Hyejin Park is a 1st year Ph.D. student in the department of Tourism, Hospitality and Event Management. Her research focuses on Destination Management and Destination Marketing and the value and flow of information in the tourism industry.
Nationality: Seoul, South Korea
Past Education: Undergraduate from Seoul and master’s degree in Hospitality Management from Ohio State University.
Past Experience: worked for theo government agencies for more than three years: the Korea Tourism Organization, the national DMO and for the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute, conducting research in national level to make tourism policies nationally.
Favorite UF Experience: Taking classes and expanding research in a broad range of topics.
Favorite past projects: Current project she has been working on comparing cultural differences from different countries.
Most valuable learning from EFTI: Engaging in collaborations with professionals from all over the country has been a great advantage
People you admire at EFTI: Dr. Stepchenkova, for being strict and having high expectation for students, making them grow, and well as Lijuan, her office mate.
Favorite travel experience: London, more than 10 years ago was her first trip overseas. She enjoys the mix of old and new, past and present with old buildings and modern people
Dream place to visit: Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, and many other cities in the US.
Hobbies: Listen to classical music makes her relax and focus. She can plan the piano.
Projected and Perceived Destination Image on Social Media: Comparing Perception of Destination Image between Official DMO in South Korea and Chinese Travelers
More about Hyejin...
Hyejin was inspired by three classes when deciding the focus of her research: Smart Tourism, Data Mining, and Social Network Analysis. From the learning she got in these classes she got interested in the flow of information in the tourism industry, turning her work to create models based on theory, and developing measurements to analyze visitors’ perception and attitudes to specific destinations. Hyejin currently uses SPSS and AMOS in her researches, but she is currently self-teaching herself on R and Phyton through coursera, youtube and books, to develop even further her skills.
She works closely with her advisor, Dr. Svetlana Stepchenkova on the majority of her projects. One of the most recent ones is about authenticity in tourism. In collaboration with other researchers from Russia they have developed a scale to measure visitors’ attitudes towards authenticity, defining them as objectivist, constructivist, and postmodernist.
Another one of her most recent projects is titled “Projected and Perceived Destination Image on Social Media: Comparing Perception of Destination Image Between Official DMO in South Korea and Chinese Travelers. (Click here to learn more about it). This project was developed in collaboration with Chinese students in the department and received “Best Paper Award” at the China Tourism Forum 2019 – USA during July 2019.
Although Hyejin is still starting her PhD here, she is already involved in many projects and eager to succeed. We are looking forward to seeing and sharing her future projects.
