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InícioChamadas para contribuiçõesChamadas fechadasVol. 14, issue 27 (2019)

Vol. 14, issue 27 (2019)

Call for papers for Comunicação Pública No. 27 (December 2019)

Special Dossier: Omni-channel Communication in Tourism

Editors:

Raquel Barbosa Ribeiro and Filipa Fernandes (Centro de Administração e Políticas Públicas, Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas, Universidade de Lisboa)

Languages: Portuguese; English; Spanish

Deadline for submission: 15 October 2019

Overview

We find ourselves in the era of services and strategic communication is crucial for its success. In the last decades, the society digitalization process (Batra & Keller, 2016) has had a notable influence on strategic communication.

Despite the marked emphasis placed on the digital by academics and professionals, digital interaction alone does not generate consumer preference, and face-to-face interpersonal communication keeps on being a major differentiating factor among brands (Berman & Thelen, 2018). Interpersonal communication is a crucial element in relational exchanges, playing a preponderant role in reducing customer uncertainty; due to its intangible character, it is also an important factor in building affective engagements, especially in the service sector (Walz & Celuch, 2012). Customer service in particular has been shown to be a critical feature in customer satisfaction and loyalty (Alge, Gresham, Heneman, Fox, & McMasters, 2002). Kotler et al. (2017) argue that multi-channel communication (online or offline) evolved to omni-channel communication (online and offline) so as to provide the customer with a continuing experience of contact.

Tourism, a growing activity sector (globally as well as domestically) is an area ripe with opportunities for researching omni-channel communication. Digital changes in tourism have brought us the expansion of digital influencers, e-wom, and user-generated content, all of which supported by audiovisual platforms, digital social media and digital communities. Those changes have led to an increase in the global demand for tourism services and to a concomitant decrease in the number of people who engage the services of traditional travel agencies – a phenomenon that became known as the process of ‘disintermediation’ (Law, Leung, Leung, & Fong, 2015). Despite the many predictions of its disappearance due to the impact of the Internet, interpersonal communication is not dead; in fact, many consumers still prefer to talk to an expert interlocutor about their travel plans, and the reason why this is the case lies on the affective benefits that the consumer draws from having interpersonal communication with their travel agent increase the perceived value of the experience (Terblanche & Taljaard, 2018).

We see thus that, in tourism, virtual reality in shops and investment in online communication coexist with providing the customer with personalised experiences and services, which verbal and non-verbal communication components have a significant impact in terms of retention, loyalty and organisational resilience (Cerdeira, 2015).

It therefore seems that research on omni-channel communication in tourism is likely to yield a considerable potential for detecting innovative strategies and tactics with advantages to other for-profit and not-for-profit areas of activity.

Objectives and Intended Focus

To identify agents, publics, processes and outcomes of tourism communication (mass, interpersonal and computer-mediated communication) in omni-channel context;

To understand the developments of tourism communication in omni-channel context, with a focus on: digital influence, customer service, training and relational communication;

To identify processes of narrative building and tourism discourses in omni-channel context;

To understand consumers’ perception on omni-channel tourism communication;

To promote the debate on the complementarity of online and offline communication, taking the tourism sector as reference;

We welcome high-quality written papers on the issues above listed, supported by scientific-academic research focused on (but not limited to) the following topics:

  1. Agents, publics, processes and results of tourism communication;

  2. Mass communication, interpersonal communication e computer-mediated communication in tourism;

  3. Tourism communication in omni-channel context;

  4. Digital influence, customer service, training and relational communication in tourism;

  5. Tourism narratives and discourses;

  6. Complementarity of online and offline communication in tourism.

KEY DATES

1st Call for Papers: 29 May 2019

Deadline for Submissions: 15 October 2019

Deadline for Notification of Acceptance: 30 October 2019

Deadline for submitting the final version of accepted paper: 15 November 2019

Publication date: 15 December 2019

Submission guidelines:

Manuscripts should follow the preformatted template (https://www.escs.ipl.pt/investigacao/revista-comunicacao-publica/call-for-papers) and be submitted by e-mail (sent to: cpublica@escs.ipl.pt) attached in .doc format. The subject to be included is the following: Dossie temático 01_COT.

Papers can be written in English, Spanish or Portuguese, always using Microsoft Word. They are to include an abstract of up to 900 characters, five keywords written in both the language of the paper and in English, and the author’s details (name, affiliation, position, field of study, and contact information). The full paper, with reference list, annexes and citations should not exceed 50.000 characters (including spaces, endnotes, references, tables, images, etc.). Studies, Notes and Book Reviews should not exceed 10.000 characters (For more information please see Normas de Publicação).

Upon acceptance of a paper for publication, the individual or collective author(s) will be asked to assign copyright to Comunicação Pública.

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