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As the world slowly emerges from the pandemic of the newly discovered COVID-19 virus, luxury hospitality providers are re-opening their businesses in a completely new reality. While they ensure that their unique brand identity and image are appropriately communicated to the customers, they must also strictly adhere to the hygiene and cleanliness standards imposed on businesses by local authorities. As a result, luxury hotels, restaurants, spas and resorts find themselves in a situation where they must adjust, if not re-design, experiences offered to their customers.

This chapter looks at the concept of experiences and examines key elements of creating authentic experiences. It discusses the role of embedding the culture of adaptability to change to ensure the business's longevity and resilience to crises. Finally, it deconstructs some of the industry's best practices to showcase the most creative and resourceful approaches to embracing the new reality and offering authentic experiences to discerning guests.

The chapter is concluded by an attempt to look into future customer expectations and businesses' opportunities to re-open and provide updated services to customers by actually embedding strategic foresight in both short- and long-term planning to build genuine resilience to future crises.

The chapter studies the problems of formation of regional mechanisms of modernization and development of infrastructure of regions and the country, which are determined by complexity of attracting private capital in financing of infrastructure, which is limited by a long return period and the level of profitability of projects. The mechanism of public–private partnership is offered, which allows leveling high risks of implementation of infrastructural projects under guidance of the state. Also, the methodology of foresight control is studied, which is the last stage of modernization and development of infrastructure of regions and the country, as innovational tools of forecasting the future, which is aimed at leveling the risks, allows determining and neutralizing the danger of nontarget usage of invested financial resources, and seeing the threats to internal environment and external environment.

A series of research experiences provoked this paper. In the spring of 2003, I was asked to act as an assessor, for the Island of Ireland Seed Corn competition¹. There I came across academic start-ups (ASUs), directly linked to Irish public sector science and technology (S&T) funding. Several of the competition teams consisted of young scientists, who presented business plans. Probing demonstrated that the teams appeared to possess little understanding of the business concepts these contained. Another consistent finding was that any market reference made was focused on multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiaries already located in the country. Intrigued by this, together with a colleague, we then began looking at ASUs, university-based funded S&T research centres and the activities of the newly created Science Foundation of Ireland (SFI).²

To explain the origin of novel strategies I elaborate the managerial judgment perspective as an alternative to the serendipity and managerial foresight views on the origin of novel strategies proposed in the earlier literature. The managerial judgment perspective closely integrates resource-based theories and theories of managerial cognition. It builds centrally on the construct of “management’s theory of success” as a representation of managers’ beliefs and expectations concerning the factors that lead to desired outcomes in the light of Knightean uncertainty and that is formed through learning from small samples over time. The managerial judgment perspective may be seen as a theory that explains the formation of strategies independently from their eventual performance, but may also shed light on the cognitive antecedents of superior performance. It also argues for a conception of strategic agency in terms of ecological rationality.

In the tourism sector, the differentiation is difficult in the commoditized market. The main challenge for businesses is to design the experiences which would create awareness and difference. With this foresight, this chapter aims to show an experience-based service design path built around various elements such as sensations, emotions, human relations, innovations, and values.

This chapter is based on extensive literature review, including books, journals, articles, conference papers, and search reports. Furthermore, the Singapore Airlines web page was used as an important source of information to examine the instructional path built suggested in the literature review.

As it has been determined by the general review, experience-based service design contains different components, and with these evaluations the experience-based service design was established in this chapter within three steps: explore, design, and positioning. Furthermore, on the case study of Singapore Airlines, the tracks of these three steps have been investigated. Especially, explore and design dimensions have been identified to be used mainly during the experience design.

From the highlights of the literature review, an instructional path for experience-based service design and implementation process is highlighted in three parts and this instructional path would guide business managers/experience engineers.

As the experience-based service design has been increasingly receiving the attention of the business’ managers in the tourism sector, an overview examination of experience design, and being instructional guide will direct them to implicate the dimensions in practice.

Successful smart cities' implementation will require organisational leadership decision-making competences. The foundation of smart cities is digital technologies; many of these technologies are emerging technologies that require IT skills, which are scarce and will exacerbate the battle for talent between organisations. Filling the talent gap will necessitate global hiring, which has implications for organisational culture, cultural diversity and organisational leadership. Organisational cultural mix is an important contributor to leadership decision-making. However, decision-making is underpinned by trust. Blockchain is an emerging technology that has the potential to engender organisational trust in decision-making and, by extension, in the leadership with the ‘right’ organisational culture. Smart cities will be required to leverage emerging technologies to give business performance a competitive advantage and use emerging technologies’ applications to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

Cameroon’s contemporary legislative and institutional frameworks for disaster risk management (DRM) encapsulate the concept of Civil Protection (CP). Diverse disaster risk profile and high incidence/frequency of co-occurring natural and human-induced hazards are intimately linked to increasing vulnerability and fragile economy, transforming hazards into emergencies, crises and disasters, with dire livelihood consequences. To curb growing disaster risks, the Cameroon government instituted basic legislative and institutional frameworks for DRM, through top-down hierarchical, and ex post decision-making processes. Existing frameworks combine multi-hazard, multi-stakeholder and multidisciplinary/agency approaches. Inertia, limited foresight and proactiveness, innovation capacity and limited stakeholder involvement have rendered DRM ineffective. Existing DRM instruments are vague and not explicit. DRM lags behind a rapidly evolving disaster risk profile, and implementation is scattered across ministries/agencies, rendering cross-sectoral cooperation and coordination difficult. Although Cameroon is a signatory to many international disaster risk reduction (DRR)/DRM frameworks, and frequently participates in international DRR/DRM events, implementation of international agreements leaves much to be desired. The Directorate of Civil Protection – Cameroon’s sole legislative DRM institution is marred by bureaucracy, centralisation and insufficient power to perform. There is an urgent need to overhaul existing legislation and institutional frameworks for effective DRM in Cameroon.