social representations theory based on an
investigation of individual and societal components of tourists’ perceptions provided in an
OVR context.
Figure 1 illustrates the ?ux of information in online vacation rentals, in which the presence of
two poles is a determining factor (tourist and owner). Without bi-directional interaction
between these two entities, OVR would not make any sense. The tourist and owner are both
actors in the OVR process, and as such they share information, interpret it and can make use
of it (or not), meaning that all feedback is converted into potential added value.
The processes related to search activities create their own ?ux of data (researching a
property, analyzing the information, making a decision) which interrelate with functions of
control (checking availability, methods of payment, among others). The current trend of
mobile phone applications is also having a strong dynamic effect on this channel, for both
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tourists and owners. This allows even greater agility in the promptness of responses. The
data that emerge from the ?uxes and sub-?uxes in OVR are transformed into information,
and then into constructed representations which allowthe receiver (tourist, owner) to make a
decision.
Information ?ow and social actors’ engagement and personalization
Tourists and owners live in a world of social objects in the context of online vacation rentals.
This process instigates material and symbolic collective coping. First anchoring it to an
image, then interpreting it in familiar terms and representations and then adding further
reviews, descriptions and elaborations leads to an objecti?ed image, metaphor or symbol.
The tangible and intangible features of the online process enact social perceptions and new
social representations are ?nally built making the phenomenon familiar and part of common
sense. Consumer engagement in a virtual community involves interactive experiences
between tourists and owners, and/or other members of the community. All the processes of
engagement are aimed at facilitating the involvement of the tourist, making his or her
experience relevant at a personal level, creating a personal connection and therefore
strengthening (or not) the desire to participate in a future experience.
Different points of contact and opportunities for encounters are established (tourist reviews
(1); owners pro?le available on OVR platforms (2) and global information (3); virtual
relationship through e-mails (4); and explorative analysis (5)) between tourists and service
providers. The online vacation rentals process comprises cognitive, emotional and
behavioural dimensions and the two principal actors could play hybrid roles, as the tourist, in
different moment, can be an owner, and the owner can be a tourist. This possibility might
provide a consciousness attitude in the way the business is run. The tourist engages initially
with an inanimate object of interest (e.g. a villa) and owners’ descriptions; reviews about the
villa that he is interest in are posted by others tourists through OVR, and then progress to
two-way interactions with the owner(s), and thus the relationship ends with a business deal
or not (see Figure 2).
Methodology
This study is applied to the Algarve region in Portugal, which has a population of around
400,000 and attracts 5,000,000 tourists per year (Ana, 2008). According to a recent report,
half of UK overseas home-owners bought properties in coastal locations over recent
decades. Moreover, Almeida (2010) shows that of those who stated they bought a house in
the Algarve, 21 per cent bought it directly fromtheir previous owner, 18 per cent directly from
friends and 48 per cent used an estate agent. The geographical site chosen for this research
was Albufeira, since it has the largest number of listed properties in Portugal on the platform
under study (HomeAway.uk.com). While this particular investigation of the owner’s
relationship with OVR tourists is supported by Netnography, there also exist other
research challenges in terms of accessing the intangible dimensions of ‘‘relationship’’;
notably, the exploration and identi?cation of subjective feelings of the owner-tourist
relationship could determine intrinsic aspects of the commercial vacation product. Since
there is no structured information available concerning OVR information ?ows, or the roles
Figure 1 The information ?ow that sustains the OVR phenomenon
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and behaviours of participants, this research is exploratory in its essence. Given that the
focus is more on understanding and interpreting than on explanation and prediction, an
interpretative qualitative approach is the most suitable (Decrop and Masset, 2011).
Netnography is recommended as a method by which to study communities which exist only
in cyberspace and the virtual world and where normal access would prove to be dif?cult
(Langer and Beckmann, 2005).The fundamentals of netnography data collection and
analysis were taken into account to ensure the trustworthiness of the results. It is important to
restate this research offers neither representativeness nor generalisation, as the conclusions
are limited to the sample analysis. Furthermore, this research offers trustworthiness as in
most exploratory qualitative researches (Wallendorf and Belk, 1989; Lincoln and Guba,
1985), but not validity as is commonly stated in quantitative research. This research collects
and observes textual data, and as such our unit of analysis is not the person but the
behaviour (Mead et al., 1938). It could also be assumed that posts are a social action is
trustworthy and relevant.
The qualitative outcome of the previous stage (data collection) was examined and
messages that are directly related to the research questions are recognised. Using textual
analysis including the use of a corpus linguistics analytical tool (the software program
WordSmith v.6, Scott, 2011), the authors aim to capture the multidimensional meanings
presented by the tourists’ online reviews of their travelling experience and home rental.
To collect the reviews we assumed the procedure outlined by Kozinets (2002, 2010). We
directly copied the posts from HomeAway.uk.com platform and according to Kozinets
(2010) and Belk et al. (2013), the guiding principles for deciding whether to use a web site
were present: the relevance of the web site; how recent the communications are; if the web
site is interactive; if it has critical mass and if the site has posts that are rich in detail. All ?ve of
these characteristics were identi?ed in the platform under study. The analysis is based on a
convenience sample of tourists’ postings collected from the web site HomeAway.uk.com,
using a qualitative explorative approach to the textual data. From 1 February 2013 to the
middle of March 2013, the researchers reviewed intensively all the proprieties with reviews
and managed by owners from 2009 to 2012 and discarded the data of property
management run by companies. The selection process, summarised by Figure 3, resulted in
Figure 2 Tangible and intangible features of the OVR process that enact social perceptions
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1979 reviews (173,813 words in total). An attempt was made to ?nd diverse views (both
positive and negative reviews were collected) although our data contain mainly positive
evaluations and just a few negative ones were analysed taking into consideration the criteria
suggest by Kozinets (2002). The data sample, also, comprises posts in both high and low
seasons, and corresponds to 95 per cent of the total number of testimonies posted on this
platform relating to properties in Albufeira. Like Mallorca (Kozak and Rimmington, 1999),
Albufeira is a very popular summer vacation destination, though it is also popular out of
season as a winter destination too. We thus consider that the sample captures the critical
mass of communications and overall atmosphere of the object of study and also re?ects the
heterogeneous nature of the environment, since the data comprise tourists of various
nationalities, although the nationalities most represented are the British, Portuguese and
Germans. Lastly, it is worth noting the richness of some of the testimonies in terms of their
detail, meaning that interesting results were obtained, as we will show below.
