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A comparative study was undertaken analysing what accommodation managers and business guests believed were the factors influencing accommodation selection. It was discovered that business guests rated “bathroom and shower quality”, “standard of bedroom maintenance” and “comfort of mattress and pillow” highly, while accommodation management rated “courteous, polite, well‐mannered staff”, “enthusiasm, and commitment of staff” and “efficiency of front desk” highly. In contrast, both the business guests and accommodation managers indicated that the cleanliness of the hotel was the most significant factor influencing accommodation selection. The research also identified that there was a statistically significant difference in many items in the survey between what management and guests believed were important, which indicates a lack of understanding by management. The ramifications for management who do not provide those items important to guests are lower occupancy rates and guest dissatisfaction. Further, spending time and money on items that are not so important to guests may not be a wise use of resources. Regarding the question of whether managers understand their guests, this research indicates that they do not.

Teaching and learning online during the Covid-19 pandemic has forced university instructors to consider online alternatives to the classroom. It is possible to facilitate students’ learning in the digital environment in similar ways to the traditional face-to-face classroom. The inclusion of e-guests in the digital learning space presents one such opportunity. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the use of e-guests in online learning.

This paper presents a case study, following a postgraduate class and the role of the e-guest in students’ synchronous online learning.

E-guests facilitated student learning. Their approaches to learning ranged from slides to discussions. Students responded well to this method of learning.

There is potential for enhancing student learning through the inclusion of e-guests, who bring their expertise to the classroom. E-guests from different regions offer students an opportunity to learn from specialists they would not necessarily have access to in the traditional classroom.

E-guests offer one important potential means of enriching online teaching.

This study aims to determine similarities and differences in business travellers' expectations and managers' perceptions of the service provided by guest houses.

Two questionnaires with seven‐point Likert scales were used to measure travellers' expectations of guest house service and managers' perceptions of these expectations. Data was analysed using Statistica Version 6.1 by employing factor analysis and ANOVA tests.

Business travellers deemed secure parking and the professionalism of staff as the most important attributes, while guest house managers thought it would be friendliness of front desk staff and efficient handling of complaints. Both groups indicated that cleanliness of rooms and services performed by staff adequately the first time, were of particular importance. The importance rating of the different service dimensions was not significantly influenced by the business travellers' gender, managerial position, nights of stay or by the guest house grading. Managers mostly overestimated guests' expectations.

The limitation of the study is the relatively small sample used (50 guest house managers and 300 business travellers within one city). Future research needs to examine a broader sample of guest house managers and could compare the expectations of different types of guests.

It is worth noting that guest house managers had overestimated the expectations of business travellers regarding the service provided. Management should focus on service dimensions important to guests and not those based on own opinions.

An understanding of business travellers' expectations could lead to their needs being more closely addressed and satisfaction levels being raised.

Guest history is a valuable service and marketing tool. In particular, it is likely to become a strategic device for the development of brand loyalty in the 1990s. Reports on a nationwide Australian study of 121 hotels′ use of guest history, and describes some of the key opportunities for optimizing the guest history function. The findings suggest that while guest history is being widely utilized by hotels, the extent of that utilization is limited. Three major areas for developing strategies to optimize the guest history function were found to include: specific guest history training modules; an internal service orientation emphasizing the organization‐wide usage of guest history to service the customer better; and further enhancement of the use of guest history for increasing brand loyalty.

Language and dialect, customs and service attitudes are just a few of the characteristics that make each culture unique. Consequently, the presence of people from different cultures during a service encounter may impact service quality, as what constitutes good service quality is perceived differently across cultures. As a country with a multicultural society, culturally diverse migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB) play an increasingly important role in the Australian hospitality and accommodation sector. Within this regional context, this study aims to contribute to a more robust understanding of the influence of workforce cultural diversity on different aspects of front-desk accommodation service quality in the accommodation industry.

In this qualitative study, 31 semi-structured in-depth interviews with guests, front-desk staff and managers at service apartments in Western Australia were conducted, followed by validation interviews with five hospitality human resource management experts.

The results of the interviews suggest that cultural diversity of NESB staff affects several aspects of Australian accommodation front-desk services, including communication quality, staff-guest interaction and guest satisfaction. Findings point out that culturally diverse NESB front-desk staff may face cross-cultural communication barriers due to different foreign accents and the presence of local slang, improve guest-staff interaction and the overall guest experience in case of similar cultural backgrounds with guests and provide authentic representations of multiculturalism in Australia.

