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The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of reviewer qualification and credibility (RQC) and hotel classification involving online hotel reviews (OHRs). The study examines the effects of the reviewer level as a proxy of RQC on review helpfulness and reviewing behavior (review rating, review length). The study also included hotel classification as a moderating variable.

Data from 1,968 reviews were collected from TripAdvisor.com using a web data-harvesting technique. Hypothesized relations in the model were tested with t-test and MANOVA analysis.

The empirical results show that the effect of reviewer level on review helpfulness is not significant. In addition, a high-level reviewer tends to leave a lower rating and a lengthier review than a low-level reviewer. Regarding the moderating effects, for the high-level reviewer, three-star independent hotels have a greater effect on review helpfulness.

The study has several useful implications for researchers, hotel industry when managing OHR and disseminating information to their potential consumers.

The findings help online review website organizers manage the operation of RQC and hotel classification in a proper manner. Marketing managers, especially those of three-star independent hotels, can effectively utilize review management to the desired effect.

Unlike previous studies, this study explores the effect of RQC on review helpfulness and reviewing behaviors across the hotel classification. In addition, this study contributes to the hotel industry developing more effective online reviews from the reviewer level and diverse hotel types (three-star independent, four-star chain, five-star luxury hotels).

The purpose of this study is twofold: it aims to examine hotel website features by conducting a content analysis and it analyses customers’ viewpoints about the importance of the contents of hotel websites. The study involves a quantitative method of measurement and evaluation of the information provided by hotel websites. It tries to evaluate the richness of definite and ample information dimensions, which as a whole constitutes the information services offered through the website.

The study is based on two pillars: all five-star hotel chains (113 hotels) in Egypt as the population frame to evaluate the contents of their websites; and a sample of 406 customers selected to examine the customers’ views on the importance of the contents of hotel websites. This study proposes a quantitative evaluation frame of all dimensions provided by hotel websites which is developed, tested and validated.

The study has revealed important findings that can help hotel managers to adjust the information on the websites to be more efficient and customer-oriented.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed frame again in further studies.

The study includes implications for the development of hotel website evaluation from the perspective of two sides, hotel managers and customers, by using a unique quantitative evaluation model.

This research has for the first time combined statements from the perspective of two sides – hotel managers and customers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of ethnic, gender and religious diversity management practices (DMPs) and the level of implementation from perspectives of five-star hotels in Egypt. Besides, it also examines the moderating role of empowerment and capability development (CD) between the importance and the implementation of gender and religious management practices.

The questionnaires were distributed personally to entry-level F&B employees, F&B managers, working in F&B departments, and HR managers in all accepted five-star hotels in their workplaces, during July and August 2017. Only 400 returned back, with a response rate of 35 percent and were considered usable for data analysis.

The results clarified that there was a significant moderate positive correlation between the importance and the implementation of gender and religious management practices (MPs). Nonetheless, the correlation proved to be significant, weak and positive between the importance and the implementation of ethnic MPs. The relationship between the importance and the implementation of ethnic, gender and religious MPs was not moderated by empowerment.

Although questionnaires have been collected from diverse F&B outlets, comparisons among outlets were not conducted. This study concentrated on the F&B departments only; hence, future researchers can make comparisons among different departments.

This study implies that HR managers should recruit employees from diverse ethnicities, gender, ages, disabilities and religions to help five-star hotels achieve success in marketplaces. Recruiting diverse employees should be a basic part of the organizational culture of hotels, specifically F&B departments.

Social activities organized in hotels, such as a tennis table, football and billiards tournaments, are included. Hotels can provide employees with special meals during fasting and they can also allow Christian employees to leave the hotel from 7 to 10 a.m. to attend the mass in church each Sunday.

Although DM is necessary for the hospitality industry, there is a lack of studies focusing on investigating the importance−implementation of DMPs and analyzing the moderating role of empowerment and CD in this industry, specifically in Egypt. This study provided weighty contributions to the management of diversity in the Egyptian hotel sector and formed one of the first empirical studies.