The option to use mostly a qualitative explorative research design was determined by the
nature of investigation aims and the need to adopt a perspective that would not rely on a
preconceived model, but rather on the analysis of words, as in Ryan and Cave’s, 2005
research about Auckland’s image as a visitor destination. As our analysis mostly considers
conversations, connections, and re?ections of other social experiences to be, in some sense,
a type of ‘‘content’’ that can be said to exist apart fromits context, we can regard the data that
such techniques produce as useful for purposes of qualitative research (Belk et al., 2013).
Equally, the tests of the validity of data interpretation are more dif?cult than in the case of
statistical data that possess well-understood tests of reliability and validity. Any analysis of
qualitative data can offer only tests of credibility by the use of congruent interpretations
derived fromresearchers working initially separately, or by the results ‘‘making sense’’ to other
stakeholders, or by reference to ?ndings derived from other studies within the literature. With
reference to this last point, the results of this study reveal again the consistent pattern that
arose in previous research (Dias et al., 2013). Tourists who use the OVR platform choose
familiar ground, thus highlighting the dimensions of security and familiarity in networking.
Findings
The primary purpose of cross-checking between the nationality of the tourists and owners
was to evaluate the level of intensity between them, and to what extent our suspicion the
existence of nationality micro-communities – British to British, German to German identi?ed
in a previous study (Dias et al., 2013) – was supported by the extensive analysis carried out
by the authors. This was done following the properties advertised on the platform
HomeAway.uk.com, the destination under study, with testimonies between 2009 and 2012.
Figure 3 Customer review selection process
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From Table I below it is visible that the intensity of traf?c (number of posts) we can state, from
the 497 of the total number of properties available on the HomeAway.uk.com web site that
are located in Albufeira, 64 per cent of the owners are British, 23 per cent Portuguese, 7 per
cent Irish and 4 per cent German. An analysis of the nationality of the tourists that posted on
the web site (n ¼ 1979) regarding their stay in a property shows that the tourists that
predominate are British (61 per cent), followed at some distance by Irish (11 per cent),
Germans (8 per cent) and Portuguese (4 per cent).
This evidence shows that social actors tend to interact with peers of their own nationality
(British to British) which is in accordance with Dias et al. (2013). Table II shows that more than
three quarters (76 per cent) of the posts are from British tourists who selected properties
managed by a British owner. This also applies to the Germans, although the number of
properties managed by Germans is relatively small (4 per cent); the vast majority (97 per
cent) of posts relating to these properties were made by Germans. Of the units managed by
the Irish, 60 per cent of posts came from Irish tourists and 32 per cent from British. The
distribution of posts by author nationality for the properties managed by the Portuguese was
as follows: British (40 per cent), French (15 per cent), Portuguese (13 per cent), Dutch (10
per cent) and Irish (7 per cent) – with other nationalities hardly represented.
The content analysis identi?ed two principal dimensions in tourist-owner relationships in the
context of online vacations rentals. This study exposes those dimensions: engagement and
personalisation. These results may intuitively suggest that the actors’ engagement is more
evident and tends to grow within the same nationality, and it is also noted that, people’s
cultural background and home environments (Dann, 1993; Yagi, 2001) seem to facilitate
virtual con?dence and trust and enhance engagement. This tourist’s review illustrates the
individual’s heightened levels of cognitive and /or behavioural engagement:
Everything ran smoothly frombeginning to end with the booking. Tracy is very prompt at replying,
the apartment is reasonably priced. The apartment is just as pictured, spacious, spotlessly clean
and comfortable. The location is fabulous. The sea and beach is at the end of the road and you
have an amazing view over the bay. The old town is a few minutes’ walk away. As mentioned the
Treˆ s Coronas restaurant is de?nitely worth a visit and as an additional plus they sell wine from Cliff
Richard’s vineyard!
Table I Intensity of traf?c
Albufeira (%)
British 64
Portuguese 23
Irish 7
German 4
Note: n ¼ 497
Source: Authors’ own data from HomeAway.co.uk – December 2012
Table II Posts by nationality
Testimonies
Owner’s nationality British (%) Portuguese (%) Irish (%) German (%) Others (%)
British 76 2 10 2 10
a
Portuguese 40 13 7 4 36
b
Irish 32 1 60 – 7
German 1 – – 97 2
Notes:
a
Dutch (2 per cent); Canadian (1 per cent); French (1 per cent); Danish (0.4 per cent); Spanish
(0.4 per cent); Belgian (0.4 per cent); USA (0.4 per cent);
b
French (15 per cent); Dutch (10 per cent);
Spanish (5 per cent); Canadian (3 per cent); USA (3 per cent)
Source: Authors’ own data from HomeAway.co.uk – December 2012
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This review illustrated tourist engagement as the level of a tourist’s physical, cognitive and
emotional presence in their relationship with owner, as de?ned by Patterson et al. (2006). The
opportunity mentioned of buying wine from Cliff Richard’s vineyard suggest that all the
property’s guests would like this and it is expectable that all would love it. Cliff Richard is a
British pop star who was famous fromthe 1950s to the 1990s. This reminds us, once again, of
the British-to-British micro-community.
Just wanted to say thanks for letting us have this villa at short notice! It has been a really great
holiday and the weather has been fantastic. The villa itself is beautiful and the children really
enjoyed the pool. A special thanks goes to John and Alain as they have been a great help over the
last week. A car rental would be highly recommended but for those who don’t want to drive or
can’t drive Jean and Alan are great to have around!
The personalized drive service is well received and apparently the owners are aware of it.
The tourist’s level of engagement is also visible, ?rst with the speci?c inanimate object (villa),
thus serving to impact on their tourist engagement states. Tourist engagement is a process
which begins through a virtual environment and develops in the real state. In addition, the
following tourist review provides another example of personalization:
Peter was very very helpful could not fault him nothing was too much trouble he was extremely
helpful when my mum was ill and needed treatment from the medical centre he was also on time
for doing airport runs once again I would like to give a big thank you to Alex and Peter for such a
relaxing enjoyable holiday many thanks from the hill family.
There are repeat examples of personalization service, as a service attitude – attending to the
individual needs of a client (Ball et al., 2006):
Thank you to Nigel and Rosie for providing a beautiful apartment which totally lived up to
expectations and more! It is very much ‘‘our style’’ as we thought it would be from the information
given and we immediately felt at home.
My family and I had a brilliant holiday. The apartment was stunning and had everything that you
could possibly need and more. It was very spacious and beautifully decorated and really felt like
home from home.
In order to analyze the corpus of texts collected from the HomeAway.com web site we use
corpus analysis software (in this case, WordSmith version 6, Scott, 2011). This corpus
analysis program has a function – concord – that explores word connections, giving the
surrounding context for each instance that is found. Our main objective of using this speci?c
function is to investigate how tourists perceive the personalization of services and how they
engage with owners, exploring the numerous contexts and with co-texts to the left and the
right, as is explained in Figure 4.
