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This paper aims to understand the perceptions and practices of small accommodation providers regarding the growing area of user‐generated content (UGC) web sites.

A total of eight small hospitality enterprise cases of four classifications were selected using a purposive stratified sampling procedure. On‐site semi‐structured interviews are the main source of information.

Empirical findings indicate that there is a divergence among small accommodation providers with regard to UGC web sites. It finds that small accommodation provider views are varied as to the influence of UGC web sites on traveller decisions. It also shows that some providers are using innovative, proactive practices to respond to UGC web sites, whilst others have limited awareness of the internet and are currently not responding.

The generalisation of this research is limited by its sample size. The research implications are that more research using a more representative sample must be completed on the topic to verify findings.

With great diversity in the awareness and responses of small accommodation providers to changes on the internet for firms not to suffer a competitive disadvantage, they must, at least, stay abreast of developments on the internet, in particular fast‐growing UGC web sites.

Minimal research has been completed on the perceptions and practices of accommodation providers regarding UGC web sites, despite the importance the web sites are thought to have on traveller decisions. This paper should be of interest to tourism hospitality practitioners as well as academic researchers to better understand how practitioners are responding to the emerging issue of UGC web sites.

AT this time of the year librarians take their holidays. They will need the break this year as much as in any year since the end of the war. There are many problems to be faced in the autumn and winter, among them the continuous rising prices of everything, and the diversion of public funds to rearmament, which must have some repercussions upon the library service. Whether it is yet a fact that the pound is worth little more than five shillings in real money, we are not prepared to say, but it is certain that every cost has increased, and is continuing to increase. Especially is this so in connection with book production and bookselling; even, as our correspondent on another page suggests, in some cases the royalties of authors are in jeopardy. How far this will go it is impossible to say. At the same time the rates everywhere promise to increase still further, and in spite of the advances, it is unlikely that libraries will be exempt from the stringencies of the time. Such predictions have, however, been frequently contradicted by our past experience. Some of the real advances libraries have made have seemed to be the direct result of bad times. This is hardly a holiday meditation, but we think our readers will need all the physical and mental refreshment they can get before they face the possibilities that may follow.

The case can be used in strategic management, international business or ethics courses. In strategic management courses, students will be able to identify political relationships as sources of a firm’s competitive advantage. Students will also understand the role of ethics in the firm’s competitive advantage. In international business courses, the students will be able to analyze the role that corruption and bribery play in the analysis of a country’s institutions. Students will also understand how corruption in a host country influences a firms’ decision to internationalize. Finally, students will understand the challenges that firms face when serving customers in other countries. In ethics courses, students will understand the nature of state/business corruption, i.e. the abuse of public office for private gain and the concept of state capture, i.e. managers controlling the political system for their advantage. Students will be able to analyze the decision of whether to collaborate with unethical partners or customers.

Bell Pottinger Private (BPP) was a British public relations (PR) firm with a successful but questionable reputation of helping famous critical figures and despots improve their public image. In 2016, Lord Tim Bell and the other leaders of BPP were asked to create a PR campaign for the Gupta family. The Guptas were a group of businessmen headed by three brothers who migrated from India to South Africa in the early 1990s. By the 2010s, they had built a business empire allegedly thanks to a corrupt relationship with the President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma and his family. The press and prosecutors were increasing their investigations on these relations. The case has two parts, which address two separate challenges and can be taught as standalone cases or in a sequence in two sessions.

MBA and Executive Education.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 5: International business.