This study aims to determine whether the branded luxury guestroom amenities provided in five-star hotels of Delhi influence the guest's hotel purchase decisions. It also identified the amenities which are found to be most and least influential in affecting the guest's hotel selection and purchase behaviour. The study was conducted in the three upscale five-star hotels of Delhi. The selection of amenities and brands to be considered as luxury was based upon three focus group interviews with the room's division manager of the hotels. A structured questionnaire was drafted to identify the most and least useful hotel amenities among the respondents, influencing their hotel selection and purchase behaviours. Wi-Fi in the guestroom was found to be the most valuable amenity, with stationery items regarded as least valuable. It was also found that the guest's hotel selection and purchase decisions were significantly influenced when luxury branded amenities were placed in the guestroom. Guests were even found to pay extra when the hotel provided access to luxury branded amenities in the guestrooms. This is a novel attempt to find how the guests' hotel selection and purchase intentions are influenced by the placement of branded luxury amenities in guestrooms.

This article aims to analyze performance evaluation in the Portuguese hospitality sector. It assesses the frequency with which performance indicators are monitored, the relevance assigned to them and how the two are related. It further evaluates whether performance evaluation practices in the Portuguese hospitality sector are based on the balanced scorecard (BSC) philosophy.

The study builds upon a doctoral research addressing the hospitality sector in Portugal. Theoretically, it resorts to a literature review on performance indicators and the Portuguese hospitality sector. Empirically, it looks at a sample of four- and five-star hotels operating in Portugal in 2012. A questionnaire addressing the four perspectives of BSC was applied, and a descriptive analysis was developed.

Performance indicators cover the four perspectives of BSC in a balanced way, which confirms its relevance as a strategic management tool. However, there is no coincidence between the performance indicators most frequently monitored and those considered to be most relevant.

The study reviews/identifies performance indicators suitable for the hospitality sector and highlights ways to improve their use in the Portuguese hospitality sector.

Redirecting the use of performance indicators to long-term objectives will benefit the financial results of the hospitality industry, with positive impacts on employment. This is particularly relevant as the hospitality industry is an activity strongly characterized by seasonality.

This is a descriptive study related to the use of indicators in the Portuguese hotel sector, to this date inexistent/innovative. It highlights the need for changes in the choice of performance indicators in the Portuguese hospitality sector and offers suggestions for future performance evaluation frameworks.

This paper aims to propose and test a conceptual model, guided by conservation of resources theory, that examines whether emotional exhaustion is a mediator between organization mission fulfillment and critical outcomes such as turnover intentions, lateness attitude, job performance and extra-role customer service.

The aforesaid relationships were assessed via data gathered from customer-contact employees two weeks apart in three waves and their immediate supervisors in the international five-star chain hotels in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The relationships in the model were gauged via structural equation modeling.

The results reveal that organization mission fulfillment influences the above-mentioned outcomes only through emotional exhaustion. Specifically, organization mission fulfillment mitigates customer-contact employees’ emotional exhaustion. Under these circumstances, these employees report desirable outcomes such as low levels of quitting intentions and lateness attitude as well as higher in- and extra-role performances.

In future research, collecting data from different service settings in different countries would enable the researcher to conduct a cross-national study and make further generalizations. In future research, including actual turnover and absenteeism as well creative and service recovery performances in the model would enrich the understanding about the outcomes of organization mission fulfillment and emotional exhaustion.

Management needs to use several intra-organizational communication tools so that customer-contact employees can have an understanding of how the organization is trying to accomplish its mission. When employees participate in and contribute to the preparation of the organization’s mission statement, they own the mission statement and do their best to achieve the organizational objectives. Management should also offer a work environment where employees can avail themselves of psychosocial support to be provided by mentors. Such psychosocial support would enable employees to manage problems emerging from emotional exhaustion.

This paper contributes to current knowledge by testing the effect of the organization’s fidelity to its mission statement on emotional exhaustion and the above-mentioned job outcomes using data obtained from employees in frontline service jobs in the hotel industry.

