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Application of technology and meeting accessibility requirements of guests are two essential areas to consider and improve in order to facilitate, ameliorate and accelerate the management of hospitality services furnished by hotels. These two trends carry great importance for competitivity of hotels' services and sustainability of tourism industry. They are two distinguishing characteristics that build a positive perception of hotels' image among its rivals.

This chapter aims to reflect the current level of conformance of the hotels' services to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for tourism, specifically, SDG 11 related to accessibility and SDGs 9, 12 and 13 related to technology. A qualitative research is conducted to find out the commitment and awareness levels of the hotel staff at managerial positions to the accessibility and technology requirements in line with the mentioned SDGs. The representatives of city centre hotels of İzmir, Turkey with three, four and five stars and boutique hotels categories are chosen as the target population. The results obtained via content analysis signal that the extent of conformity of hotels to technology and accessibility requirements in line with the adoption of the related SDGs depend on the creation of practical solutions on the educational, legal and managerial perspectives. The chapter contributes to academic literature in tourism management and brings suggestions for tourism practitioners to adapt and improve their services to meet the standards and requirements of SDGs related to accessibility and adoption of technology in hospitality services.

This study aims to understand the characteristics and formation of artists’ production sensibilities and relations with other actors within an emerging hybrid art market structure.

To unravel senses and map out relationships and structures in the context of this study, qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews and analysis of secondary data sources, were applied.

The authors describe three art production sensibilities and market-based relationship logics rooted in the artist and the artwork’s diverse role in the market.

The findings suggest that artistic sensibilities motivate managers working in the hybrid art market to develop a more nuanced positioning of artists and their creative outputs to improve harmony and collaboration.

This study demonstrates that the hybrid structure of art markets allows for the harmonious separation and collaboration of non-market (artistic) and market logics. This study uncovers how artists combine their non-market creative position with market needs in the process of marketization and hybridization.

The spread of COVID-19 has shaken people’s lives around the globe in an extraordinary way, threatening health, disrupting economic activity, and spreading fear and anxiety. However, the outbreak originated as a public health crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic has also developed into a global economic crisis, with severe and potentially lasting impacts on employment and trade. The chapter investigates the changing dynamics of street economy during the COVID-19 era. In this study, one of the biggest but overlooked stakeholders of the street economy, municipality’s perception through the constables regarding the street vendors will be investigated. It is known that the worldwide epidemic of COVID has caused such problems as layoffs, depreciation of money, the global crisis, foreign trade coming to a halt, and, thus, it reduces individuals’ purchasing power. Therefore, it is considered that the number of individuals who are parties to the street economy has increased. This research aims to understand and discuss how COVID-19 has been affected to the street economy from the point of view of the constables, who are one of the most important stakeholders of the issue. A qualitative depth interviews were conducted to the constables of İzmir Municipality in Turkey. A semi-structured interview questions were applied and the data were analysed with the NVIVO program to understand the changing dynamics of street economy during the COVID-19 era in Turkey. The research aims to support and guide the local authorities with fresh data from the field regarding the changing characteristics of street economy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate empirically the main factors that affect the house prices in Izmir, Turkey using the quantile regression and ordinary least square approaches.

Sample data about the housing market for Izmir collected from the web pages of various real estate agencies during June 2018. Following this, the quantile regression method is used to estimate all possible effects of variables on each interested quantile to determine the factors that affect house prices to guide the potential consumers, house developers, city planners and the policymakers in Izmir, Turkey.

Results show that the age of the house, central heating and parking have no significant effect on prices. The size of the house, the existence of an elevator, fire and security have a positive and significant effect on prices. The number of rooms has lower values for high-priced houses, while the floor, the number of balconies, air conditioning, proximity to schools have a higher value for high-priced houses. The number of toilets, the number of bathrooms and the distance to the hospital have a lower value on the high-priced housing. The value of the distance from the city center and the shopping center is almost uniform in all quantiles and lowers the value of the higher-priced houses. With the exception of the value of the houses in the 10th percentile in Balcova district, the value of the houses in Konak, Balcova and Narlidere is lower prices in Karsiyaka.

This is the first comprehensive research to determine the major factors that affect house prices in Izmir. The second contribution of this paper is that it includes all possible variables and accordingly derives adequate policy implications, which could be used both by the public housing authority and private housing constructing companies in designing and implementing effective housing policies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the social status of migrants in a culturally liberal and historically cosmopolitan port city in Turkey.

