Tourism and Hospitality Management: Volume 12

The European Quality Award came into being in 1992. Since then, 42 organizations from various sectors have attained this internationally recognized award. Although the model of the award is considered as a single-generic framework for organizations of all sectors, the question about the situation of the tourism industry arises since this model is not frequent in tourism establishments. With the aim of revealing the situation of tourism industry, this chapter utilized the list of the award winning organizations and identified their economic sectors with reference to The Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Union (NACE). As a consequence, the study revealed the weak participation of the tourism industry, represented by only two hotels and a conference center.

The aim of this chapter is to understand the nature of business collaboration between healthcare service providers and tourism agencies in Malaysia. Interviews with 17 healthcare service providers in Malaysia reveal that most of the collaboration between healthcare service providers and tourism agencies in Malaysia is informal or loose, despite their intention to leverage on medical tourism for business expansion. Close and tight collaborations are rare. The findings point towards the main reasons behind the rare collaboration which are the high customer orientation of healthcare service providers, the strategic move of business and support for government agenda.

This chapter aims to identify the characteristics of transit tourists in Hong Kong. It shows that the USA, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and India are the major generating regions of transit tourists. Transit tourists have more than 10 hours of transit-wait at the Hong Kong International Airport before connecting flights to the destination regions. Significant differences exist in travel and trip-breaking patterns among transit tourists from different generating regions. This study not only provides insights on the spatial movement of transit tourists but also serves as a prologue to future discussions on transit tourism, an emerging phenomenon of urban tourism.

This chapter explores the data exchange relationships between stakeholders in a tourism domain as a means of assessing the potential application of open data initiatives. Social network analysis is utilized to analyze network relationships and explain the pattern and consequences of these relationships. Based on centrality and other network attributes, the analysis highlights the key influencers in the tourism data ecosystem examined, and suggests that initial steps towards implementing a tourism open data policy should focus on opening up tourism asset data, and relaxing current restrictive data exchange practices. The agency with responsibility for collecting and disseminating tourism asset data, is well positioned to become the data broker in an emergent tourism open data ecosystem.

Nowadays, social media influences tourists in their decision making process and plays an important role in the digital marketing strategy of tourism service providers. The purpose of this study is to examine the presence of tourism businesses in the most popular social media channel in Russia – VKontakte (VK). The data consist of Finnish and Russian groups devoted to tourism in VK: 10,000 Finnish groups and 5,000 Russian groups were found and the 12 most popular out of each group were chosen for the analysis. The findings show that VK is widely used by Finnish and Russian tourism firms, but there is still potential for more effective implementation of the channel. The group discussions on the most popular topics can provide firms with useful knowledge for planning their digital strategies for the Russian market.

The cruise tourism industry has experienced a positive evolution, with an average annual growth rate in the worldwide number of cruise passengers of 7.84% between 1990 and 2013. This chapter presents an empirical analysis particular to Spanish cruise ports and their associated tourist hinterlands. With regard to cruise ports, an evolution analysis and port portfolio analysis technique using the growth-share matrix for the period 2000–2013 is applied in order to identify the competitive positions of a range of 18 ports in the Spanish Mediterranean coast. While for the tourist hinterland of each port is characterized the geographical area encompassed. The results obtained identify the different competitive positions of ports and the different types of hinterlands characterized.

Increasing operational costs and narrowing profit margins are forcing many Hong Kong travel agencies out of business. Studies have demonstrated the strategic importance of revenue management (RM) implementation for travel agencies that wish to remain competitive. Hong Kong travel agencies should learn from these examples and modify their existing practices. As travel agencies have many of the characteristics of traditional and non-traditional RM industries, they should be able to adopt the RM operational strategies that have been successful in other industries. This study’s methodology is qualitative; in-depth interviews are conducted with 10 industrial professionals. The results provide valuable insights into RM implementation in Hong Kong travel agencies. The implementation strategies discussed here include the use of perishable inventories, predictable demand, segmentation, reservations made in advance, limited capacity and appropriate cost and pricing structures, all of which aid in profit optimisation. The results indicate that RM can improve travel agencies’ competitive stance and enhance profit maximisation. RM practitioners need to fully understand the concept and techniques and have the determination to develop and promote the system among personnel at every level of the travel agency.