The purpose of this study is to develop and test a model, which examines work‐related depression among frontline hotel employees. Specifically, the model examines emotional exhaustion as a full mediator of the effects of positive affectivity and intrinsic motivation on depression. The model also investigates the interaction of intrinsic motivation and positive affectivity on emotional exhaustion and depression.

Data were gathered from Arab frontline employees in the international five‐star chain hotels of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. A total number of 135 self‐administered questionnaires were collected.

The results of hierarchical multiple regression analysis demonstrates that employees with positive affectivity and intrinsic motivation experience less emotional exhaustion. The results reveal that emotional exhaustion fully mediates the impacts of positive affectivity and intrinsic motivation on depression and further indicate that the interaction of intrinsic motivation and positive affectivity alleviates depression.

In future studies obtaining data from multiple sources would reduce the potential threat of common method bias associated with self‐report data. Since the cross‐sectional design of the present study constrains the ability to make causal inferences, future empirical studies with longitudinal data would be beneficial to establish causal relationships.

It would be helpful for employees to cope with emotional exhaustion and depression, if they could work in an environment, where there are supportive supervisors and wellness‐health programs. Mentors could provide such employees with vocational psychosocial support and become role models in the workplace. Workshops could encourage employees to openly discuss their problems in the workplace and would demonstrate that the organization cares about their well‐being.

Very little is known about factors that may potentially exacerbate or alleviate work‐related depression. Therefore, this study partially fills in this void in the hospitality management literature by testing the previously mentioned relationships.

The purpose of this study is to identify the characterizations of business process management (BPM) methodology in hotel industry through an aggregate processing of the core cyclesteps (CCCs) of the highly-cited BPM life-cycle models in the literature aiming to highlight the major issues of the current methodological approach of BPM in hotels when to put the notion of service process into practice.

The paper identifies and examines the most popular BPM life-cycles models in the literature and locates 15 life-cycles that are highly cited. The paper then focuses on applying the theory on nine listed hotel companies in Egypt using a questionnaire in the form of a semi-structured interview technique.

The CCSs of BPM life-cycle model applied in hotels revealed a gap between BPM theory and practice in this sector. Utilizing this model of BPM life-cycle, the paper focuses on describing several of the main problems or pitfalls found in the methodological approach of BPM in hotels, which brings the essence of the whole operation management problems.

In light of these findings, the paper discusses the practical implications and focuses on recommendations on how to properly improve the methodological approach of BPM in hotels in order to get better business results.

The paper bridges the gap between BPM theory and practice and suggests recommendations that will assist hotel companies to eliminate the problems of poor process management (PM). There are also future research recommendations to enhance the knowledge of BPM theory in the service sector.

Hospitality managers face constant challenges in promoting hotel service principles such as innovation and flexibility to their new employees, as such knowledge is usually tacit in nature and hard to formalize. This study aims to suggest that this problem can be addressed by using a knowledge sharing group intervention. Specifically, the authors propose that knowledge sharing groups can enhance a newcomer’s job clarity and positive work attitude by encouraging a stronger sense of perceived importance of and affection toward the hotel service principles.

The authors designed a three-month knowledge sharing program in a five-star hotel chain in Hong Kong. Newcomers were randomly assigned into an experimental group (knowledge sharing group) (N = 235) and a control group (N = 233). The authors tested all the hypotheses via path analyses using Mplus 8.0.

The results revealed that employees of the experimental group showed a stronger sense of importance of and affection toward the service principles, which in turn resulted in higher levels of job clarity, satisfaction and commitment and lower levels of turnover intention.

This research provides hotel managers with practical knowledge regarding sharing programs as key socialization intervention mechanisms. By triggering the employees’ deeper understanding of hotel policy, this program can help hotels fortify high-quality service and develop realistic and useful materials for their future training activities.

Although hospitality scholars have consistently acknowledged the positive influence of knowledge sharing, field experimental research on the outcomes of knowledge management for the newcomer socialization process has been scanty. This study seeks to fill this gap by designing and testing a practical knowledge sharing intervention program in the hotel industry.