The word ‘‘owner (s)’’ was selected to perform a corpus analysis, although this kind of
analysis cannot give de?nitive answers, only clues. The owner(s) evoke feelings of familiarity,
comfort and easy integration in tourists’ assessment of their stay, thus reinforcing both the
potential engagement and personalised service that characterises this niche business
segment. The results show quite clearly that owner(s) is widely mentioned and refers to the
concept (excellent customer service; easy to deal with/made the book easy; replied to my
e-mails promptly; has thought of everything; made us feel con?dent; very friendly; very
helpful; kept in regular contact). This positive engagement results in a very positive
experience evaluation. Although we are not concerned with valence (positive or negative
evaluation) in a brief analysis we conclude the average rating attributed to the Albufeira OVR
context is high; it has a high proportion of maximum 5-star ratings. (From the 239 properties
evaluated, 220 achieved 5 stars – 92 per cent). However, for the purposes of this study, we
are not too concerned with this since, we are focusing most on how the representational
contents are modelled by contact and relationship with the owner through the testimonies
posted after a stay in a property.
Even with help of WordSmith (wordlist function) we found a strong presence of the word
‘‘pool’’ in the 1,979 posts analysed (it is used a total of 1,067 times). Almost all the properties
in the Albufeira sample have a swimming pool, which is clearly a much-appreciated facility.
On the other hand, the word ‘‘sea’’ is used much less – in fact overall, in the whole corpus, it
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is used just 55 times. Although this ?nding is based on a simple word count, and does not
take the co-text into account, it is still indicative of the behaviours described in the
experiences. The fact that a pool is always presented in the testimonies quoted shows the
importance that the tourists attach to this facility, both as an integral part of their experience
and as a symbolic privileged lifestyle indicator, another signi?cant social representation
example. Also, the properties’ amenities, comforts, geographic situation and close
surroundings are what are most salient, representative and most frequent in the testimonies.
The recommendations for restaurants and places to visit (golf courses, theme parks, among
others.) are also very frequent. Generally speaking, we may conclude that positive
experiences relate to engagement and personalisation as well as attributes of the
destination, mainly facilities, landscape and comforts.
Conclusions
The renting of private properties for holidays via the internet (OVR) is grounded in an
experience environment whereby tourists actively engage in dialogues, often in real time,
and construct co-created and personalised experiences with the help of other inputs (both
human and non-human). The product itself may be the same product, but tourists can ‘build’
different tourist experiences.
During the OVR process tourists and owners establish and maintain social relations based
on their expectations that such relations will be mutually advantageous. The results of our
study show that owners are conscious of these advantages since their engagement and
relationship with tourists is often present. Owners’ compensations and recognitions are the
major factor that accounts for owner motivations. For the tourist, the owner represents a
brand, an ethical code of sales, a philosophy of business management – it is not just the
virtual engagement that counts. During the rental vacation experience, the owner’s
performance is also valuable in terms of functional and affective answers to the tourist.
The article highlights the most signi?cant features of the relationship that is established
between owner and tourist in the OVR context. Whether functional aspects or emotional
aspects are exchanged, tourists and owners can create / enhance bene?cial outcomes
(?nancial and non-?nancial) for both. In the OVR context the value of the functional aspects
to be performed during stay is agreed between both parties, the resulting collaboration on
Figure 4 Concord function output – all 1979 testimonies
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speci?c applications and loving relationship, not least, develops along the process, either by
cultural af?nities (nationality, same tastes, similar aspirations, etc.) or through the testimony
of other alike tourists. Tourists generally refer to positive aspects and engagement seems to
us to be stronger when faced with more immediate individuals (owner and tourist) of the
same nationality, which apparently points to common cultural aspirations of alike holiday
experiences (Cohen, 1972).
Property owners, in the future, should understand the potential power that conversation may
represent to business. The properties may have numerous characteristics, represent
different status or confer the ability to cause certain emotions, but understanding, analyzing
and anticipating the wishes of individual tourists and differentiating their service delivery and
building closer, personalised collaborations with them allows their owners to expand their
potential business and strengthen their position on the platform and in the community. By
omitting this important factor, the competitive position could be spoiled. The owner should
be attentive to requests, respond in a personalised way and take advantage of synergies
between this environment and the tourist, one to one. Mutual accountability and this
exchange are part of this process based on this recent activity in long tail tourism.
This paper also suggests that there are advantages in using corpus linguistic software
programs to analyse large numbers of testimony texts in order to better understand the
interaction among and between OVR players. This type of analysis can often shed light on
the relationship (material and symbolic) with the properties themselves, as well as illustrate
the different types of relationships established. From this exercise, we were able to identify
micro-communities inserted within a broader and more differentiated community, thus
suggesting the possibility of other tendencies and behaviours to be explored, given the
complexity and malleability of tourism in a social context. If, however, some similarities
among the points-of-view and interests are manifest in the corpus of testimonies as a whole,
these similarities – or representations – are more evident when we look at groups of the
same nationality.
Our research suggests that the role of testimonies in OVR represents the human side of the
experience, bringing diverse imaginaries to accommodation possibilities; and when these
representations meet the expectations of the type of experience desired, tourists will select
that property. This evidence reinforces the claim made by HomeAway.com that a ‘‘property
with testimonies will have a 33 per cent greater chance of being selected compared to those
that have none’’ (HomeAway.co.uk, n.d.).
If technologies affect the processes of making economic and social decisions, which in turn
affect political decision-making, the users and infrastructure associated with them will not
only re?ect but also mould and modify society (MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1985; De Laat,
2000). As Tribe (2008) suggests (see also Leung and Law, 2007; Gretzel, 2011), it is
necessary to incorporate critical theory into research that aims to investigate the
relationships between technology and tourism. Thus, the next step should be to re?ect on
the impact that this platform (HomeAway.com) has on socio-technical systems. It is also
worth remembering that it is dif?cult to generalise from case studies (Yin, 2003), and so it
would be bene?cial to compare this study with other contexts –, e.g. other platforms or
geographical regions, in order to consolidate the results. The collaboration and the
innovative use of online vacation rentals will facilitate increased competitiveness between
properties and tourist destinations, and this sector should be included in the analysis tourist
destination.
Strategic implications
These results are valuable to the HomeAway company, and its members and tourists should
maintain efforts to improve communication with customers and public. Connection is the
core of this business, and HomeAway.com is an advisor and trusted source of information,
collaborating with and supporting through the channels all actors evolved in the rental
vacation business. As customized communities provide content and a seamless user
experience, the reviews and all conversations must be seen as an opportunity to improve or
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maintain the service. It is an ongoing process which is constantly diverse and variable.