The study sheds new light on tourists’ shifting perceptions and expectations of authenticity, particularly in Australia, where cultural diversity has increased in prominence. Moreover, in the Australian accommodation service, many NESB employees who have learned American/British English have difficulty conversing with people with Australian accents, especially when Australian slang is also present.

本项定性研究针对西澳大利亚州服务公寓的客户、前台工作人员和经理进行了 31 次半结构化深度访谈, 随后对五位酒店人力资源管理专家进行了验证性访谈。

语言和方言、习俗和服务态度是能体现每种文化独特性的几个特征。因此, 在服务过程中人们文化背景的差异可能会影响服务质量, 因为不同文化对于良好服务质量的认知各不相同。澳大利亚作为一个多元文化社会的国家, 其酒店和住宿行业的发展愈发受到来自非英语背景（NESB）的多元文化移民的影响。因而, 本研究以澳大利亚为案例地有助于更深入地了解劳动力文化多样性对住宿行业前台住宿服务质量的多层面影响。

访谈结果表明, NESB 员工的文化多样性对于澳大利亚住宿前台服务的沟通质量、员工-宾客互动、以及宾客满意度等多方面都有影响。调查结果指出, 文化多元化的 NESB 前台工作人员：（1）可能由于不同的外国口音和当地俚语的存在而面临跨文化沟通障碍; （2） 接待相似文化背景的宾客时员工-宾客互动和整体宾客体验都会得到提升（3）代表澳大利亚多元文化的真实现状。

本研究为游客对原真性的看法和期望的转变提供了新的线索, 特别是在文化多样性日益突出的澳大利亚。此外, 在澳大利亚的住宿服务中, 许多学习过美式/英式英语的NESB员工很难与带有澳大利亚口音的宾客沟通, 更何况还需面对澳大利亚俚语。

El idioma y el dialecto, las costumbres y las actitudes de servicio son sólo algunas de las características que hacen que cada cultura sea única. En consecuencia, la presencia de personas de diferentes culturas durante un encuentro de servicio puede repercutir en la calidad del servicio, ya que lo que constituye una buena calidad de servicio se percibe de forma diferente en las distintas culturas. Como país con una sociedad multicultural, los inmigrantes culturalmente diversos de origen no angloparlante (NESB) desempeñan un papel cada vez más importante en el sector de la hostelería y el alojamiento en Australia. Dentro de este contexto regional, este estudio contribuye a una comprensión más sólida de la influencia de la diversidad cultural de la mano de obra en diferentes aspectos de la calidad del servicio de recepción en el sector del alojamiento.

En este estudio cualitativo se realizaron 31 entrevistas en profundidad semiestructuradas a huéspedes, personal de recepción y gerentes de apartamentos en Australia Occidental, seguidas de entrevistas de validación con cinco expertos en gestión de recursos humanos del sector de la hostelería.

Los resultados de las entrevistas sugieren que la diversidad cultural del personal de los NESB afecta a varios aspectos de los servicios de recepción de los alojamientos australianos, como la calidad de la comunicación, la interacción entre el personal y los huéspedes y la satisfacción de éstos. Los hallazgos señalan que el personal de recepción de los NESB culturalmente diverso puede (1) enfrentarse a barreras de comunicación intercultural debido a los diferentes acentos extranjeros y a la presencia de jerga local, (2) mejorar la interacción huésped-personal y la experiencia general del huésped en caso de tener antecedentes culturales similares con los huéspedes, y (3) proporcionar representaciones auténticas del multiculturalismo en Australia.

El estudio arroja nueva luz sobre las cambiantes percepciones y expectativas de autenticidad de los turistas, especialmente en Australia, donde la diversidad cultural ha cobrado mayor protagonismo. Además, en el servicio de alojamiento australiano, muchos empleados de NESB que han aprendido inglés americano/británico tienen dificultades para conversar con personas con acento australiano, sobre todo cuando también está presente la jerga australiana.

