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This study aims to examine the evolution of spatial–temporal patterns in China’s hotel industry from 1978 to 2018.

A database comprising over 140,000 hotels with more than 30 rooms was created. The exploratory spatial–temporal data analysis (ESTDA) method, based on space–time cube model, was used to explore and visualize the spatial–temporal pattern of hotels.

The Chinese hotel industry can be divided into two development stages, namely, a large hotel-dominant stage before 2000 and a small–medium-sized hotel-dominant stage after 2000. China’s prefecture-level cities were clustered into four tiers. The higher the tier, the earlier the city will initiate hotel development. The Chinese hotel industry has four continuous hotspots (the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Bohai Rim and Sichuan and Chongqing) and some temporary hotspots.

This study lacks quantitative investigation, which could show the underlying mechanism of the evolution of the Chinese hotel industry.

This study is the first to investigate China’s hotel evolution over 40 years by applying big data and the ESTDA method. The systematic and evolutionary exploration will enable hotel researchers to understand the spatial–temporal nature of hotel distribution better. Introducing the ESTDA method into tourism and hotel research also provides an additional tool to researchers. Hotel investors and operators, city and tourism planners and market regulators can learn from the evolution of location patterns to make better where and when decisions.

Studies show that internet has become a major force propelling growth in tourism sector in many countries. An appropriate diffusion of the information and communication technology (ICT) services can facilitate visibility of hotels and lodges on search sites and third-party booking websites and thus influence demand. It also helps leverage the use of social media for promotion and customer acquisition purposes. Recently, Myanmar, with impressive historical world heritage sites, is witnessing a tourist boom; more hotels are opening up and achieving competitive advantage by offering free internet connectivity to guests and locating their premises in the vicinity of an ICT infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to investigate ICT readiness to support the lodging industry in Myanmar by focusing on one sub-index of the Network Readiness Index (NRI, a term heavily used by World Economic Forum). The paper focuses on the “Network Use” component of NRI, pertaining to the effect of the “quality of the Internet connection” available to lodges, and its association with the following dimensions: customer service: the availability of ICT services to guests, such as internet connectivity and availability of ATM in the vicinity; digital marketing: the use of social media, keeping records of guests and analyzing aggregate data to extract business insights; and business-to-business online booking: the use of online booking via major third-party intermediary websites like Expedia, Booking.com and Agoda.com.

Surveys were conducted in three major touristic cities in Myanmar: Bagan, Mandalay and the capital city, Nay Pyi Taw. A total of 101 valid questionnaires were used. Survey questions were centered around the following themes: internet connection problems, digital marketing activities, and online booking directly or via third party digital intermediary. The data are presented and interpreted by descriptive statistics and regression analysis.

Though, Myanmar is new to internet and commercial use of ICT, the awareness of the importance of leveraging social media and online booking for business development is surprisingly high in the lodging sector. On average, about 80 percent of surveyed hotels are present on the WWW through a dedicated hotel website. However, most websites lack an online booking capability. As a result, and due to a global trend, online booking through third-party intermediaries has become the dominant option for hotel booking arrangements in Myanmar. Agoda, founded in Bangkok in 2002, was found to be the number one choice for online booking intermediary in Myanmar, followed by Booking.com. Analysis of the logistic regression revealed that it was highly likely that areas around ATMs have better internet connectivity. As expected, it was also found that it is very unlikely that hotels reporting a problem in internet connectivity will be able to provide internet service to their guests. Despite the presence of problems in internet connectivity in Mandalay and Bagan cities, located away from the capital; most hotels in these cities resort to leveraging social media for promotion and customer/guest development. The analysis also revealed that cities located away from the capital are more aggressive in leverage online third-booking intermediaries.

While researchers were hoping for a higher participation rate in the survey, especially in the city of Mandalay, data collection was challenging, a number of hotels/lodges denied participation. This may have some implications on the generalization of results. However, over 70 and 45 percent of hotels/lodges in the capital city and the ancient city of Bagan, respectively, had participated in the survey.

Tourism has a great potential for growth in Myanmar. This research recommends ways to achieve and sustain competitive advantage for the lodging sector, which is vital for tourism.

