Editorial

Citation

Okumus, F. (2010), "Editorial", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 22 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijchm.2010.04122caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Volume 22, Issue 3

We have eight full research articles and one research-in-brief paper (RIB) in this issue. The first article by Amit Sharma and Iain Christie investigated the value creation process in hospitality services and its impact on business performance and product/service prices in Mozambique. Their findings reveal that key operational factors contributing to low value creation included low employee productivity and management inefficiency. This was largely due to a lack of trained employees. This article is amongst the few in the literature that have used value chain analysis to evaluate hospitality services. It is also the first such analysis of hospitality services in sub-Saharan Africa, where availability of both quantifiable time series and cross-sectional data remains an obstacle to research.

In the second article, Anastasios Zopiatis and Panayiotis Constanti measured the association between leadership styles and burnout among hospitality managers currently working in the industry of Cyprus. The authors investigated transformational, transactional and passive/avoidance leadership styles in order to establish which leadership style is more prone to burnout effects. The findings suggest that transformational leadership has a significant positive association with personal accomplishment and is negatively related to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Their paper adds to existing knowledge by investigating an issue presented in just a few hospitality-related studies. While separate studies of burnout and leadership have captured the attention of hospitality researchers, studies investigating their association are notable by their absence.

The following article by Eva Gallardo, Sandra-M Sánchez-Cañizares, Tomás López-Guzmán and Maria M. Nascimento Jesus empirically analyzed job-satisfaction differences between employees of the hotel industries of two similar tourist destinations, namely Andalusia (Spain) and the Algarve (Portugal). Their study findings reveal an acceptable level of job satisfaction in both regions, although this is higher among the Andalusian workers, not only in terms of the overall score but also for each of the job facet scores considered. The study results encourage hotel managers to focus their attention on their remuneration systems, promotion possibilities and the perception of their profession’s prestige in order to improve staff satisfaction. In the next article, Kalotina Chalkiti and Marianna Sigala explored the occurrence and implications of staff turnover in the Greek hospitality industry. Their study findings reveal that the Greek hospitality industry faces similar staff turnover impacts that are also found in other countries. The findings imply that staff turnover is often instigated by factors, which are beyond management control and that staff turnover negatively affects service quality levels, costs and time related to staff recruiting and training. The paper contributes to the field by providing primary data about the level, the type and the consequences of staff turnover in the Greek hospitality industry.

The China foreign-invested travel agencies and respective tourism policies are analyzed by Jing Bill Xu, Hanqin Qiu Zhang and Jiajia Sophia Wu. The findings reveal that some foreign investment-related tourism policies were implemented ahead of the schedule to which China committed upon its entry to the WTO. The tight nature of the policies implemented meant that only 25 foreign-invested agencies had survived in China by August 2007. This study can be seen as a successful and enlightening attempt to pave the way for future researchers to engage in further discussions about FDI in tourism in a political environment, particularly in developing countries. In the next article, Amalia Triantafillidou, Christos Koritos, Kalliopi Chatzipanagiotou and Aikaterini Vassilikopoulou investigated the most important characteristics of the religious package tour as perceived by consumers who travel to the Holy Land and examined the marketing components that play an important role for pilgrims. Results show that regarding the product mix, hotel ratings and extra benefits are considered of minor importance by the interviewed travelers. However, the tour guide and the trip’s schedule and program are the most important factors that influence consumer decisions regarding the purchase of a specific tourism product. Price did not seem to influence travelers to sacred places. Travel agents that offer tour packages to pilgrims, as well as tourism companies wishing to promote pilgrimages can take into consideration these findings in order to design effective marketing plans.

John Cousins, Kevin O’Gorman and Marc Stierand explored the phenomenon of molecular gastronomy by conducting empirical research focusing on renowned chefs. Utilizing an extensive literature review followed by 18 phenomenological interviews, the authors found that there is far greater confusion about what molecular gastronomy might be than is implied in previous studies. The term may often be wrongly used to describe a possible culinary movement and leading chefs, whose new restaurant concepts have become associated with it, reject the term. With only 20 years of history, molecular gastronomy is still a comparatively new phenomenon, this initial research presents a clear picture of its evolution so far and the increasing confusion the use of the term has created. In the final article, the relationships among hedonic and utilitarian values, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intentions in the fast-casual restaurant industry were examined by Kisang Ryu, Heesup Han and Soocheong (Shawn) Jang. Their findings indicate that hedonic and utilitarian values significantly influenced customer satisfaction, and customer satisfaction had a significant influence on behavioral intentions. Utilitarian value showed a greater influence on both customer satisfaction and behavioral intention than did hedonic value. This study also revealed that customer satisfaction acted as a partial mediator in the link between hedonic/utilitarian value and behavioral intentions. The findings of this study can greatly help hospitality researchers and practitioners understand the roles of hedonic and utilitarian values in customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions in the fast-casual restaurant industry.

In the research-in-brief paper, based on their empirical study Srikanth Beldona, Andrew Moreo and Gokul Mundhra develop a conceptually underpinned typology of eating out attitudes and distinguish differences based on demographics and actual eating out behaviors. This research in brief paper found that age, education, the breadth of culinary exposure, and the extent of eating out are significant differentiators between the four eating out attitudes. The study is one of the first studies in restaurant marketing literature to examine and explain the roles of two important and highly relevant consumer behavior constructs: involvement and variety seeking. The study also provides key insights pertinent to the fast growing Indian market.

Papers in this issue present empirical findings from different countries such as Mozambique, Cyprus, Spain, Portugal, Greece, China, US and India. In addition, papers in this issue provide empirical findings and discussions from different segments in the tourism and hospitality industry such as hotels, restaurants and travel agencies. Once again, we hope that our readers find all the articles published in IJCHM strong, relevant and useful.

Fevzi OkumusEditor-in Chief