This chapter aims to assess how effective loyalty programs are in contributing to retaining guests for hotels. The effectiveness is measured by means of a Bass model which allows the measurement of the diffusion patterns of adopters within potential adopters. The data used to perform this model allow the depiction of the effect of geographical localization over a time frame of three years. Results suggest that the loyalty card’s acceptance was measured from the internal and external parameters, based on the concept of diffusion theory. The results indicated a need for innovation of the loyalty program from 2019. Due to the existence of several hotels with different typologies in different countries, a segmentation of clients by nationalities is suggested with a “waterfall” strategy being placed in the hotel chain loyalty program.

The main purpose of this chapter is to investigate whether hotel hospitality mediates and/or moderates the relationships between surprise experience and customer delight in the context of hotel services. This study, involving 300 Malaysian and non-Malaysian hotel guests, employs questionnaire surveys as the main data collection method. The results indicate that there is a strong and positive relationship between surprise and customer delight, and hotel hospitality mediates and also moderates the abovementioned direct relationship.

The Asian paradigm is more than just a demonstration of visually impactful behaviors and practices by hospitality establishments that can be explained by their different Asian cultural backgrounds and reinforced by training; it is focused on the customer, leveraging of the commercial environment while highlighting, not hiding, cultural and destination differences to give people more reasons to visit and repeatedly use their properties. This chapter examines to evaluate transferability of Asian paradigm in hospitality management concepts to non-Asian countries; what and how Asian paradigm in hospitality management can be transferred. For the detailed level on examination and discussion of transferability of Asian concepts, the chapter includes case of Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts for operators’ point of view.

The growing importance of Krakow as the tourist destination in Eastern Europe has inspired changes in its hospitality industry as early as in the mid-nineteenth century. This chapter addresses the following questions – how has the hospitality industry developed during this period? Where did it concentrate? How did the hospitality offer expanded, and was the nature of the competition between owners? Due to the limited availability of historical statistical information on the service industry, the data for this study was derived from guide books, diaries, calendars, and newspapers (“Chronicle of Cracow”) throughout 1848–1939. The authors have examined about 30,500 volumes from which a selection of relevant information and press advertisements was made. Through the examination of historical press announcements for more than 90 years, the authors were able to reproduce the direct location of the hospitality industry objects, their changes of location, the identity of owners, the profile of provided services, and the economic and spatial transformations of the hospitality industry in Krakow.

The importance of diversification and innovation in strengthening of global competitiveness has been emphasized in both tourism and local development literature. The aim of this chapter is to define the factors (company type, company size, intra-industry investments, collaboration with other companies, and associations) that influence the product- and service-diversification of hotels. This chapter addresses the diversification and innovation strategies of hotels, not only in the light of tourism literature, but also of local development literature, and it provides empirical evidence based on a company-level survey. The findings of the study show that company type, company size, sector-specific knowledge (intra-industry investments and experience of hotel workers), and collaboration with other companies and institutions matter for product- and service-diversification of hotels.

The purpose of this chapter is to emphasize the importance that the branded content has acquired when it comes to increasing the companies’ brand knowledge in general, and particularly, the hotel chains, analyzing the implantation of this strategy in the Ushuaïa Ibiza Beach Hotel. The methodology applied is the content analysis, studying the presence of the hotel from Ibiza in Facebook and Twitter although mainly studying which are the contents published by Ushuaïa Beach Hotel that generate a bigger engagement with its target audience. The sample period goes for one year, from January 2012 to January 2013. The results show that its key to success is to publish contents that seduce its audience involving it voluntarily and taking part in it.