Though a considerable research exists on tourism and the recent advances of the ICT sector in Myanmar, the country’s readiness for the actual usage of the internet for the development of tourism has not been specifically addressed. This paper explores this with compelling research findings useful for policy makers as well as players in the tourism sector.

This study aims to examine the impact of a mega-sporting event “2014 FIFA World Cup” on hotel pricing strategies and performance.

The present project examines the host regions’ response to the 2014 FIFA World Cup which was established by the variance in the main hotel key performance indexes: occupancy, average daily rate, revenue per available room (RevPAR) and supply. Using data gathered from STR, this research distinctly shows how the Brazilian host regions reacted to the World Cup.

Results suggest that the key performance indicators of Brazil’s lodging sector reacted differently to the World Cup. Although all hosting cities experienced significant RevPAR growth because of the increase in hotel room rates during the event, the supply and occupancy performed differed from each city.

Research is limited to the case of hotel performance at the country level for mega-events. The study focused on the reaction of revenue managers in the Latin America context. Other contexts may generate different results.

The study helps revenue managers to examine how the FIFA World Cup travel demand affected pricing strategies and revenue management practices in the Brazilian hotel sector in areas undergoing seasonal growths in overnight tourism. This study serves to inform hoteliers and practitioners about revenue management pricing strategies to improve hotel performance during mega-sporting events.

This study reveals that the benefits brought by a mega-event are not always translated into strong hotel revenue performance. This study highlights an important but understudied research area of revenue management pricing strategies and the effect of mega-sporting events in the hotel sector. This study contributes to the literature as one of the few investigations to benefit hotel pricing strategies and overall revenue performance.

This study is one of the few studies about exploring the reaction of revenue managers during the execution of a mega-sporting event. The value of the present study lies in the fact that the authors extend previous studies examining the impact of the most important sporting event in the hotel industry at the country-level perspective. This study serves to inform hoteliers and practitioners about revenue management pricing strategies to improve hotel performance during mega-sporting events.

This paper aims to employ data envelopment analysis (DEA) models to evaluate the efficiency level and the change of efficiency of the hotel industry in major Chinese cities from 2001 to 2011. The study also aims to investigate the determinants of this efficiency.

The DEA models were used to calibrate the scores of technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency in each city, and the Malmquist productivity index was introduced to trace the efficiency change. Furthermore, the panel Tobit and linear regression models were applied to look into various factors contributing to efficiency scores.

The inefficiency of the hotel industry generally comes from the pure technical inefficiency. Moreover, the efficiency of the hotel industry has been considerably improved over the research period due to the change in technical efficiency. In addition, it was found that political hierarchy, degree of openness and level of tourism dependence help explain the cross-city differences in efficiency scores, whereas ownership structure dominantly contributes to the improvement of efficiency over time.

The benchmark analysis of efficiency is of great importance to cities with an unproductive hotel industry, as it helps them make critical adjustments towards the efficiency frontier.

This study represents one of the first studies to rigorously and systematically investigate the efficiency and efficiency change of the hotel industry in major Chinese cities and identify the possible factors explaining the efficiency score.

The purpose of this paper is to figure out the impacts of soft innovation in the city hotels in general, whereas the focus is on figuring out if there exists a difference in vitality on the components of soft innovation among the hotel categories, as 4 stars, 5 stars and boutique hotels in Izmir, Turkey.

The first part is related to a detailed literature review on the soft innovation components as color, sound, light, scent and decoration. Literature review is followed by a qualitative research where expert information on the research topic is collected. Judgmental sampling is used to identify experts’ views where in-depth semi-structured interviews are conducted with 12 hotel managers in Izmir city. The soft innovation hotel application areas taken into consideration are: lobby and reception, rooms, restaurant, bar and ballroom areas, meeting and congress halls, SPA and pools, gardens and landscape and other exterior hotel architecture.

The findings of the research reveal the sample hotel managers’ views as all the soft innovation applications are important for all city hotels regardless of their category, meaning that soft innovation may lead to better marketing results. Thus, according to hotel managers, soft innovation offerings have a potential for better customer satisfaction as positive feedback. However, the vitality degree among components changes according to the hotel’s category. For boutique hotels the most important component is found to be the decoration of the hotel, whereas for 4 stars hotels it is light and for 5 stars hotels it is scent.

