Editorial

Citation

Okumus, F. (2009), "Editorial", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 21 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijchm.2009.04121caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Volume 21, Issue 3

This issue consists of six empirical research articles and two research-in-brief papers. In the first article, Hanaa Osman, Nigel Hemmington, and David Bowie explore the ways in which a transactional marketing approach can generate customer loyalty in a hotel brand. The paper provides a review of the paradigm shift from transactional marketing to relationship marketing, in the services marketing literature. The findings suggest that a transactional approach to marketing can be an effective strategy for hotels, which target niche segments with highly differentiated offers at competitive prices. For practitioners, the paper suggests that transactional marketing and relationship marketing can be seen as complimentary marketing strategies.

Mario Castellanos-Verdugo, M^a de los Ángeles^a Oviedo-García, José L. Roldán, and Nadine Veerapermal examined the employee-customer relationship quality in the hotel industry. Their findings can be useful both for academics and practitioners as the study provided useful variables for hotel managers introducing a relationship marketing strategy in their hotels, regardless of their category. In addition, their results suggest a wide range of measures that hotel managers could undertake to develop and maintain employee-customer relationship quality.

In the next article, John Paravantis, Nancy Bouranta, and Leonidas Chitiris investigated the relationship between internal and external service quality. Their research results provide evidence to support the view that internal service quality has a direct effect on external service quality. Their findings can be helpful to service firms who focus on internal service quality in order to improve external service quality.

Victoria Bellou and Andreas I. Andronikidis’ study looked into the prevalent organizational climate within hotels and tries to identify variations in employees’ perceptions, based on whether they hold managerial or non-managerial positions. They found that efficiency, reflexivity, innovation and flexibility, supervisory support, and quality were among the most prominent characteristics affected by organisational climate, whereas outward focus and pressure to produce were least affected. Identifying the prevalent organizational climate can certainly assist managers to optimize performance by identifying key issues.

Christina G. Chi and Dogan Gursoy identified factors that were important for the success of career and placement services offered by hospitality programs, from the industry’s perspectives. They found internship requirement was found to be the most important factor for the success of career services, followed by faculty industry experience and quality of student preparation for job/internship interviews.

The final research paper by Ning-Kuang Chuang, Dean Yin, and Mary Dellmann-Jenkins, explores intrinsic and extrinsic factors impacting the job satisfaction of casino hotel chefs and whether chefs’ background characteristics are associated with their overall and specific facets of job satisfaction. Among intrinsic factors, the chefs were most satisfied with the “work itself” and least satisfied with “growth and recognition” they received. Among extrinsic factors, they were most satisfied with “supervision” and least satisfied with “company policy” pertaining to sick leave and paid vacation. This study is unique in directing attention to the “back of the house leaders” – hotel chefs, in a top tier gaming and tourism city and reinforce the value of recognition at work and creation of specialized incentive programs.

In the first research-in-brief paper, Haiyan Kong and Catherine Cheung offered an overview of the existing English literature concerning the developments of China’s hotel industry by means of reviewing the topic from three academic online databases. Their findings showed that research on China’s hotel development grew rapidly with the rise of China’s hotel industry, reflecting the situation, problems, challenges and opportunities affecting hotel development. By grouping the published studies into four major themes, this study clearly demonstrates key emerging issues in China.

The next research-in-brief paper by Austin Uzama provided suggestions for increasing the number of international tourists visiting Japan. In examining personal experiences and past associations in the travel industry for 12 years in Japan the author suggested that Japan should move beyond its lip service “Yokoso! Japan” campaign slogan, and formulate a long-term tactical and strategic marketing plans. The recommendations should help all stakeholders in the industry to increase the number of international tourists visiting Japan.

This issue covers a wide variety of interesting and current topics in the hospitality field. In this issue, we have authors from England, Greece, Spain, China, the USA and Japan presenting their empirical research findings from the hospitality industry in their respective countries.

Fevzi OkumusEditor-in-Chief