Introduction Summary: Tourism is accepted as a multidisciplinary industry .Hoteliers and tour operators/travel agencies (TO/TA) count as two main stakeholders in the tourism sector, and they are interdependent with regard to their marketing and service objectives. Distribution channels, as TO and TA, are an important part of tourism growth. As TOs and TAs are the intermediaries between tourist and tourism service providers. Tourists travel to satisfy or fulfill their dreams because travel is a need for psychological relief that motivates people for temporary movement to different places and different countries. The research aims to examine the effects of perceived stakeholder conflict factors (PSCF) issues identified from the existing literature on guests’ outcomes in accommodation establishment located in Kyrenia, Northern Cyprus. PSCF is, namely, misinformation, unmanaged bookings and operational mistakes involving quality-price inconsistency and unsolved guest’s problems should be considered by both parties. Therefore, the objective of this study is to address the research gap regarding the effects of PSCFs on guests’ perceived value (GPV), guest satisfaction (GS) and behavioral intention (BI). Purpose: This study aims to investigate stakeholders conflict and its effects on guests’ outcomes, namely GPV, GS and BI associated with accommodation establishments, which has not been examining empirically before. Design/Methodology/Approach: This study conceptualized PSCFs and developed a scale for assessing this conflict and its outcomes. Through careful instrument development process, four sub-dimensions and 17 items of PSCFs were identified. Findings: The overall PSCFs’ effects obtained indicate that GPV, GS and BI are associated with accommodation establishments, and are negatively affected by the unsatisfactory relationship between these two key stakeholders. Originality/Value: The study empirically tested the conceptual model through conducting survey research to collect data from the guests whose trips were organized through a TO/TA and staying in five-star or four-star accommodation establishments located in Kyrenia, Northern Cyprus.

This paper reviews the literature on hotel guest questionnaires, also commonly known in the industry as comment cards. Considered a hotel tradition, the ubiquitous questionnaire remains the primary method employed by mainstream hotels to elicit and record guest feedback despite shortcomings in data reliability and response rates. Hence questionnaires play a key facilitation role in the collection of guest feedback (guest–hotel dyad in hotel communication). The paper traces the history of questionnaire utilization in the hotel industry, and examines evolutionary changes in terms of form and function. A typology of questionnaire genre is constructed. Used either independently or in combination with other methods, the traditional paper guest questionnaire has been complemented or even superseded by e-based variants. Obsolescence threatens the paper questionnaire as technology uptake permeates the hotel industry. This paper considers a “service innovation” by using the questionnaire as a communication tool along the hotel–guest dyad. A back-to-basics approach potentially yields a valuable and cost-efficient guest service encounter opportunity whilst mitigating questionnaire data deficiencies.

This research proposes to organise and distil this massive amount of data, making it easier to understand. Using data mining, machine learning techniques and visual approaches, researchers and managers can extract valuable insights (on guests' preferences) and convert them into strategic thinking based on exploration and predictive analysis. Consequently, this research aims to assist hotel managers in making informed decisions, thus improving the overall guest experience and increasing competitiveness.

This research employs natural language processing techniques, data visualisation proposals and machine learning methodologies to analyse unstructured guest service experience content. In particular, this research (1) applies data mining to evaluate the role and significance of critical terms and semantic structures in hotel assessments; (2) identifies salient tokens to depict guests' narratives based on term frequency and the information quantity they convey; and (3) tackles the challenge of managing extensive document repositories through automated identification of latent topics in reviews by using machine learning methods for semantic grouping and pattern visualisation.

This study’s findings (1) aim to identify critical features and topics that guests highlight during their hotel stays, (2) visually explore the relationships between these features and differences among diverse types of travellers through online hotel reviews and (3) determine predictive power. Their implications are crucial for the hospitality domain, as they provide real-time insights into guests' perceptions and business performance and are essential for making informed decisions and staying competitive.

This research seeks to minimise the cognitive processing costs of the enormous amount of content published by the user through a better organisation of hotel service reviews and their visualisation. Likewise, this research aims to propose a methodology and method available to tourism organisations to obtain truly useable knowledge in the design of the hotel offer and its value propositions.

Hospitality services are among the most robust experiences enjoyed by consumers. To deliver them successfully, careful attention to detail is first needed for the design and development of those experiences. This chapter begins by exploring the array of elements that holistically construct an experience, from process to people to physical environments. Then, the customer experience management framework is used to outline a recommended technique for approaching experience design. Finally, a brief survey of visualization techniques shows how experiences can be modeled for assessment and improvement.