Advances in Hospitality and Leisure: Volume 4

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.

As management-level turnover is increasing rapidly, one of the major challenges for the hospitality industry is to retain highly educated and highly skilled employees. As the psychological contract approach to the employment relationship had not been investigated with regard to the hospitality industry, it became the subject of this study. The results demonstrate that psychological contract measures, in particular job content, can explain why there is a substantial amount of variance in intention among highly educated hotel employees with regard to leaving the organization, especially when the mediating role of affective commitment is taken into account. In this paper, managerial implications are discussed, and recommendations for further research are made.

This study adopted the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) because of its sophisticated imaging techniques in eliciting mental models. Scholars across disciplines have been exploring paradigms beyond positivism due to the question about the adequacy of quantitative measures to capture complete accounts and to deal with vital problems. The marketing literature also advocates the need of a new methodology to examine consumers’ underlying thought and behavior that might help alleviate the industry's inability to translate research findings directly into practices. This study elicited tourists’ mental models, which were depicted on an integrated consensus map with three metaphoric themes. Marketers might translate these metaphoric themes directly into practices. The results of this study strongly support the use of qualitative methodology, more specifically the ZMET, as a means for obtaining the underlying tourists’ behavior that often remain far beyond the reach of traditional research methods.

An accurate tourism forecast is critical to destination countries as a foundation for tourism-related decision making and efficient tourism planning. The purpose of this study is to evaluate how Taiwan's inbound tourism was affected by the September 21st Earthquake in 1999 and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003, one of the mega earthquakes in the 20th century and most catastrophic health hazard in the past hundred years in Taiwan, respectively. According to the empirical findings, Taiwan's inbound tourism was brutally devastated by the two calamities, particularly during the SARS outbreak. The inbound tourism was more heavily influenced by the SARS epidemic and recovered from the SARS shadow was greater compared with the recovery after the September 21st Earthquake.

The objective of this paper is to present an analysis on the competitiveness of Romania as a tourism destination, based on Porter's diamond model. The model developed in this paper seeks to capture the main elements of competitiveness highlighted in the literature, while appreciating the special issues involved in exploring the notion of destination competitiveness as emphasized by tourism researchers. An overview of the Romanian tourism industry is included to test the findings of the proposed research model. Throughout the analysis, the paper also focuses on the most competitive export products and their prospects for improvement. The study allows for the identification of different tourism products potential, and can be used by industry and government to identify opportunities for competitiveness enhancement.

The purpose of this research was an attempt to improve the applicability of the balance scorecard, in particular the customer perspective, in the hospitality industry. The objective of the study was to investigate a more structured customer-centric performance measurement framework customized for the hotel industry. Hence, this paper presents the “Customer Calculator” which had been developed based on the Customer Equity model proposed by Rust et al. (2000a). Qualitative examinations by interviewing hotel management were conducted to test the applicability of the customer-centric measurement framework. The customer scores facilitate hotel decision-makers who can pinpoint the important drivers of customer relations, which are in need of further action and improvement. The framework can also be employed by the stakeholders to assess hotel performance in general.

The purpose of this investigation was to identify the association between Experience Use History (EUH) and types of substitution choices of hikers with the perspectives of activity involvement and place attachment. On-site surveys were distributed by systematic sampling technique to obtain a representative sample of hikers with 51% response rate. The theoretical expectation was confirmed by these data. Findings indicated that among four EUH classifications, Veterans and Visitors who perceived higher levels of activity involvement and relatively lower levels of place attachment tended to make resource substitutability, while Locals who scored highest on place attachment chose to make temporal substitutability and Beginners who scored lower on both activity involvement and place attachment were apt to make both resource and activity substitutability. Suggestions and managerial implication are further discussed.

