Advances in Hospitality and Leisure: Volume 2

Advances in Hospitality and Leisure (AHL), a peer-review publication, aims to promote seminal and innovative research outputs pertaining to hospitality, leisure, tourism, and lifestyle. Specifically, the series will encourage researchers to investigate new research issues and problems that are critical but have been largely ignored while providing a forum that will disseminate singular thoughts advancing empirical undertakings both theoretically and methodologically.

The purpose of this research is to examine the characteristics and participation patterns in culture and art activities by multicultural groups through comparative examination using logistic regression analysis. Regarding the differences of participation patterns of cultural activities, the results show that there are meaningful changes of participation patterns by race. Income level seems to have dissipated as a barrier in attending cultural activities. In contrast, there is a meaningful change in the relationship between educational attainment and attendance in cultural activities. There are differences in art exhibition attendance by race. Income and educational attainment are also closely related to art exhibition attendance. The results of the analysis imply that it is necessary to segment the consumers of culture and art events specifically by race, income level, or educational attainment.

Quality has been widely recognised as an important source of competitive edge in the tourism industry. Much of the focus of research to date has been on the individual firm. However, there has been a shift from interfirm competition to interdestination competition, resulting in a lacuna in the research and a need for more attention to be afforded to management of quality at the destination level. Given the fragmented and diverse nature of the tourism destination, many researchers have underlined the need for co-operation in any effort to improve quality at the destination. However, there is often a reluctance among tourism businesses, particularly small- and medium-sized tourism enterprises (SMTEs) to cooperate. This paper sheds light on the impact of training on interfirm dynamics within a destination quality management network. The findings revealed that training of network members influenced the development of a referral system, which in turn helped to create a tourism quality value chain for the visitor.

This paper deals with an issue that has been identified in many markets where there are large numbers of package tourists. In Australia, there have been a number of studies undertaken into the use of a range of dubious business practices employed by Inbound Tour Operators (ITOs), particularly in the Korean market. The cause for this problem is identified as the minimization of the retail price of package tour by transferring part of the cost of the tour to ITOs in the destination country. Under this system, ITOs are paid a daily tour rate below their real costs and are forced to recover losses by employing a range of dubious business practices including forced shopping and kickbacks from shops. The paper models the normal operation of the package tour cycle where no business practices are used and compares this to the Korean package inbound market in Australia where the use of business practices of this nature is widespread.

In addition to individual differences, variations in visitors’ motivations may result from temporal variance. The leisure ladder model (LLM) is one of the most representative motivation models, which proposes patterns for an individual's temporal dynamic nature. This study attempts to examine empirically the ageing and experiential variations of the theme park visitors’ motivations, which underlie the model. Using stratified and systematic sampling techniques, survey data were collected from visitors to four leading theme parks in Taiwan – an Asian island nation. Limited support for the ageing variation was found and its changing pattern was also recognized in this study. A relatively more discriminating scale to measure the extent of visitor's experience was also suggested.

This article highlights a new research theme on how a no-escape natural disaster (NEND), such as Taiwan's earthquake of September 21, 1999 (dubbed as 921), impacts tourists’ trip decision. Nearly four years after the 921 event, a survey investigated the changes of tourists’ decision-making to the area mostly affected by the disaster. Expected negative effects on travel decisions were found. Surprisingly, a tourism boom in the affected destinations was documented. The possible reasons for recovery are discussed. Furthermore, comparing the consequences of another NEND event – December 2004 tsunami, the study suggests practical research agendas in rejuvenating NEND-impacted tourism destinations. Lastly, it is recommended that future research might center on the safety issues of travel destinations.

It is generally accepted that repeat visitation represents an attractive, cost-effective market segment for most destinations. Given such importance, an analytical model is proposed and tested. Our model prescribes a direct, causal relationship between pull motivations, travel satisfaction, intention of repeat visit, and repeat-visit behavior. Two hundred and two survey questionnaires are collected using a systematic sampling technique. Factor Analysis is employed to reduce 14 motivational attributes to five factors. The results of the logistic regression analysis reveal that the factor ‘local food and beverages’ and tourists’ overall satisfaction level are insignificant predictors of repeat visitation. However, the rest of the variables such as climate, attractions, and facilities are significant. Implications of the results for both researchers and practitioners are discussed.

Relationship marketing is widely accepted as the most successful way to build customer loyalty and competitive advantage in a mature, competitive market. The study investigates customer loyalty programmes within the context of service quality in Swedish hotels using an online questionnaire survey. Five service quality factors were identified: technical, functional, environmental, technological convenience and technological product dimensions, which supports the Northern European service quality model with the addition of technological dimensions. Five loyalty programme factors were also established and factor scores were mainly undifferentiated on the basis of socio-demographic and behavioural variables. The implications of the results are discussed and recommendations for further research are made.