However, on a ?nal note, as there are doubtless some tourist/service provider interactions
that are dif?cult to capture, in future we may need to re-evaluate the way in which we try to
gather data from these less visible elements of the process.
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About the authors
Joana Afonso Dias is a PhD student at Huelva University (Spain). She is interested in
e-tourism and the impact of information and technology on the management of tourism and
its implications for strategic management, such as virtual tourism. She is currently
investigating consumer behaviour theories of tourism and social interaction. She is a
Lecturer at Instituto Superior Dom Afonso III, Loule´ where she teaches a variety of marketing
(research) courses. Joana Afonso Dias is the corresponding author and can be contacted
at: [email protected]
Anto´ nia Correia is an Assistant Professor with aggregation at the University of the Algarve.
Her current research interests are concerned with the application to tourism of consumer
behaviour theories, paying particular attention to issues associated with psycho-social
variables that in?uence choices/decisions, the external factors that affect consumer
behaviour and social interactions, risk and uncertainty in consumer behaviour and models of
destination choice, motivation and satisfaction, product/destination image, virtual tourism
and golf. She has published in leading journals, such as Annals of Tourism Research,
Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research, among others.
Francisco Jose´ Mart? ´nez Lo´ pez is a Full Professor at the University of Huelva, in Spain. He
has a PhD in Economics and Business Sciences from the University of Seville, is Chancellor
of the University of Huelva and Professor of the Department of Financial and Managerial
Information Systems. His current research interests are concerned with information and
technology.
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doc_520341017.pdf
This study aims to examine, via social exchange theory and social representations, how
online vacation rentals (OVR) connect tourists and owners. It also aims to understand the dynamics and
representations between owners and tourists in Albufeira, one of the most popular counties in the south
of Portugal, supported on the theories of representation and social exchange. More specifically
this research is structured on the following question: how the consequents – engagement and
personalization – are materialized in the testimonies and descriptions posted on the vacation rentals
platform.
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
From information-sharing to vacation rental choices – the case of Albufeira, Portugal
J oana Afonso Dias Antónia Correia Francisco J osé Martínez López
Article information:
To cite this document:
J oana Afonso Dias Antónia Correia Francisco J osé Martínez López , (2014),"From information-sharing to vacation rental choices – the case
of Albufeira, Portugal", International J ournal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 8 Iss 1 pp. 35 - 47
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Frominformation-sharing to vacation rental
choices – the case of Albufeira, Portugal
Joana Afonso Dias, Anto´ nia Correia and Francisco Jose´ Mart? ´nez Lo´ pez
Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to examine, via social exchange theory and social representations, how
online vacation rentals (OVR) connect tourists and owners. It also aims to understand the dynamics and
representations between owners and tourists in Albufeira, one of the most popular counties in the south
of Portugal, supported on the theories of representation and social exchange. More speci?cally
this research is structured on the following question: how the consequents – engagement and
personalization – are materialized in the testimonies and descriptions posted on the vacation rentals
platform.
Design/methodology/approach – The initial assumption for this exploratory study is that OVR bring
both material and intangible advantages for the individual consumer and for the community of
homeowners. Drawing fromnetnography, using textual analysis, including the use of a corpus linguistics
software program(WordSmith v.6), the authors aimto capture the multidimensional meanings presented
by the tourists’ online reviews of their travelling experience and home rental.
Findings – The ?ndings suggest that sharing the same nationality can facilitate engagement and
in?uence the decision-making process (selection of property). Furthermore, ?ndings point to a sense of
place construed through affordances of place, home and a functional sense of place. Personalization of
services is perceived by tourists as a positive outcome, this being the result of a positive evaluation that
properties have received.
Originality/value – The innovative design of this research, combining textual analysis and netnography
of data reviews, and the analysis of this new form of tourism are the main contributions of this paper.
Keywords Engagement, Personalization, Social exchange theory, Netnography,
Online vacation rentals (OVR), Social representations theory
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Social networks are a vehicle for consumers not only for searching but also for sharing their
travel experiences by posting comments and opinions, all of which then serve as information
for others (Xiang and Gretzel, 2010). Interaction enhances co-operation and the sharing of
individual or inter-individual experiences, contributing to the building of social
representations that may contribute to form virtual communities. On the other hand, social
exchange theory assumes that social relations involve exchange of resources among
groups seeking mutual bene?ts from exchange relationships. The innovative use of social
networks in tourism, when based on a philosophy of learning, can stimulate communications
and interactions among and between different players. From this profound alteration in the
tourism market, whether from the perspective of the service provider or the consumer, these
elements have given rise to virtual communities. As Gro¨ nroos (2007) notes, when consumers
are looking for products or services they are also looking for solutions that will serve their own
processes of generating value. A growing part of tourism communication relationships
involve technical and symbolic means. Pearce and Moscardo (2002) argue that the theory of
social representations is an ideal theoretical approach to study tourism and its relations with
DOI 10.1108/IJCTHR-07-2013-0049 VOL. 8 NO. 1 2014, pp. 35-47, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182
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PAGE 35
Joana Afonso Dias is a
Junior Lecturer in the
Department of
Management and
Marketing, INUAF –
Instituto Superior Afonso III,
Localidade, Portugal.
Anto´ nia Correia is Assistant
Professor at the Faculty of
Economy, University of the
Algarve, Algarve, Portugal.
Francisco Jose´ Mart? ´nez
Lo´ pez is Full Professor at
Financial and Managerial
Information Systems,
University of Huelva,
Huelva, Spain.
Received 29 July 2013
Revised 12 January 2014
Accepted 20 January 2014
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the community, given the possibility of the theory of social representations re?ecting
common sense, opinions and knowledge of a particular group on a social object.
Engagement and personalisation are the tangible consequents of interaction and
communication processes that may be outlined with a qualitative research, such as this
one. Hence this study focuses on a virtual community, a private destination on the internet
(Homeaway.co.uk) that addresses the needs of its members by facilitating peer-to-peer
interaction and communication. HomeAway.com is the world’s leading online market place
for the vacation rental industry, consisting of a portfolio of web sites dedicated to many
holiday rental markets, located in more than 170 countries, and it is here that the virtual
renting of privatively-owned properties is undertaken. These social exchanges and content
cannot be underestimated in the interactivity and interaction inherent in social exchanges
between owners and tourists. Through this social networking and computer-mediated
platform, owners and tourists share testimonies that are engrained in their social
representations but also comprise social exchanges. This research aims to understand
the dynamics and representations between owners and tourists in Albufeira, one of the most
popular counties in the south of Portugal, supported on the theories of representation and
social exchange.