A novel data set from the Izmir Labor Market Household Survey is used. Social status is measured by occupational status, wages, and education. In addition, parents’ education, as well as, duration of unemployment for migrants is analyzed. Occupational status and education analyzes are based on ordered probit models. The probability that an individual with given characteristics will have an uneducated parent is estimated with a probit model. Weibull duration model is employed for the unemployment duration.

Migrants in Izmir are likely to have occupations that claim a lower status. Migrants have higher wages so migrants are taking jobs of lower status but higher pay. The probability of exiting unemployment for migrants is higher, that is the duration of unemployment for migrants is shorter. Male have higher education levels and receive higher wages. Parents’ education for migrants is lower in general. Female migrants have lower education levels than natives, male or female, and do not receive higher wages than female natives in the labor market. The paper concludes that the social status of migrant women is definitely lower than natives, male or female, and male migrants. Evidence on the social status of migrant men also points to a disadvantage as even though the male migrant is more educated on average, he is likely to hold an occupation of lower status.

This paper employs a novel data set to investigate the social status of migrants vs natives. In addition, it undertakes a multi-dimensional econometric analyses of social status. Unemployment has not been included in econometric analysis of social status before.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyze volatility properties of the house price returns of Turkey and Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir provinces over the period of July 2007-June 2014.

The paper uses conditional variance models, namely, ARCH, GARCH and E-GARCH. As the supportive approach for the discussions, we also use correlation analysis and qualitative inputs.

Empirical findings suggest several points. First, city/country-level house price return volatility series display volatility clustering pattern and therefore volatilities in house price returns are time varying. Second, it seems that there were high (excess) and stable volatility periods during observation term. Third, a significant economic event may change country/city-level volatilities. In this context, the biggest and relatively persistent shock was the lagged negative shocks of global financial crisis. More importantly, short-lived political/economic shocks have not significant impacts on house price return volatilities in Turkey, Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. Fourth, however, house price return volatilities differ across geographic areas, volatility series may show some co-movement pattern. Fifth, volatility comparison across cities reveal that Izmir shows more excess volatility cases, Ankara recorded the highest volatility point and Istanbul and national series show lower and insignificant volatilities.

The study uses maximum available data and focuses on some house price return volatility patterns. The first implication of the findings is that micro/macro dimensions of house price return volatilities should be carefully analyzed to forecast upside/downside risks of house price returns. Second, defined volatility clustering pattern implies that rate of return of housing investment may show specific patterns in some periods and volatile periods may result in some large losses in the returns. Third, model results generally suggest that however data constraint is a major problem, market participants should analyze regional idiosyncrasies during their decision-making in housing portfolio management. Fourth, because house prices are not sensitive to relatively less structural shocks, housing may represent long-term investment instrument if it provides satisfactory hedging from inflation.

The evidences and implications would be useful for housing market participants aiming to manage/use externalities of housing price movements. From a practical contribution perspective, the study provides a tool that will allow measuring first time of the return volatility patterns of house prices in Turkey and her three biggest provinces. Local level analysis for Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir provinces, as the globally fastest growing cities, would be found specifically interesting by international researchers and practitioner.

The purpose of this paper is to figure out the impacts of soft innovation in the city hotels in general, whereas the focus is on figuring out if there exists a difference in vitality on the components of soft innovation among the hotel categories, as 4 stars, 5 stars and boutique hotels in Izmir, Turkey.

The first part is related to a detailed literature review on the soft innovation components as color, sound, light, scent and decoration. Literature review is followed by a qualitative research where expert information on the research topic is collected. Judgmental sampling is used to identify experts’ views where in-depth semi-structured interviews are conducted with 12 hotel managers in Izmir city. The soft innovation hotel application areas taken into consideration are: lobby and reception, rooms, restaurant, bar and ballroom areas, meeting and congress halls, SPA and pools, gardens and landscape and other exterior hotel architecture.

The findings of the research reveal the sample hotel managers’ views as all the soft innovation applications are important for all city hotels regardless of their category, meaning that soft innovation may lead to better marketing results. Thus, according to hotel managers, soft innovation offerings have a potential for better customer satisfaction as positive feedback. However, the vitality degree among components changes according to the hotel’s category. For boutique hotels the most important component is found to be the decoration of the hotel, whereas for 4 stars hotels it is light and for 5 stars hotels it is scent.