A range of organizational culture scales have been developed and applied in various industries. However, the measurement of organizational culture is noticeably different according to industry. Measuring organizational culture, specifically as it relates to the hospitality industry, is also a research area that has remained relatively unexplored. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss some essential problems and gaps existing in the previous studies. This chapter also presents a new scale entitled the “hospitality industry organization culture scale” that applies specifically to the hospitality context, and contributes to our understanding of organizational culture within this context. A multidisciplinary and mixed-method research approaches were followed in order to develop a new organizational culture scale for the hospitality industry. The findings suggest that the hospitality industry has unique cultural characteristics that are distinguished from similar industries.

As an alternative way of tourism, disabled tourism has its own characteristics due to the fact that disabled tourists are likely to have different needs and expectations throughout their vacations at a destination. Therefore, this chapter aims to provide a generic overview of disabled tourism and identify if there would be any requirements for developing training programs and examine their contexts. The discussion of results is based on undertaking an interview survey among the executive managers of travel agencies and hotel businesses operating in a resort town of Turkey. Although the respondents emphasize the importance of training programs, unfortunately there is much less improvement in terms of facilities for disabled visitors.

The economic ramifications of tourism and hospitality have led to the considerable growth of global education in this industry. The ever-changing needs of this industry for appropriate skills and expertise have made it more competitive in nature, which has led to the increase in studies exploring the motivations for students to choose a specific destination. This chapter explores the motivations of South Asian students to undertake tourism and hospitality qualifications in the United Kingdom. The research was based on mixed method approach through two sequential phases of focus group and questionnaire among the students of a higher education provider in London. The results revealed a set of motivational factors influencing South Asian student’s choices to study tourism and hospitality in the United Kingdom.

There is an essential link between the success of hospitality organizations and the availability of appropriate labor resources, making employee attraction a critical concern for the industry. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the role of work experience, both inside and outside the hospitality industry, in shaping students’ attitudes toward hospitality careers. The study was conducted on the group of 338 undergraduates and graduates enrolled in tourism and hospitality studies in Poznan, Poland. The findings suggest that work experience displays a stronger relationship with preferred than with perceived job and organization attributes. It is also related to perceptions of hospitality career attractiveness both in the long and in the short run as well as to intentions to apply for a job after graduation. The results underline the importance of providing students with quality work experience by the hospitality industry stakeholders as it can influence future career decisions.

The tourism industry in South Africa today faces the dual challenges of finding ways to extend tourism spending into previously marginalised communities and to redress the imbalances in cultural representations of those communities. The legacy of formal racial segregation is extremely difficult to reverse. The study investigated the potential of Edu-tourism to fundamentally change tourism dynamics. This approach targets young, intelligent, ‘new tourists’ who choose different types of visitor experiences and contribute to changing the way South Africans value and use their own cultures. The method used included requiring students to design tourist packages, in consultation with tour guides, visitors and local community members. The outcomes provide stimulation for new research, widely distributed income generation and building bridges between divided communities.

In Brazil, higher education Tourism courses emerged in the 1970s as a teaching and research field aiming to raise the students’ critical awareness toward a contextualized learning within the political, economic, and sociocultural scenario of the country. This chapter discusses the structure of higher education Tourism courses based on a new academic structure. The data are drawn from the monthly informative bulletins of the Center of Tourism Research (CEPETUR) of the Catholic University of Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro, wherein a group of teachers report their activities in both professional and academic sector of Tourism. The findings show that undergraduate students are encouraged to produce conceptual texts enabling their insertion in scientific research projects under a new conception of academic field.

Intercultural awareness and skills are important competencies for hospitality and tourism management program graduates due to the internationalization of the tourism industry. Graduates will work with coworkers and serve customers from diverse cultural backgrounds. With the exponential growth of China’s tourism industry, an examination of intercultural awareness and skills education in China’s hospitality and tourism higher education is needed. This study employed a qualitative approach by interviewing 11 educators in Chinese mainland universities on their views of the current status of intercultural awareness education, their role in this learning process, and how their program offerings enhance students’ learning of cultural diversity. Implications for administrators and faculty members are discussed.