Therefore this study aims to examine, via social exchange theory and social representations,
how tourists and owners interact and communicate in online vacation rentals. More
speci?cally this research is structured on the following question: How the consequents –
engagement and personalisation – are materialized in the testimonies and descriptions
posted on the vacation rentals platform.
This research ?lls a gap in the literature in three ways. At a theoretical level, engagement and
personalisation are still constructs that deserve more research as they are not consensual in
the literature (Shen and Ball, 2009; Sawhney et al., 2005). Further, by bringing together the
theories of social representations and social exchanges (State et al., 2012) this research
made advances on the grounds of the interactions and communications in the virtual world
supporting the formation of the consequents of this relation, materialized by engagement
and personalisation. At a methodological level, qualitative research allows us to explore
thoroughly the formation of both constructs. At a practical level this research focuses on a
relatively new market segment (Anderson, 2006) that is emerging and which is one of the
most promising in tourism development – online vacation rentals (Frommer, 2010).
The paper is organised as follows: in the next section, the theoretical framework of the study
is laid out, including an outline of the principles of social exchange theory and social
representations theory. The following section introduces and integrates the phenomenon of
OVR in the tourism context by reviewing the key concepts. Then the methodology is
presented, followed by a discussion of the results and, ?nally, the conclusions, including a
summary of the main contributions and limitations of the study and suggestions for future
research.
Theoretical insights
The basis of this research relies on social exchange theory and social representations.
Social exchange theory explains how attitudes relate to other people and are largely
dependent on perceptions that are based on the balance of the relationship, the type of
relationship expected and the opportunity to have a better relationship with others
(Andereck et al., 2005; Emerson, 1976; Wallace and Wolf, 2006). It is based on the premise
that human behaviour – or social interaction – is an exchange of activity, both tangible and
intangible (Homans, 1961), comprising rewards and costs (Homans, 1961). Furthermore,
social exchange theory examines the processes of the creation and maintenance of
reciprocity in social relations, or mutual grati?cation among and between people, which
gives rise to the engagement needed to set a certain deal. The main assumption of
exchange theory is that individuals establish and maintain social relations based on their
expectations that such relations will be mutually advantageous. In tourism studies, this
theory has recently been receiving more attention (Woosnam et al., 2009; Andereck et al.,
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2005; Claiborne, 2010; Jurowski et al., 1997; McGhee and Andereck, 2004; Perdue et al.,
1990; Sirakaya et al., 2002) with particular focus on the attitudes of local residents towards
tourism. Social exchange theory has not been applied yet in online contexts to the authors’
best knowledge. On the other hand, social representation is an implicit concept that orients
people’s actions, making up an important dimension via which rational thoughts about an
object are consistently organised. Moscovici (1961, 1976), argues that social representation
is the knowledge that produces and determines behaviours, since it de?nes the nature of the
stimuli that surround us as well as the signi?cance of responses. Social representations
relate to the ways in which consumers perceive the symbolism of their consumption, in
relation to other social perceptions for the same forms of consumption. Thus, social
representations serve as code and interpretation systems, provided by society, which
project values and social aspirations (Jodelet, 1990). Social representation theory describes
how and what people think in their everyday experiences and how a wider social reality
in?uences their thoughts (Moscovici, 1981). Previous researchers employed social
representations theory and social exchange theory either as a quantitative paradigm
(Fredline and Faulkner, 2001) or a qualitative one (Andriotis and Vaughan, 2003, Yutyunyong
and Scott, 2009).
These theories provide the basis for this research which aims to understand how the social
representations possessed by tourists and second home owners are embedded in the
information exchanged in an online environment, and how this social exchange moderates
the information they decide to share. The consequent of this exchange is assumed as
engagement whereas the social representations materialized in the posts are the result of a
personalisation of their experiences. Generally speaking, engagement is achieved via posts
that lead tourists to a number of perceptions, and in which it is feasible to explicitly or
implicitly share social representations about and around the property. Further it may be
assumed that tourists’ and owners’ social exchanges are maintained based on the
expectation that this relation will be advantageous for both. In the online vacation rentals
process, it is not only the testimonials or suggestions obtained at the end of service provision
that enhance its value. Requests or questions posed, even before the tourists stay, can lead
to a greater involvement and enhance the creation of value associated with the process. This
‘‘virtual courtship’’ forms an engagement sustained by personalised responses, and
enriches the future stay. These owners’ attitudes relate to tourists dependent on perceptions
that are based on the balance of their relationship and what type of relationship they
expected (Andereck et al., 2005; Emerson, 1976; Wallace and Wolf, 2006). Moreover the
reviews under analysis are written to implicitly or explicitly support the social representations
in and around the property available on the OVR platform, which bestow on the property the
level of personalisation which tourists are looking for.
The posts under analysis are written to implicitly or explicitly evidence social representations
in and around the property announced, which bestow on the property the level of
personalisation which tourists are seeking.
Conceptual framework
This paper integrates social exchange theory and social representations theory based on an
investigation of individual and societal components of tourists’ perceptions provided in an
OVR context.
Figure 1 illustrates the ?ux of information in online vacation rentals, in which the presence of
two poles is a determining factor (tourist and owner). Without bi-directional interaction
between these two entities, OVR would not make any sense. The tourist and owner are both
actors in the OVR process, and as such they share information, interpret it and can make use
of it (or not), meaning that all feedback is converted into potential added value.
The processes related to search activities create their own ?ux of data (researching a
property, analyzing the information, making a decision) which interrelate with functions of
control (checking availability, methods of payment, among others). The current trend of
mobile phone applications is also having a strong dynamic effect on this channel, for both
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tourists and owners. This allows even greater agility in the promptness of responses. The
data that emerge from the ?uxes and sub-?uxes in OVR are transformed into information,
and then into constructed representations which allowthe receiver (tourist, owner) to make a
decision.
Information ?ow and social actors’ engagement and personalization
Tourists and owners live in a world of social objects in the context of online vacation rentals.
This process instigates material and symbolic collective coping. First anchoring it to an
image, then interpreting it in familiar terms and representations and then adding further
reviews, descriptions and elaborations leads to an objecti?ed image, metaphor or symbol.
The tangible and intangible features of the online process enact social perceptions and new
social representations are ?nally built making the phenomenon familiar and part of common
sense. Consumer engagement in a virtual community involves interactive experiences
between tourists and owners, and/or other members of the community. All the processes of
engagement are aimed at facilitating the involvement of the tourist, making his or her
experience relevant at a personal level, creating a personal connection and therefore
strengthening (or not) the desire to participate in a future experience.
