Search results

Growing health concerns amid the COVID-19 pandemic have led guests to focus on various aspects of hotel cleanliness. This study aims to investigate whether customers’ perceived importance of hotel cleanliness during their stay depends on local pandemic severity and moderators of the pandemic–cleanliness relationship.

Based on TripAdvisor data from 26,519 reviews in 2020 for 2,024 hotels across the USA, this study evaluated the importance of hotel cleanliness using the estimated coefficient of the cleanliness score in a regression of overall hotel rating scores.

Results of a multilevel ordered logit model confirmed that a more difficult local pandemic situation rendered cleanliness more important during hotel stays. Additionally, the effect of the pandemic was more pronounced among specific groups: men and travelers with more expertise, and guests staying in hotels without COVID-19 protocols for linen cleaning, with a lower average rating, with a larger size and in a more urbanized location.

This study represents a pioneering effort to assess how pandemics shape people’s (perceived) importance of cleanliness during hotel stays based on revealed data. Despite potential managerial relevance, a number of the moderating variables included in this study, such as traveler expertise and hotel location, have never been studied within the context of cleanliness perceptions during a pandemic.

After completion of this case study, the students will be able to comprehend the importance of communication in managing change, examine the role of processes and systems in implementing change management initiatives at a large scale, assess the effectiveness of various strategies in mitigating resistance to change and recognise optimal strategies for communication processes and messages with respect to different audience and contexts.

This case study discusses decisions and strategies that led to Indore (a city in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India) becoming India’s cleanest city for the sixth time in a row. The case explores if the various strategies used by the commissioner of Indore Municipal Corporation would continue to succeed in mitigating resistance to change from the citizens of Indore or if the change management strategies needed to be revised. Amidst intensely rising competition from other cities, especially Surat (a city in the state of Gujarat, India), the case delves into the commissioner’s efforts to defend Indore’s claim of being India’s cleanest city for the sixth consecutive time.

This case study is suitable for use in executive modules and management development programs. It can be used for the following courses: ■ In change management course, this case study can cover critical aspects of strategies to mitigate resistance to change and bring about lasting behavioural changes in followers.■ In communication courses, this case study can cover key aspects of communicating the change vision of a leader to a large audience.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 7: Management science

This case is the second of a three-part series that follows the managerial, strategic, and communications decisions of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) or Clean India Mission, the flagship programme of the Government of India to eliminate the practice of open defecation (i.e., not using a toilet) from 2014 to 2019. As of 2014, 550 million people in India practiced open defecation. This problem posed a massive public health hazard and economic drag for the country as well as a threat to global health. Written from an insider's perspective, the cases centre on the decisions made by a new Secretary of India's Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, who was hired to manage SBM, and the team he assembled. Case B discusses the start-up challenges for SBM, including implementation in India's complex federal system, workplace culture, and the deep-rooted behaviour of open defecation in rural India and the managerial and communication strategies formulated to address them. The case concludes by framing the difficulties with slow-moving states and monitoring rigour that the leadership SBM, with a new team, strategic focus, and early momentum, faced as the mission entered its final two years.

This study aims to investigate tourists’ intentions to use hotel service robots with a focus on safety and hygiene. It examines the impact of perceived safety, health awareness and service assurance on consumer engagement and robot usage.

Survey data from 275 participants with experience in robotic service were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The study used purposive sampling and collected data via the Prolific platform, using SEM and SmartPLS Ver. 3.0 for analysis.

Results indicate customers prioritize safety and hygiene, valuing effective service responses and cleanliness. Perceived robotic safety and service assurance positively influence personal engagement, with a preference for service robots among female guests.

While emphasizing the importance of safety and service assurance in hotel robotics, the study acknowledges limitations in personalization and conclusive use of service robots.

This research contributes to understanding the role of perceived safety in service robot usage, highlighting the significance of user trust and comfort in human–robot interactions. It also explores the novel connection between service assurance and service robots, offering insights into robotic performance reliability in user-centric contexts.

This study investigates restaurant patrons' comfort level with the sudden shift in the dining-in climate within the state of Massachusetts during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

An exploratory study utilized learning algorithms via gradient boosting techniques on surveyed restaurant patrons to identify which restaurant operational attributes and patron demographics predict in-dining comfort levels.

Past consumers' eating habits determine how much their behavior will change during a pandemic. However, their dining-in frequency is not a predictor of their post-pandemic dining-in outlook. The individuals who were more comfortable dining in prior to the pandemic dined in more often during the COVID pandemic. However, they had a poorer outlook on when dining in would return to normal. Although there are no clear indicators of when and how customers will embrace the new norm (a combination of pre-, peri-, and post-pandemic), the results show that some innovative approaches, such as limiting service offerings, are not well accepted by customers.

The study offers several managerial implications for foodservice providers (i.e. restaurants, delivery services, pick-up) and investors. In particular, the study provides insights into the cognitive factors that determine diners' behavioral change in response to a pandemic and their comfort level. Operators must pay attention to these factors and consider different offering strategies when preparing to operate their business amid a pandemic.

This is a study of a specific location and period. It was conducted in Massachusetts before a vaccine was available. The restaurant industry was beset with uncertainty. It fills a gap in the current literature focused on the COVID-19 pandemic in customers' transition from pre-COVID-19 dining-in behaviors to customers' refreshed COVID-19 outlook and industry compliance with newly established hygiene and safety standards.

