Editorial

Citation

Okumus, F. (2011), "Editorial", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 23 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijchm.2011.04123aaa.002

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Volume 23, Issue 1

This first issue of IJCHM in 2011 includes seven full articles and one discussion paper. In the first article, Usha Ramanathan and Ramakrishnan Ramanathan explore UK hotels’ performance in terms of how various service attributes influence customers’ intention to revisit hotels. This study uses data from online customer ratings of 664 hotels and employs statistical regression analysis to identify and group different attributes in hotels. Their findings point out that value for money is a critical attribute. In addition, this study finds three dissatisfier attributes, which were “customer service”, “room quality” and “quality of food”, which imply that an inadequate performance in these attributes can adversely impact guests’ intention to revisit. In the second article, Joshua Hills and Grant Cairncross examine the perceptions and practices of small accommodation providers regarding the growing area of user-generated content (UGC) web sites. According to their research findings from a series of interviews, some providers use UGC web sites in an innovative way while others have only limited awareness.

In the third article, Osman Karatepe uses the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model to examine the moderating role of perceived organizational support and job autonomy on the relationships between emotional dissonance and exhaustion and disengagement. The author collected data through using self-administrated questionnaires with a sample of 620 hotel employees in Ankara, Turkey. Study results suggest that emotional dissonance intensifies exhaustion and disengagement. This study fills the gap in literature by examining the moderators of emotional dissonance in hospitality management. In the fourth article, Jie Wu, Henry Tsai and Zhixiang Zhou evaluate the operational efficiency of international tourist hotels in Taipei by utilizing a non-radial data envelopment analysis (DEA) model. Their study illustrates that the radial and non-radial DEA models may provide not only different performance measurements for the corresponding hotels but also different benchmarks for improving efficiency. The following article by Neamat El Gayar and her colleagues proposes a framework for hotel revenue maximization. Their proposed forecasting framework attempts to illustrate the hotel reservation process. In particular, this study aims to model hotel arrivals as an interrelated process of stochastic parameters such as reservations, cancellations, duration of stay, no shows, seasonality, trend, and simulates forward in time the actual process of reservations to obtain the forecast. Three different sets of reservation records of simulated hotel data were conducted to test the operation of the system on real data. According to study results from a case study hotel in Egypt, the proposed framework generated effective recommendations to maximize revenue.

Caroline Ritchie inspects how young adults interact with wine in a variety of settings by using seven focus group interviews. Social usage of wine patterns are introduced in this study and this is one of the first studies looking into the issue from the young adult perspective. Understanding how young adults interact with wine can support the development of moderate social drinking behaviour policies. The next article by Barry Mak investigates the reasons tour operators implement quality assurance. It also examines the problems and challenges that tour operators would face when implementing quality assurance. This study employs a multiple case study approach by interviewing senior managers of three accredited tour operators. The research findings reveal that the reasons for attaining ISO 9000 certification include image building, promotion and advertising. On the other hand, there are a number of negative aspects to the certification that include the high cost of implementation and the lukewarm reception by staff.

Finally, in his discussion paper, Conrad Lashley shares the knowledge of a team working in management education for hospitality practitioners in a British context. The study provides fresh ideas and perspectives on issues related to hospitality management education. The insights and discussions provided by the author can promote critical thinking on hospitality industry management development and the relationships between educators and industry practitioners.

We hope that our readers find all the articles published in this issue timely, relevant and useful.

Fevzi OkumusEditor-in-Chief