Different points of contact and opportunities for encounters are established (tourist reviews
(1); owners pro?le available on OVR platforms (2) and global information (3); virtual
relationship through e-mails (4); and explorative analysis (5)) between tourists and service
providers. The online vacation rentals process comprises cognitive, emotional and
behavioural dimensions and the two principal actors could play hybrid roles, as the tourist, in
different moment, can be an owner, and the owner can be a tourist. This possibility might
provide a consciousness attitude in the way the business is run. The tourist engages initially
with an inanimate object of interest (e.g. a villa) and owners’ descriptions; reviews about the
villa that he is interest in are posted by others tourists through OVR, and then progress to
two-way interactions with the owner(s), and thus the relationship ends with a business deal
or not (see Figure 2).
Methodology
This study is applied to the Algarve region in Portugal, which has a population of around
400,000 and attracts 5,000,000 tourists per year (Ana, 2008). According to a recent report,
half of UK overseas home-owners bought properties in coastal locations over recent
decades. Moreover, Almeida (2010) shows that of those who stated they bought a house in
the Algarve, 21 per cent bought it directly fromtheir previous owner, 18 per cent directly from
friends and 48 per cent used an estate agent. The geographical site chosen for this research
was Albufeira, since it has the largest number of listed properties in Portugal on the platform
under study (HomeAway.uk.com). While this particular investigation of the owner’s
relationship with OVR tourists is supported by Netnography, there also exist other
research challenges in terms of accessing the intangible dimensions of ‘‘relationship’’;
notably, the exploration and identi?cation of subjective feelings of the owner-tourist
relationship could determine intrinsic aspects of the commercial vacation product. Since
there is no structured information available concerning OVR information ?ows, or the roles
Figure 1 The information ?ow that sustains the OVR phenomenon
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and behaviours of participants, this research is exploratory in its essence. Given that the
focus is more on understanding and interpreting than on explanation and prediction, an
interpretative qualitative approach is the most suitable (Decrop and Masset, 2011).
Netnography is recommended as a method by which to study communities which exist only
in cyberspace and the virtual world and where normal access would prove to be dif?cult
(Langer and Beckmann, 2005).The fundamentals of netnography data collection and
analysis were taken into account to ensure the trustworthiness of the results. It is important to
restate this research offers neither representativeness nor generalisation, as the conclusions
are limited to the sample analysis. Furthermore, this research offers trustworthiness as in
most exploratory qualitative researches (Wallendorf and Belk, 1989; Lincoln and Guba,
1985), but not validity as is commonly stated in quantitative research. This research collects
and observes textual data, and as such our unit of analysis is not the person but the
behaviour (Mead et al., 1938). It could also be assumed that posts are a social action is
trustworthy and relevant.
The qualitative outcome of the previous stage (data collection) was examined and
messages that are directly related to the research questions are recognised. Using textual
analysis including the use of a corpus linguistics analytical tool (the software program
WordSmith v.6, Scott, 2011), the authors aim to capture the multidimensional meanings
presented by the tourists’ online reviews of their travelling experience and home rental.
To collect the reviews we assumed the procedure outlined by Kozinets (2002, 2010). We
directly copied the posts from HomeAway.uk.com platform and according to Kozinets
(2010) and Belk et al. (2013), the guiding principles for deciding whether to use a web site
were present: the relevance of the web site; how recent the communications are; if the web
site is interactive; if it has critical mass and if the site has posts that are rich in detail. All ?ve of
these characteristics were identi?ed in the platform under study. The analysis is based on a
convenience sample of tourists’ postings collected from the web site HomeAway.uk.com,
using a qualitative explorative approach to the textual data. From 1 February 2013 to the
middle of March 2013, the researchers reviewed intensively all the proprieties with reviews
and managed by owners from 2009 to 2012 and discarded the data of property
management run by companies. The selection process, summarised by Figure 3, resulted in
Figure 2 Tangible and intangible features of the OVR process that enact social perceptions
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1979 reviews (173,813 words in total). An attempt was made to ?nd diverse views (both
positive and negative reviews were collected) although our data contain mainly positive
evaluations and just a few negative ones were analysed taking into consideration the criteria
suggest by Kozinets (2002). The data sample, also, comprises posts in both high and low
seasons, and corresponds to 95 per cent of the total number of testimonies posted on this
platform relating to properties in Albufeira. Like Mallorca (Kozak and Rimmington, 1999),
Albufeira is a very popular summer vacation destination, though it is also popular out of
season as a winter destination too. We thus consider that the sample captures the critical
mass of communications and overall atmosphere of the object of study and also re?ects the
heterogeneous nature of the environment, since the data comprise tourists of various
nationalities, although the nationalities most represented are the British, Portuguese and
Germans. Lastly, it is worth noting the richness of some of the testimonies in terms of their
detail, meaning that interesting results were obtained, as we will show below.
The option to use mostly a qualitative explorative research design was determined by the
nature of investigation aims and the need to adopt a perspective that would not rely on a
preconceived model, but rather on the analysis of words, as in Ryan and Cave’s, 2005
research about Auckland’s image as a visitor destination. As our analysis mostly considers
conversations, connections, and re?ections of other social experiences to be, in some sense,
a type of ‘‘content’’ that can be said to exist apart fromits context, we can regard the data that
such techniques produce as useful for purposes of qualitative research (Belk et al., 2013).
Equally, the tests of the validity of data interpretation are more dif?cult than in the case of
statistical data that possess well-understood tests of reliability and validity. Any analysis of
qualitative data can offer only tests of credibility by the use of congruent interpretations
derived fromresearchers working initially separately, or by the results ‘‘making sense’’ to other
stakeholders, or by reference to ?ndings derived from other studies within the literature. With
reference to this last point, the results of this study reveal again the consistent pattern that
arose in previous research (Dias et al., 2013). Tourists who use the OVR platform choose
familiar ground, thus highlighting the dimensions of security and familiarity in networking.
Findings
The primary purpose of cross-checking between the nationality of the tourists and owners
was to evaluate the level of intensity between them, and to what extent our suspicion the
existence of nationality micro-communities – British to British, German to German identi?ed
in a previous study (Dias et al., 2013) – was supported by the extensive analysis carried out
by the authors. This was done following the properties advertised on the platform
HomeAway.uk.com, the destination under study, with testimonies between 2009 and 2012.