In 2020, the world encountered travel restrictions because of pandemic, and the hospitality sector across the globe was one of the most affected industries. The purpose of this study is to further explore real-time experiences of guests who stayed in budget hotels and how pandemic has changed the expectations of its customer segment.

The current study uses netnography to examine customer experience of guests who stayed at budget hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic. A thematic analysis was conducted using NVivo 12 plus on 1,391 customer reviews collected from various travel portals.

The results suggested personalization and hygiene were the most significant themes that influence customer experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors’ analysis revealed that the use of self-service technologies like contactless services during check-in, checkouts and use of Quick Response codes in restaurants and other services would help reduce the perceived risk of guests and enhance the overall customer experience.

The branded budget hotel sector has pumped in lot of money envisaging growth just before the COVID crises emerged. Therefore, the fast recovery is of paramount importance for the sector. Additionally, majority of the pandemic-related studies in hospitality sector have focused on luxury hotels and failed to address the real-time experiences of customers with respect to budget hotels of a developing country. The outcome of this study will be relevant for the budget hotels and policymakers because they face the crucial task of reviving and sustaining enterprises and the industry at large.

The purpose of this study is to find out the factors that influence dental travelers’ revisit intention (RI) to Tijuana, Mexico.

Based on the push and pull model, five constructs were included: quality service, price, supporting services, cultural proximity and quality information. The information was obtained by applying an online survey to a sample of 384 dental tourists in Tijuana, Mexico, who were repeat patients of a dental clinic in Tijuana after the COVID-19 pandemic. Exploratory factor analysis, average variance explained and composite reliability were conducted to ensure the validity of each construct. Multiple regression analysis was done to identify predictors of travelers’ RI.

The results obtained show that cultural proximity, quality service, price and supporting services influenced the travelers’ revisit behavior after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge on travel behavior in dental tourism after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, which has been scarcely studied. Also, RI was analyzed, focusing on repeated travelers to propose a model mainly for borders or frontiers where developed and developing countries co-exist and interact.

The purpose of this study is to understand the situation of hotels and tourism industry in Malaysia during and in post Covid-19 and to mitigate indirect damage caused by COVID-19 to the hotel business and tourism industry by examining the factors that have an influence on hotel’s customer satisfaction rating and revisit intention through an integration of service quality (SERVQUAL) framework and expectation-confirmation theory (ECT).

The SERVQUAL and ECT were considered the underpinning theoretical models but are integrated and extended by including a few additional variables. Data were collected from 458 respondents of travelers and hotel customers in Malaysia and analysed by applying partial least squares structural equation model technique.

The empirical results established that significant positive relationships exist between the three newly emerged independent variables (IVs), namely, hygienic practice, greenness of service and digitalization and hotel customer satisfaction towards hotel revisit intention, and only two variables from SERVQUAL, namely, reliability and assurance, have a significant relationship with hotel customer satisfaction towards hotel revisit intention. The results reveal that customer satisfaction has significant direct effect between above-mentioned IVs and customers revisit intention.

The use of purposeful sampling method in only one country might limit the generalizability of the results. Future research should be planned to duplicate the current study using a sizable sample of participants from multiple countries and include other related factors related to the pandemic phenomena such as safety, hotel location and health value offered.

Theoretical findings imply that service quality is a dynamic theory that should be examined continuously to achieve sustainable and resilient performance in today’s competitive business environment, as some modifications inevitably occur over time and new factors could be emerged. Regarding practical implications, study findings proved the great significance of assurance, reliability, digitalization, greenness and hygienic practices on customer satisfaction towards intention to revisit to hotel. Therefore, it is critical for hotel management to retain hotel business industry in a way that fits and matches customer’s health protection, meets customer’s newly prompted expectations and needs and ensures resilience during unsettled times.

This study is unique as the newly emerged variables are included in the research framework, and thus it helps to close the literature gap by introducing an integrated SERVQUAL and ECT theoretical model, which rarely performs in this context and can be replicated or extended with validated scales. This study contributes to enhancing hotel and tourism sustainable service quality performance to achieve myriad economic and health values.

This study aims to investigate consumer decision-making styles (CDMS) in the context of street food. In addition to the original CDMS constructs, two additional constructs, namely food safety risks and environmental risks, were included based on relevant literature. Furthermore, the study explores the moderating role of social media celebrities (SMCs) in bridging the intention-behaviour gap in street food consumption behaviour.

The data were collected through an online survey, with 300 participants providing useable responses. Partial least squares (PLS) analysis was employed to analyse the data.

The findings indicate that out of the eight identified CDMS, six styles, specifically recreational (hedonistic shopping consciousness), price consciousness, novelty-seeking, impulsiveness, confusion due to over-choice and brand loyalty, significantly influence consumers' intention to consume street foods. Additionally, the results support the moderating role of SMCs. This suggests that the presence and influence of SMCs play a significant role in shaping consumers' intention and behaviours towards street food consumption.

This study contributes significantly to the literature by adding two additional constructs, namely safety risks and environmental risks in CDMS. Moreover, this study fulfils the intention-behaviour gap in street food literature by exploring the moderation effect of SMCs.