This paper seeks to accomplish three objectives. First, based on prior research, this paper attempts to infer the value relevance of earnings and equity for firm valuation in the restaurant industry. The second objective is to document the joint information content of earning and equity in firm valuation. Finally, the model tested above is used to evaluate the relevance of capital structure for firm valuation in the static capital structure framework. The empirical results indicate that the incremental R2 associated with earnings was found to be generally less than the incremental R2 associated with equity. The adjusted R2 of the model that included both earnings and equity ranged from 0.54 to 0.77. The results suggest that the addition of capital structure variables have no incremental explanatory power in explaining the market value of firm, in the presence of earnings and equity.

Internet technology has changed the way information is distributed and the way people do business in the industry. Its impacts have been well studied, but the time element seems to be ignored for the investigation of risks taken and trustworthiness held by online shoppers. The time element should be included because pre-travel plans are usually made and a time lapse does exist between “the time a reservation is made” and “the time the reservation is confirmed.” This study proposes an online purchasing model to investigate the relationships among trustworthiness, time lapse, and online reservation activities. A significant correlation was found between trustworthiness and online reservations but despite such significance, time lapse neither sways the trustworthiness nor leads to low reservation retention.

This research compares youth tourists’ trip preferences and their perceptions of accommodation in Switzerland among visitors staying at three different types of properties (e.g., hard budget, budget, and mid-sector). Attractive price was found to be the most critical reason for the selection of accommodation for those staying at hard budget properties. Proximity to points of interest represents the main reason for choosing budget and mid-sector accommodations. When examining the differences in preferences for eating outlets, the respondents from the mid-sector lodging facilities prefer full-service restaurants while the other groups of visitors prefer to use self-service eateries. The study further finds that the youth guests of hard budget properties express reluctance in joining evening activities that are fee-paying. Managerial implications along with suggestions for future study are provided in the conclusion.

The accommodation of the Australian Tourism industry and contributes around $2.9 billion to the tourism gross value employs 18% of all tourism employees annually. Despite this important economic contribution, there is a general lack of information on the investment trends in this sector. This paper highlights the past investment trends and factors that have affected those investment decisions during the last three decades, and provides the estimates of the future investment. Forecast shows that over the next 10 years around 52,800 new rooms will be required to meet the expected tourism demand by 2013 and around $5.3 billion new investment will be required to construct those extra facilities. The historical patterns of investment in the sector suggest that this expected requirement for new investment is readily achievable.

Oklahoma's attractions have not caught much attention from either the international tourists or tourism researchers. In order to promote international tourism and make effective marketing strategy, it is important for Oklahoma to be well informed of visitors’ perceptions prior to any actual campaigns. A survey was conducted at Oklahoma's twelve Welcome Centers in 2002 and 202 valid questionnaires were returned. Based on the survey, Oklahoma's underlying attraction dimensions were examined and the dimensions that determined Oklahoma's overall attractiveness were identified. Implications of this study were further discussed and recommended.

This article assessed the effects of airfares and foreign exchange rates on Global Tourism demand. It identified three categories from the assessment – The Market Segment Effect; The Substitution Effect; and The Facilitation Effect. The tourism literature is rich with vast studies on the effects of various components of tourism prices on international tourism, but lacking in comprehensive categorization of the identified effects. Such assessment would enable tourism destination planners and service providers to be able to focus on identified specific issues and finding their pertinent solutions. It has been determined that while there might be identified profound effects, their solutions are not applicable to all tourism destinations or services.

Today's restaurant customer is tempted with an unprecedented array of culinary delights coming from all around the planet. Consumers have been increasingly concerned about personal well-being and are better equipped to gain knowledge about health and nutrition through abundant information in print and other media such as the Internet. This study strives to discover what German restaurant goers really consider to be healthy. Due to the paucity of literature on healthy meals, this research attempts to initiate exploratory investigations testing a new psychological construct of healthy meals by using college students as the study population. This study finds that low-fat and non-genetically modified ingredients are the main concerns when respondents select a healthy meal. In addition, gender and eating habits affect the perceptions of healthy meals. Lastly, drawing from the key findings, suggestions for future research are proposed.

Service research including justice has ignored the full range of service outcomes possible and has only been conducted when a service failure has occurred. This study allows for a full spectrum of service outcomes including service success, service failure, and service recovery. This study used the survey method to collect data to measure the relationship of justice constructs (i.e., interactional, distributive, and procedural justice) to overall justice and customer satisfaction. The researcher used a convenience sample-survey method. Graduate students in a service class collected 50 useable questionnaires for the pilot study. The researcher and two graduate students collected 302 useable questionnaires in an airport for the main study. Path analysis results showed that interactional, distributive, and procedural justice, all had direct effects and a significant positive relationship to overall justice and customer satisfaction, and overall justice had a direct and significant positive relationship to customer satisfaction.