Figure 3 Customer review selection process
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From Table I below it is visible that the intensity of traf?c (number of posts) we can state, from
the 497 of the total number of properties available on the HomeAway.uk.com web site that
are located in Albufeira, 64 per cent of the owners are British, 23 per cent Portuguese, 7 per
cent Irish and 4 per cent German. An analysis of the nationality of the tourists that posted on
the web site (n ¼ 1979) regarding their stay in a property shows that the tourists that
predominate are British (61 per cent), followed at some distance by Irish (11 per cent),
Germans (8 per cent) and Portuguese (4 per cent).
This evidence shows that social actors tend to interact with peers of their own nationality
(British to British) which is in accordance with Dias et al. (2013). Table II shows that more than
three quarters (76 per cent) of the posts are from British tourists who selected properties
managed by a British owner. This also applies to the Germans, although the number of
properties managed by Germans is relatively small (4 per cent); the vast majority (97 per
cent) of posts relating to these properties were made by Germans. Of the units managed by
the Irish, 60 per cent of posts came from Irish tourists and 32 per cent from British. The
distribution of posts by author nationality for the properties managed by the Portuguese was
as follows: British (40 per cent), French (15 per cent), Portuguese (13 per cent), Dutch (10
per cent) and Irish (7 per cent) – with other nationalities hardly represented.
The content analysis identi?ed two principal dimensions in tourist-owner relationships in the
context of online vacations rentals. This study exposes those dimensions: engagement and
personalisation. These results may intuitively suggest that the actors’ engagement is more
evident and tends to grow within the same nationality, and it is also noted that, people’s
cultural background and home environments (Dann, 1993; Yagi, 2001) seem to facilitate
virtual con?dence and trust and enhance engagement. This tourist’s review illustrates the
individual’s heightened levels of cognitive and /or behavioural engagement:
Everything ran smoothly frombeginning to end with the booking. Tracy is very prompt at replying,
the apartment is reasonably priced. The apartment is just as pictured, spacious, spotlessly clean
and comfortable. The location is fabulous. The sea and beach is at the end of the road and you
have an amazing view over the bay. The old town is a few minutes’ walk away. As mentioned the
Treˆ s Coronas restaurant is de?nitely worth a visit and as an additional plus they sell wine from Cliff
Richard’s vineyard!
Table I Intensity of traf?c
Albufeira (%)
British 64
Portuguese 23
Irish 7
German 4
Note: n ¼ 497
Source: Authors’ own data from HomeAway.co.uk – December 2012
Table II Posts by nationality
Testimonies
Owner’s nationality British (%) Portuguese (%) Irish (%) German (%) Others (%)
British 76 2 10 2 10
a
Portuguese 40 13 7 4 36
b
Irish 32 1 60 – 7
German 1 – – 97 2
Notes:
a
Dutch (2 per cent); Canadian (1 per cent); French (1 per cent); Danish (0.4 per cent); Spanish
(0.4 per cent); Belgian (0.4 per cent); USA (0.4 per cent);
b
French (15 per cent); Dutch (10 per cent);
Spanish (5 per cent); Canadian (3 per cent); USA (3 per cent)
Source: Authors’ own data from HomeAway.co.uk – December 2012
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This review illustrated tourist engagement as the level of a tourist’s physical, cognitive and
emotional presence in their relationship with owner, as de?ned by Patterson et al. (2006). The
opportunity mentioned of buying wine from Cliff Richard’s vineyard suggest that all the
property’s guests would like this and it is expectable that all would love it. Cliff Richard is a
British pop star who was famous fromthe 1950s to the 1990s. This reminds us, once again, of
the British-to-British micro-community.
Just wanted to say thanks for letting us have this villa at short notice! It has been a really great
holiday and the weather has been fantastic. The villa itself is beautiful and the children really
enjoyed the pool. A special thanks goes to John and Alain as they have been a great help over the
last week. A car rental would be highly recommended but for those who don’t want to drive or
can’t drive Jean and Alan are great to have around!
The personalized drive service is well received and apparently the owners are aware of it.
The tourist’s level of engagement is also visible, ?rst with the speci?c inanimate object (villa),
thus serving to impact on their tourist engagement states. Tourist engagement is a process
which begins through a virtual environment and develops in the real state. In addition, the
following tourist review provides another example of personalization:
Peter was very very helpful could not fault him nothing was too much trouble he was extremely
helpful when my mum was ill and needed treatment from the medical centre he was also on time
for doing airport runs once again I would like to give a big thank you to Alex and Peter for such a
relaxing enjoyable holiday many thanks from the hill family.
There are repeat examples of personalization service, as a service attitude – attending to the
individual needs of a client (Ball et al., 2006):
Thank you to Nigel and Rosie for providing a beautiful apartment which totally lived up to
expectations and more! It is very much ‘‘our style’’ as we thought it would be from the information
given and we immediately felt at home.
My family and I had a brilliant holiday. The apartment was stunning and had everything that you
could possibly need and more. It was very spacious and beautifully decorated and really felt like
home from home.
In order to analyze the corpus of texts collected from the HomeAway.com web site we use
corpus analysis software (in this case, WordSmith version 6, Scott, 2011). This corpus
analysis program has a function – concord – that explores word connections, giving the
surrounding context for each instance that is found. Our main objective of using this speci?c
function is to investigate how tourists perceive the personalization of services and how they
engage with owners, exploring the numerous contexts and with co-texts to the left and the
right, as is explained in Figure 4.
The word ‘‘owner (s)’’ was selected to perform a corpus analysis, although this kind of
analysis cannot give de?nitive answers, only clues. The owner(s) evoke feelings of familiarity,
comfort and easy integration in tourists’ assessment of their stay, thus reinforcing both the
potential engagement and personalised service that characterises this niche business
segment. The results show quite clearly that owner(s) is widely mentioned and refers to the
concept (excellent customer service; easy to deal with/made the book easy; replied to my
e-mails promptly; has thought of everything; made us feel con?dent; very friendly; very
helpful; kept in regular contact). This positive engagement results in a very positive
experience evaluation. Although we are not concerned with valence (positive or negative
evaluation) in a brief analysis we conclude the average rating attributed to the Albufeira OVR
context is high; it has a high proportion of maximum 5-star ratings. (From the 239 properties
evaluated, 220 achieved 5 stars – 92 per cent). However, for the purposes of this study, we
are not too concerned with this since, we are focusing most on how the representational
contents are modelled by contact and relationship with the owner through the testimonies
posted after a stay in a property.
Even with help of WordSmith (wordlist function) we found a strong presence of the word
‘‘pool’’ in the 1,979 posts analysed (it is used a total of 1,067 times). Almost all the properties
in the Albufeira sample have a swimming pool, which is clearly a much-appreciated facility.