The results of this study give relatively limited information because only managers’ point of view are shown. In the research, customers’ perceptions on soft innovation based interviews with the top management of the hotels studied takes place, indicating which may not be the case to reflect the real perception of customers. Therefore, for further researches, it is recommended for the other researches to take into consideration of customers’ point of views as well. Also, time limitation, sample size and application of only qualitative research may be stated as the limitations for this study. Quantitative research applies to customers on the same topic and problem statement is recommended for further studies related to city hotels’ soft innovation applications.

Motivation of this study is to understand how soft innovation can change hotels’ atmosphere and make it more attractive from the managers’ perceptions. According to hotel managers’ views, soft innovation applications may lead to higher customer satisfaction, but the level of investment among the components may change according to the city hotel’s category. Research implications indicate that hotel managers may optimize the effectiveness of their soft innovation efforts by taking into consideration their hotel type, application areas and innovation category as decoration, color, scent, sound and light. According to hotel managers, decoration-related soft innovation is more important to boutique hotels, lighting-related soft innovation is an effective investment for 4 stars hotels and scent-related soft innovation is a suitable investment for 5 stars hotels.

The originality of the study lies in the analysis of the components of soft innovation as a means for effective city hotel marketing and innovative management applications. Though it is a very suitable industry for implementation, improvement and development, there are limited studies on soft innovation applications in the hotel industry.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of Airbnb on hotel employment.

A triple-difference regression framework was used to compare changes in hotel employment in three cities in South Africa where Airbnb started operating relative to cities without this home-sharing platform. Data on hotel employment was drawn from the survey on hotel service conducted by Smith Travel Research whereas the data on Airbnb’s listings was drawn from the Airbnb’s homepage for the period between July 2015 and December 2018. The analysis was restricted to 792 hotels.

Although prior studies have showed that Airbnb has an adverse impact on hotel performances, the findings show that total hotel employment expanded after the entry of Airbnb, accompanied by a marked relative shift towards self-employment. Airbnb supply negatively affected permanent employment, which was compensated by increase in temporary employment and self-employment. While the paper finds no evidence of adverse employment impacts, the hourly earnings declined for hotel employees were compensated by increase in income among self-employed Airbnb hosts. Although these findings might be contradictory to the general conjecture, such evidence calls for a comprehensive investigation of Airbnb’s overall economic impact.

First, the study was based on the impact of Airbnb on hotel employment in South Africa. Caution is therefore required when generalising the findings of this study in other geographic areas. Second, some variables that may affect employment have not been included in this study because of the unavailability of data.

The results show that the sharing economy plays an important role in solving the unemployment problem, particularly in South Africa, where there is a high rate of unemployment. More practical implications are further discussed.

To the best of author’s knowledge, this paper provides the first systematic evidence of the impact of Airbnb on labour market outcomes in the hotel industry in South Africa.

本论文研究Airbnb对酒店就业的影响。

研究采用三重差分回归模型, 对南非三个有Airbnb经营的城市与其他没有Airbnb经营的城市做酒店就业情况的对比分析。酒店就业数据来自于Smith Travel Research进行的Hotel Service问卷。Airbnb数据来自于2015年七月至2018年十二月之间的Airbnb主页上的租赁房屋数据。共792家酒店参与了数据分析。

尽管之前的研究表明Airbnb对酒店绩效有着负面影响, 但是本论文研究表明, 在Airbnb进驻城市后, 该城市的酒店就业提升了, 并伴随着显著的自营就业。然而, Airbnb最终还是对长期的就业有着负面影响, 只是短期就业和自营就业的比重增大而已。虽然本论文未发现Airbnb对就业有负面影响, 但是酒店员工的时薪降低了, 随之弥补的是自营就业的收入增加。尽管本研究结果对整体的文献有着矛盾的地方, 但是仍需针对Airbnb经济影响的全面调研。

首先, 本论文仅研究了南非Airbnb对酒店就业情况的影响。其研究结果在其他地区的推广性则有待考察。第二, 受到数据限制, 一些可能会影响就业率的因素未被收录在本研究样本内。

研究结果表明共享经济对解决就业问题有着重要影响, 尤其是在失业率较高的南非地区。更多的实际意义可以被深入讨论。

本论文是首篇系统分析了Airbnb对南非酒店业劳动市场影响的文章。

This research aims to reveal that accessibility of hotels to major points of attraction in the urban–territorial continuum of Catalonia, with its urban and coastal landscapes, has a direct impact on the dependent variables of customer satisfaction and average room rate.

