General Information

Zheng (Phil) Xiang, Ph.D. Assistant Professor   Area: Tourism; Marketing; Information Technology; E-Commerce

Box 311100 Denton, TX 76203-1100 P (940) 369-7680 F (940) 565-4348 philxz@unt.edu

 

 

Research Area

• Management Information Systems in Tourism: Use of information technology to support strategic management; development of innovative information systems to support learning and knowledge creation; performance evaluation of destination marketing organizations; social cognitive aspects of management and technology.
• E-Commerce: Travelers’ use of technology for trip planning; design of persuasive tourism websites focusing on the human-computer interaction aspects; emergent technologies (travel search engines, recommender systems, Web 2.0 applications) and their impact on travelers’ planning and information search behavior; e-Marketing for destinations.
• Research/Analytical Methods: Text mining; semantic network analysis; experiment design; Web-based survey and experiment.

 

 

Courses Taught

• SMHM 2800 Foundations to International Travel and Tourism
• SMHM 3300 Hospitality Industry Marketing and Sales

 

 

Education

Degree

Major

Institution

PH.D.	Business Administration	Temple University
MS	Leisure Studies	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
BA	English	Xi’An Jiaotong University

 

 

Significant Awards

Date

Award

Sponsoring Organization

2007	Best Paper Nomination at The 12th Annual Graduate Education and Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism, Houston, TX.	I-CHRIE
2006	“Harry A. Cochran Research Center Award for Excellence in Research by a Doctoral Student for 2006”, Temple University	The Fox School of Business, Temple University
2006	Best Paper Nomination at The 11th Annual Graduate Education and Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism, Seattle, WA.	I-CHRIE
2005	Paper voted as the top three best papers at the International Federation of IT and Travel and Tourism (IFITT)’s Annual Conference of Information Technology and Tourism (ENTER’05), Innsbruck, Austria.	IFITT

 

 

Selected Publications

Wang, Y. & Xiang, Z. (2007). Towards a Theoretical Framework of Collaborative Destination Marketing. Journal of Travel Research. In press.

 

Xiang, Z., Kothari, T., Hu, C., & Fesenmaier, D. R. (2007). Benchmarking as a Strategic Tool for Destination Marketing Organizations: A Proposed Framework. Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, 22(1).

 

Xiang, Z. & Formica, S. (2007). Mapping Environmental Change and Tourism: A Study on the Incentive Travel Industry. Tourism Management, 28(5): 1193-1202.

 

Xiang, Z., Kim, S., Hu, C., & Fesenmaier, D.R. (2007). Language Representation of Restaurants: Implications for Developing Online Recommender Systems. International Journal of Hospitality Management. In press.

 

Kothari, T., Xiang, Z., & Fesenmaier. The Impact of a Marketing Information System: A Case Study of SMART-Baltimore. Information technology & Tourism. Forthcoming.

Xiang, Z. & Fesenmaier, D.R. (2006). Assessing the Initial Step in the Persuasion Process: Meta Tags on Destination Marketing Websites. Information Technology & Tourism, 8(2): 91-104.

 

Xiang, Z. & Fesenmaier, D.R. (2005). Interface Metaphors: An Analysis of Two Search Engine Interfaces for Trip Planning. Information Technology & Tourism, 7(2): 103-117.

 

 

Selected Grants

Date

Grant Title

Funding Agency

April 1, 2007 – September 1, 2007.

Co-Principal Investigator: Developing “SMART SEARCH USA”: A Tourism Specific Search Engine ($7,500).

Madden Preprint

August, 2007 – July, 2008

Co-Principal Investigator: Developing SMART-Elkhart: A Marketing Information System for Destination Partnerships (amount pending)

Elkhart County Convention and Visitors Bureau