On the other hand, the word ‘‘sea’’ is used much less – in fact overall, in the whole corpus, it
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is used just 55 times. Although this ?nding is based on a simple word count, and does not
take the co-text into account, it is still indicative of the behaviours described in the
experiences. The fact that a pool is always presented in the testimonies quoted shows the
importance that the tourists attach to this facility, both as an integral part of their experience
and as a symbolic privileged lifestyle indicator, another signi?cant social representation
example. Also, the properties’ amenities, comforts, geographic situation and close
surroundings are what are most salient, representative and most frequent in the testimonies.
The recommendations for restaurants and places to visit (golf courses, theme parks, among
others.) are also very frequent. Generally speaking, we may conclude that positive
experiences relate to engagement and personalisation as well as attributes of the
destination, mainly facilities, landscape and comforts.
Conclusions
The renting of private properties for holidays via the internet (OVR) is grounded in an
experience environment whereby tourists actively engage in dialogues, often in real time,
and construct co-created and personalised experiences with the help of other inputs (both
human and non-human). The product itself may be the same product, but tourists can ‘build’
different tourist experiences.
During the OVR process tourists and owners establish and maintain social relations based
on their expectations that such relations will be mutually advantageous. The results of our
study show that owners are conscious of these advantages since their engagement and
relationship with tourists is often present. Owners’ compensations and recognitions are the
major factor that accounts for owner motivations. For the tourist, the owner represents a
brand, an ethical code of sales, a philosophy of business management – it is not just the
virtual engagement that counts. During the rental vacation experience, the owner’s
performance is also valuable in terms of functional and affective answers to the tourist.
The article highlights the most signi?cant features of the relationship that is established
between owner and tourist in the OVR context. Whether functional aspects or emotional
aspects are exchanged, tourists and owners can create / enhance bene?cial outcomes
(?nancial and non-?nancial) for both. In the OVR context the value of the functional aspects
to be performed during stay is agreed between both parties, the resulting collaboration on
Figure 4 Concord function output – all 1979 testimonies
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speci?c applications and loving relationship, not least, develops along the process, either by
cultural af?nities (nationality, same tastes, similar aspirations, etc.) or through the testimony
of other alike tourists. Tourists generally refer to positive aspects and engagement seems to
us to be stronger when faced with more immediate individuals (owner and tourist) of the
same nationality, which apparently points to common cultural aspirations of alike holiday
experiences (Cohen, 1972).
Property owners, in the future, should understand the potential power that conversation may
represent to business. The properties may have numerous characteristics, represent
different status or confer the ability to cause certain emotions, but understanding, analyzing
and anticipating the wishes of individual tourists and differentiating their service delivery and
building closer, personalised collaborations with them allows their owners to expand their
potential business and strengthen their position on the platform and in the community. By
omitting this important factor, the competitive position could be spoiled. The owner should
be attentive to requests, respond in a personalised way and take advantage of synergies
between this environment and the tourist, one to one. Mutual accountability and this
exchange are part of this process based on this recent activity in long tail tourism.
This paper also suggests that there are advantages in using corpus linguistic software
programs to analyse large numbers of testimony texts in order to better understand the
interaction among and between OVR players. This type of analysis can often shed light on
the relationship (material and symbolic) with the properties themselves, as well as illustrate
the different types of relationships established. From this exercise, we were able to identify
micro-communities inserted within a broader and more differentiated community, thus
suggesting the possibility of other tendencies and behaviours to be explored, given the
complexity and malleability of tourism in a social context. If, however, some similarities
among the points-of-view and interests are manifest in the corpus of testimonies as a whole,
these similarities – or representations – are more evident when we look at groups of the
same nationality.
Our research suggests that the role of testimonies in OVR represents the human side of the
experience, bringing diverse imaginaries to accommodation possibilities; and when these
representations meet the expectations of the type of experience desired, tourists will select
that property. This evidence reinforces the claim made by HomeAway.com that a ‘‘property
with testimonies will have a 33 per cent greater chance of being selected compared to those
that have none’’ (HomeAway.co.uk, n.d.).
If technologies affect the processes of making economic and social decisions, which in turn
affect political decision-making, the users and infrastructure associated with them will not
only re?ect but also mould and modify society (MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1985; De Laat,
2000). As Tribe (2008) suggests (see also Leung and Law, 2007; Gretzel, 2011), it is
necessary to incorporate critical theory into research that aims to investigate the
relationships between technology and tourism. Thus, the next step should be to re?ect on
the impact that this platform (HomeAway.com) has on socio-technical systems. It is also
worth remembering that it is dif?cult to generalise from case studies (Yin, 2003), and so it
would be bene?cial to compare this study with other contexts –, e.g. other platforms or
geographical regions, in order to consolidate the results. The collaboration and the
innovative use of online vacation rentals will facilitate increased competitiveness between
properties and tourist destinations, and this sector should be included in the analysis tourist
destination.
Strategic implications
These results are valuable to the HomeAway company, and its members and tourists should
maintain efforts to improve communication with customers and public. Connection is the
core of this business, and HomeAway.com is an advisor and trusted source of information,
collaborating with and supporting through the channels all actors evolved in the rental
vacation business. As customized communities provide content and a seamless user
experience, the reviews and all conversations must be seen as an opportunity to improve or
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maintain the service. It is an ongoing process which is constantly diverse and variable.
However, on a ?nal note, as there are doubtless some tourist/service provider interactions
that are dif?cult to capture, in future we may need to re-evaluate the way in which we try to
gather data from these less visible elements of the process.
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About the authors
Joana Afonso Dias is a PhD student at Huelva University (Spain). She is interested in
e-tourism and the impact of information and technology on the management of tourism and
its implications for strategic management, such as virtual tourism. She is currently
investigating consumer behaviour theories of tourism and social interaction. She is a
Lecturer at Instituto Superior Dom Afonso III, Loule´ where she teaches a variety of marketing
(research) courses. Joana Afonso Dias is the corresponding author and can be contacted
at: [email protected]
Anto´ nia Correia is an Assistant Professor with aggregation at the University of the Algarve.
Her current research interests are concerned with the application to tourism of consumer
behaviour theories, paying particular attention to issues associated with psycho-social
variables that in?uence choices/decisions, the external factors that affect consumer
behaviour and social interactions, risk and uncertainty in consumer behaviour and models of
destination choice, motivation and satisfaction, product/destination image, virtual tourism
and golf. She has published in leading journals, such as Annals of Tourism Research,
Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research, among others.
Francisco Jose´ Mart? ´nez Lo´ pez is a Full Professor at the University of Huelva, in Spain. He
has a PhD in Economics and Business Sciences from the University of Seville, is Chancellor
of the University of Huelva and Professor of the Department of Financial and Managerial
Information Systems. His current research interests are concerned with information and
technology.
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