The study collected data from 84 of 4-star hotel establishments, divided into urban and coastal hotels. Both coastal and urban hotels were differentiated depending on their distance to, the beach and the urban city center, respectively. Customer satisfaction and average room rate data were retrieved from online review platforms.

The study proves that hotels located in the urban–territorial continuum of Catalonia have different behaviors in terms of customer satisfaction and hotel pricing according to the variables of distance and landscape. The study shows that room rate and customer satisfaction are both higher in urban landscapes than in coastal landscapes. Urban hotels present significant differences in their levels of customer satisfaction and room rates depending on their location in the city of Barcelona. However, coastal hotels do not represent significant differences in room rates depending on their location, although they do represent significant differences in terms of customer satisfaction.

The originality of this study is based on how a dynamic urban–territorial model consisting of Barcelona and the Maresme coast, the hotel location and distances to main interest points impact in the variables of customer satisfaction and average room rate.

Building upon previous research on country-of-origin. This study aims to investigate whether the effects of country-of-origin extend to the hotel industry, based on associative network and signaling theories.

Based on a self-administered survey with tourists in China, this paper investigates antecedents and outcomes of hotel brand image and the moderating role of a hotel’s brand origin.

Results reveal country, city and industry images positively influence hotel brand image. Hotel brand image then influences price perception, quality perception and overall satisfaction.

Country-of-operation image remains a relevant, powerful predictor of brand image; thus, hotels need to carefully manage country-of-operation image.

This paper incorporates and establishes the role of country-of-operation image on hotel brand image.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the traditional hotel industry and Airbnb in nine major European cities. The author examines differences between the two business models and analyses various strategies of Airbnb hosts to cope with the crisis.

A detailed empirical analysis is presented based on data from STR and Inside Airbnb for the period January 2018–September 2020. To assess the impact of the pandemic on the hotel industry, year-to-year changes in various performance metrics are presented. The author also investigates the impact of the pandemic on Airbnb prices with panel data regression analysis. Using text-mining methods, signs for new use-cases are explored, including renting flats for home-office or quarantine.

The results support that Airbnb supply is more flexible. While hotel supply quickly returned to a level close to 2019, the average number of Airbnb listings was lower by more than 15%. Furthermore, the price analysis showed that Airbnb rates decreased more moderately than hotel prices. These findings suggest that a significant share of hosts pivoted from short-term accommodation provision and used their property differently, e.g. rented on a long-term basis. The analysis of listing characteristics revealed that the role of longer stays increased; however, the results do not support a shift towards advertising listings for home-office or quarantine purposes.

This paper presents the impact of the pandemic on the hospitality sector in a wide sample of European cities, explores the adjustment of hotels and Airbnb and provides new evidence on the differences between the business models.

The purpose of this study is to contribute with new insights into the nature, dimensionality and measurement of the core essence of the small city boutique hotel (SCBH), something which has been limited in the literature to date. It further explores the conceptual relationships of SCBH with other constructs, providing greater understanding of the nature of these specific conceptual associations and showing that the SCBH scale exhibits construct validity.

This study followed the Churchill’s paradigm to methodologically design the study and develop the scale. Based on an exploratory qualitative inquiry (one focus group and ten interviews) and quantitative assessment (two surveys), support was found for a three-dimensional scale.

Results support the proposed measures of the scale (dream, hospitality and style) in terms of construct, convergent, discriminate, nomological and predictive validity. The findings also suggest that while authenticity acts as a SCBH antecedent, pleasant arousal and preference represent SCBH consequences.

By developing and validating a SCBH scale for city destination, this study addresses an identified literature gap. Specifically, it conceptualizes SCBH as guests’ perception about core characteristics of SCBHs located in the city.