The results of this study give relatively limited information because only managers’ point of view are shown. In the research, customers’ perceptions on soft innovation based interviews with the top management of the hotels studied takes place, indicating which may not be the case to reflect the real perception of customers. Therefore, for further researches, it is recommended for the other researches to take into consideration of customers’ point of views as well. Also, time limitation, sample size and application of only qualitative research may be stated as the limitations for this study. Quantitative research applies to customers on the same topic and problem statement is recommended for further studies related to city hotels’ soft innovation applications.

Motivation of this study is to understand how soft innovation can change hotels’ atmosphere and make it more attractive from the managers’ perceptions. According to hotel managers’ views, soft innovation applications may lead to higher customer satisfaction, but the level of investment among the components may change according to the city hotel’s category. Research implications indicate that hotel managers may optimize the effectiveness of their soft innovation efforts by taking into consideration their hotel type, application areas and innovation category as decoration, color, scent, sound and light. According to hotel managers, decoration-related soft innovation is more important to boutique hotels, lighting-related soft innovation is an effective investment for 4 stars hotels and scent-related soft innovation is a suitable investment for 5 stars hotels.

The originality of the study lies in the analysis of the components of soft innovation as a means for effective city hotel marketing and innovative management applications. Though it is a very suitable industry for implementation, improvement and development, there are limited studies on soft innovation applications in the hotel industry.

The study aims to propose a decision-support system to determine the location of a regional disaster logistics warehouse. Emphasizing the importance of disaster logistics, it considers the criteria to be evaluated for warehouse location selection. It is aimed to determine a warehouse location that will serve the disaster victims most efficiently in case of a disaster by making an application for the province of Izmir, where a massive earthquake hit in 2020.

The paper proposes a fuzzy best–worst method to evaluate the alternative locations for the warehouse. The method considers the linguistic evaluations of the decision-makers and provides an advantage in terms of comparison consistency. The alternatives were identified through interviews and discussions with a group of experts in the fields of humanitarian aid and disaster relief operations. The group consists of academics and a vice-governor, who had worked in Izmir. The results of a previously conducted questionnaire were also used in determining these locations.

It is shown how the method will be applied to this problem, and the most effective location for the disaster logistics warehouse in Izmir has been determined.

This study contributes to disaster preparedness and brings a solution to the organization of the logistics services in Izmir.

Whilst the COVID-19 epidemic, whose effects still continue to be experienced, takes a wide place on the agenda of countries and cities, the social, economic, and political effects of the crisis have been deepening. Especially in terms of women and children who have moved further away from the public area with the epidemic causing poverty, violence, deprivation, etc. The deficit is growing even more. On the other hand, public policies need to show their reflexes rapidly and show their power to prevent, eliminate, and remedy any kind of deficit and negativity. In this context, the role and responsibility of local governments is increasing day by day. On the basis of sustainable development, it is important for local governments to prefer urban policies based on gender equality. In this study, the third largest city in Turkey, in crisis management during COVID-19, policies, and practices on behalf of women in Izmir Metropolitan Municipality, is analysed by gender equality perspective. The research question is investigating the policies and recommendations of women’s organisations and leading institutions and individuals on gender equality in İzmir, on crisis management in the city. This work is carried out with a feminist research approach and analysed using qualitative analysis techniques. In-depth interviews were held with bureaucrats and political decision makers, who are involved in the decision-making mechanisms of the municipality, leading women in the city and NGO representative women who are actively involved in these processes. A semi-structured question form was used during the interviews.

Izmir, the third largest city of Turkey, is an important trade hub and port. Since its early years, the city has been the home of many civilisations, nations and cultures. The Romani people can be counted among these cultures. In the centre of Izmir city, there are around 500,000 Romani inhabitants. The increasing number of migrants to Izmir and the obligatory settlement options, usually in poorer neighbourhoods, aggravates the situation. Within this context, the focus of administrative authorities on poorer neighbourhoods with a significant Romani majority and its effects to and connections with the urban improvement programme must be re-evaluated considering the benefit of the city and social-institutional support, including non-governmental institutions, must be maintained.