Editorial

Citation

Okumus, F. (2015), "Editorial", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 27 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-02-2015-0077

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Volume 27, Issue 3

We celebrated IJCHM’s 25th-year anniversary in 2013. Detailed information can be found about our activities and initiatives related to this milestone achievement at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/promo/ijchm_25.htm. As part of this important celebration, we decided to publish two special issues on contemporary hospitality research that can address key issues and challenges in the hospitality and tourism field. We invited leading scholars in the hospitality and tourism field to contribute to these two special issues. The first special issue was published in Volume 26 Issue 5 in 2014. I am now pleased to announce that this is the second special issue on contemporary hospitality research, which contains eight interesting articles.

In the first article, Chris Ryan provides a personal view of changes and trends in hospitality research. He uses a micro auto-ethnographic approach based on his observation and experiences. He states that hospitality research:

• has become commodified by universities;

• has been much influenced by changes in greater availability of analytical software packages; and

• has been much influenced by new challenges in the industry, notably globalization and the rise of Asia.

The second paper by Manuel Antonio Rivera and Abraham Pizam analyzes the progression of research in the domain of hospitality management since its inception in the early part of the twentieth century. This study postulates that the progress in hospitality management research has occurred in four distinct phases: Story Tellers (1930-1950), Profilers (1950-1970), Copy Cats (1970-2005) and Innovators (since 2000). Through a critical review of articles published in one of the leading hospitality journals, these authors claim that hospitality management research has advanced to a level of sophistication and scientific rigor that is equivalent to an innovation phase.

In the third paper, Jay Kandampully, Tingting (Christina) Zhang and Anil Bilgihan provide a critical review on emerging issues related to customer loyalty in hospitality and tourism. By synthesizing extant customer loyalty literature, this article proposes a framework designed to extend our understanding of customer loyalty and the impact of the evolving role of engaged customers in our field. The fourth article by John T. Bowen and Shiang-Lih Chen McCain provides insights for researchers to help them build loyalty models that will fit the consumer behavior of Millennials and managers as they build customer loyalty with Millennials. Since the authors’ earlier work published in 2001, a major shift has taken place: demographically, as Baby Boomers retire and pass on, Millennials will become the dominant generational segment. The authors argue that the loyalty models developed for Boomers will not be a good fit for Millennials. Those propositions presented in the paper should help researchers and practitioners to understand the customer loyalty of Millennials.

In the fifth article, Rob Law, Rosanna Leung, Ada Lo, Daniel Leung and Lawrence Hoc Nang Fong present their case study re-examining several issues about disintermediation from the perspectives of tourism product/service suppliers (hotels) and traditional intermediaries (travel agencies). Six focus group interviews were conducted to collect primary data from 10 managers of three traditional travel agencies and 11 managers from three business hotels in Hong Kong. Despite their different business backgrounds, the interviewees agreed on the increasing importance of Internet technology in the distribution of tourism products. This study offers specific theoretical and practical implications. The next article by Margaret Deery and Leo Jago examines the themes of talent management, work-life balance (WLB) and retention strategies in the hospitality industry. The paper uses employee turnover literature to underpin a discussion of successful talent management. The key findings show that WLB is one of the key variables when addressing issues of employee management and retention.

Nelson K.F. Tsang, Louisa Lee and Hailin Qu provide an inventory of the existing English and Chinese research on service quality in China’s hospitality and tourism industry. Popular research themes are service quality management and evaluation in the hotel industry. The majority of the reviewed articles are empirical studies that adopt quantitative methods. Recent studies appear to use more sophisticated statistical techniques such as confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Changes in disciplines, publication trends and statistical techniques are discussed and theoretical and practical implications are provided. In the final paper, J. Alberto Aragon-Correa, Inmaculada Martin-Tapia and Jose de la Torre-Ruiz critically review the previous research on the relationship between the natural environment and management in hospitality and tourism firms. These authors use strategic lenses to propose a general framework of previous works and a map for future research in environmental management in the hospitality and tourism field.

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

Fevzi Okumus Editor-in-Chief