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Purpose – Hospitals need to determine if an international patient department is a necessity to communicate with and manage international patients.

Design/Methodology/Approach – A benchmarking instrument was created to assess the level of professionalism in managing international patients, including reviewing and validating processes by two university hospitals, professionals, and an expert panel.

Findings – First, the differences between the hospitals depended on the will of the hospital to engage in such activities. Second, the differences depended on the embedding national context in which the hospital was situated. Further validation revealed the importance of other supportive services, such as cultural sensitivity and language. Finally, the microlevel phenomenon of international patient departments is placed within a macrolevel transnational health region development scheme.

Originality/Value – This study focused on the supply of services with respect to international patient departments, which could be related to efficiency and sustainability on a public health and health systems level.

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The tourist experience has matured in its body of literature, but researchers still debate the best way to measure and define the concept. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and compare memorable and on-site tourist experiences from theoretical, empirical, and methodological perspectives. A review of the literature is used to identify and describe the next evolutionary research step which is the quality-of-life (QOL) aspect of tourism experiences. It is argued that the evolving focus on QOL attributes is fueled by the theories and concepts of service-dominant logic. The paper argues that value (co)created on all sides of the equation (e.g., customer or company) must be considered when carrying out research. The paper also finds that different value outcomes for the individual customer occur in both on-site and memorable experience contexts. The findings contest an earlier theoretical argument, suggesting that memorable tourist experiences provide more value than on-site tourist experience.

This paper seeks to report historical research into McDonald's public communication strategies as the corporation responded to the rising tide of “political consumerism” that accompanied its global market expansion (1960‐2005).

Reviewing the brand's public relations strategies, through a content analysis of news coverage, the paper analyzes the way communication strategists took account of the anxieties about youth labour practices, community relations, globalization, environment and obesity which forced the brand to acknowledge the lifestyle risks associated with children and youth.

The case study portrays McDonald's as a figurehead of US entrepreneurial multinational capitalism. It reveals how addressing public opposition through the courts can backfire on a brand strategy so keen on defending its honour. The case study also finds that listening and engaging with critics is as effective as suing them for McDonald's.

The paper contributes to the historical recognition of the role that corporate communications professionals play – particularly marketing and public relations specialists – in transforming corporate practices by acknowledging consumers' growing anxieties about industrialization.

The Royal Opera House, located at the epicentre of Covent Garden, stands as the UK’s leading provider of opera and ballet performances. Having been extensively redeveloped, its front facade is not visible from the area’s central market place and the perceived exclusivity and elitism commonly associated with its art forms also impose a challenge. This study aims to analyze the influence that the Opera House exerts on the tourist’s perception and experience of the world-renowned London’s “Theatreland”.

In all, three hundred and six semi-structured interviews with domestic, international, first-time and repeat tourists were conducted in six different locations throughout the area and inside the flagship building using a convenience sampling approach. These were then analyzed with the assistance of qualitative data analysis software (QSR N*Vivo) in two stages leading to an initial set of categorical topics that derived in a number of findings related to the factors that influence the tourist’s perception and experience of place.

The Opera House’s perceived urban concealment proved to have an impact on its influence on Covent Garden’s sense of place. But its social inclusion and audience development initiatives that foster a new generation of opera and ballet theatre-goers emerged as important findings as the House’s open door policy for daytime visitors along with live relays of current opera and ballet productions in other locations spark an interest in experiencing the building from the inside.

This paper focuses exclusively on findings related to audience development and social inclusion initiatives currently used at the Royal Opera House and their impact on the tourist’s perception and experience of place. However, many other factors influence these processes and scope for further research is highlighted.

The Royal Opera House’s perceived urban concealment imposes a challenge to the task of developing new audiences for its current and future productions. Its learning and participation unit must endeavor to engage younger and international markets by focusing on the quality of the House’s performances, its heritage and added facilities of the venue such as exhibitions and shop.

The Royal Opera House’s creed of “excellence, access and artistic development” is implemented by extending opportunities to younger target markets to engage with its cultural produce.

This paper addresses the gap in knowledge related to the development of the niche Opera House tourist segment of the cultural tourism market.

This paper aims to provide an overview over the development of historical research into advertising from the early twentieth century. Its main purposes are to interest marketing scholars and business historians in the history of advertising, help scholars that are unfamiliar with the field in choosing an appropriate theoretical and methodological angle, and provide a critique of a range of methods and theoretical approaches being applied in advertising historical research.

The research design of this paper is based on historiographical analysis and method critique. It surveys the advertising historical literature of the three decades between 1980 and 2010, and it compares and contrasts dominant research methodologies and theoretical paradigms that have been used by historians and advertising researchers.

Much advertising historical research is based on a specific set of theoretical paradigms (“Modernization”, “Americanization”, and “Semiotics”), without being aware of the manifest impact they have on the narratives and understandings that historians create. Identifying these paradigms and outlining their impact will help marketing historians and advertising researchers to avoid the pitfalls associated with particular paradigms.

This paper subjects the modern historiography of advertising to a methodological and narratological analysis. It uses this analysis to propose new and somewhat more critical directions in advertising historical research.