This paper combined an at-destination decision-making model with the theory of tie strength to find out information related to the referrals that travelers received and used at a major tourist destination in the southeastern United States. At-destination decisions included lodging, eating and dining, entertainment, recreation, and travel. The data indicated eating and dining, recreation, and entertainment decisions are made in large numbers at the destination. The first research question involved referral source and frequency for at-destination decisions, revealing many third-party decision-makers. Friends and family members were the most requested and local residents the least requested referral sources. The second research question inquired as to whether satisfaction scores from the referred experience differed across referral source. The researchers suggested that referrals have different perceived levels of trust, expertise, and ties, and potentially will render different sales levels. Due to this, the satisfaction outcome was measured by referral source. Results showed that referred satisfaction scores were highest from local resident referrals followed by friends and relatives – one a strong tie and one a strong–weak tie. Finally, more neutral satisfaction scores were reported from other information sources. The article closes by offering possible explanations for these differences and by providing suggestions for additional at-destination decision-making and outcome research.

Many research studies have found that service quality has a direct impact on a company's profitability. Given the increasing competition in the steak restaurant business in Taiwan, the restaurant industry has noticed the importance of service quality. This study empirically assessed customers’ perceptions and expectations of service to measure service quality of a chain steakhouse in Taiwan. By applying the three-column SERVQUAL model approach coupled with part of the Fishbein model, the study was able to (a) analyze the service gaps existing in the service delivery process to measure service quality and customer satisfaction and (b) conduct a multiattribute attitude measure to evaluate a customer's attitude toward the service measure attributes of the same brand name restaurants in different locations. As service quality has a direct impact on a company's profits, the research findings are important, particularly to the examined chain steakhouse. These findings offer implications to improve the service quality for restaurant operations and further support the company in gaining a competitive advantage in the increasingly viable steak restaurant business in Taiwan.

Identifying future tourism demand is a critical aspect for tourism decision-makers to ensure the long-term success of products, services and destinations. This paper discusses how population change, an important driver of tourism demand, may impact future demand patterns. It discusses potential impacts of projected demographic change, especially those resulting from the related aspects of population ageing and changing family structures. A case study amongst Baby Boomers and Generation Y on the Gold Coast, Australia, illustrates how demand patterns may develop over the next 15 years. The study incorporates different population scenarios as projected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and shows a great diversity of demand amongst both generations. It is suggested that scenarios be used to analyse potential impacts of other determinants to obtain a better understanding of future tourism demand, thus expanding the scope of traditional forecasting methods.

Outsourcing is an important phenomenon in hotel sector. It is changing from a tactical to a strategic perspective, with greater scope and relevance to the creation of competitive advantages. The opening up of hotels to outsourcing and strategic alliances improves individual competitiveness, but also has strong repercussions on destinations, especially those in a stage of maturity and requiring new approaches to improve competitiveness. This change in interorganizational relationships to a strategic perspective requires new theoretical and practical frameworks to make it easier for hotels to outsource their operations with greater potential for competitive advantage. This work proposes the types of relationship and degree of process integration required for relational capabilities to be achieved in the hotel sector when operations are outsourced. Finally, a series of conclusions are presented.

China looks set to become the fourth largest outbound tourist generating country in the world by 2020 (World Tourism Organisation, 1997). Tourists from Mainland China are the second most important source of tourist arrivals in Singapore. A better understanding of the Chinese tourists’ needs and expectations will be helpful in positioning the country to attract them. The data collected at Singapore Changi International Airport are segmented to different groups under various demographic factors. This study shows that there exist motivational differences among gender, income, age as well as travel frequencies. The findings are useful to the marketers to establish their strategic plans in targeting at different groups of Chinese visitors.

The purpose of this study was to measure the economic benefits generated from equine camping and to increase awareness of tourism development in southern Illinois. A total of 370 survey questionnaires were collected at equine camping sites. Descriptive analysis revealed that most respondents had at least a high school education with an average annual household income of $64,000. The largest group of respondents by occupation was professionals. About 40% of respondents traveled to southern Illinois with five individuals in a group. The local expenditure model illustrated that non-local equine campers brought about 16 million dollars to southern Illinois in 2004. The economic benefits as measured suggested the potential of further developing equine camping as a major tourism activity in this area.