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The purpose of this paper is to profile the Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes (WHATT) theme issue ‘How can communities manage rapid tourism growth? The experience of Macao and other destinations?’ with reference to the experiences of the theme editor and writing team.

This paper uses structured questions to enable the theme editor to reflect on the rationale for the theme issue question, the starting point, the selection of the writing team and material and the editorial process.

The paper observes that involving authors with different academic and professional backgrounds in fields as diverse as urban planning, economics, transportation and heritage management is daunting but valuable. The outcomes of a broad-ranging collaboration yield fresh insights, a deeper understanding of the issues and an array of possible responses to the theme issue question.

The theme issue outcomes provide lines of enquiry for others to explore and reinforce the value of WHATT’s approach to collaborative working and writing.

The collaborative work reported in this theme issue offers a unified but contrarian response to the theme’s strategic question. Taken together, the collection of articles constitutes a provocative yet authorative call to action in response to the problems highlighted.

The purpose of this paper is to profile the Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes (WHATT) theme issue “Services management and the growing number of Asian travellers: what needs re-thinking?” with reference to the experiences of the theme editor and the theme issue outcomes from countries within and beyond Asia.

The paper uses structured questions to enable the theme editor to reflect on the rationale for the theme issue question, the starting point, the selection of the writing team and material and the editorial process.

This paper reports on research and discussions between academics and practitioners about an issue faced by many countries with established hospitality, tourism and travel industries. Specifically, what are the adjustments needed to mirror the radically changing demographic landscape of inbound tourism – now characterized by more affluent and mobile Asian visitors?

This paper builds on the outcomes of an international conference on “Managing and Delivering Services in the Asian Century”, and offers a response to the changes needed to better serve Asian travellers.

It provides guidelines for destinations, hospitality organizations and travel operators that have traditionally relied on European and American source markets to help them re-think their service delivery process, management and operations.

The purpose of this paper is to draw upon the various articles in this theme issue and identify the key services management principles that merit re-thinking in the face of the growing and enduring trend of Asian travellers.

As a conclusion, this paper reviews the findings of the articles in this theme issue collection and synthesizes them thematically as well as strategically for both scholars and practitioners of services management and marketing.

There are five key assumptions that need re-thinking if services management organizations are to adequately meet the challenges of a more demographically diverse wave of travellers led by Asian visitors. Briefly, service organizations need to re-think: how they identify significant shifts in customer profile, the limits of their current service systems, decisions on service integration versus separation, how to transcend the traditional 5 Ps of services and, not least, how to prioritize humanism over efficiency in terms of service manpower training and development.

Though not exhaustive, the service management issues summarized and highlighted by this paper (and comprising this theme issue of WHATT) should serve to amplify the need to address the significant and enduring changes brought by the new wave of Asian travellers now enveloping services organizations throughout the world.

The paper serves to identify several areas for service organizations to review and re-think which includes, among others, service interactions between front line service providers and customers, the evolving needs of visitors from Asia, how Asian customers perceive concepts of courtesy and politeness, as well as the use of language and culture in shaping and interpreting socio-cultural interactions in a service setting.

This paper aims to explore the rationale for the theme issue question “Services management and the growing number of Asian travellers – what needs re-thinking?” and profile the theme issue.

This paper explains the approach taken to investigate and respond to aspects of the theme issue question and the specific contribution of each article in the theme issue collection.

This paper identifies a number of action points arising from the theme issue which are discussed in the final article: Conclusion: What needs re-thinking in services management in the dawning age of Asian travellers?

There are very few articles that address the implications of rapidly growing outbound Asian travel for services management; so, this theme issue provides a significant step forward, with implications for both academics and practitioners.

The purpose of this concluding paper is to distill several guiding principles, as to how communities can manage rapid tourism growth, drawn from the collection of articles in this theme issue. The paper provides a concise, grounded case study to anchor the overall conclusion of the theme issue.

It summarizes the essence of the different articles comprising the issue, identifies their common link to the strategic question and highlights the relevance of each.

The paper presents six guiding principles for managing rapid tourism growth, ranging from bolstering social support for residents’ livelihood and providing sustainable assistance for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to prioritizing community needs for transportation and mobility. Analytic tools to help mitigate the loss of place, identity and heritage and identify optimum levels of visitor numbers are also described.

The paper underscores problems emanating from rapid tourism growth and seeks to synthesize the disparate ideas on precipitous tourism-induced change by anchoring them largely (but not only) in the specific context of Macao as a highly urbanized city affected by rapid tourism growth.

The purpose of this study is to propose a destination-level framework incorporating subjective and overall assessments of residents’ quality of life (QOL) and visitors’ quality of experience (QOE) as a means for managing optimum levels of visitor volume at destinations.

The proposed framework is empirically tested and applied using a large-scale survey of residents and visitors across a four-year time span in Macao, a Special Administrative Region of China that counts among the smallest and densest city-states in the world and which has borne the full force of extraordinary rapid tourism growth in recent years.

The study’s findings suggest that subjective assessments of residents’ QOL and visitors’ QOE interact and must be considered together when assessing sustainable levels of tourism at the level of a destination.

The study’s value lies in its use of a large-scale survey across a four-year time span to empirically validate theorized maximal values of QOL assessments from the point of view of residents as well as quality of visiting experience from the point of view of visitors. This finding lays future groundwork for more robust management of tourism growth in destinations.

This study aims to examine talent management (TM) in the hospitality industry in Macao during COVID-19. It deploys a contingency theory perspective (Luthans and Stewart, 1977) to illuminate the heightened uncertainties and challenges talent managers faced during the pandemic and the urgent adaptations to TM practices they embraced in response.

Adopting a phenomenological approach, this study analyzed data collected through semi-structured interviews conducted with a representative sample of 20 hotel managers in Macao.

Managers reported four major categories of COVID-19-induced challenges and a corresponding set of contingent TM practices. The four contingent TM practices were found to contribute to the shaping of the next new normal in TM in hospitality and included the following: Contingent TM planning; contingent TM deployment and replacement; talent training and development under contingent arrangements; and changed “talent” attitude and practices in recruitment and retention.

The findings are limited to the geographical and industry context of the study. This study should be refined with larger samples.

This study provides a useful framework for guiding professionals on how to manage talent during turmoil periods. It also contributes toward understanding the shifting meaning of talent and TM in hospitality.

This study demonstrates the applicability of contingency theory in managing hospitality talent during turbulent times, which extends TM knowledge and enriches the contingency theory. The findings also facilitate our understanding on how contingent TM practices create processes that lead in setting the new normal.

The purpose of this introductory paper is to provide a broad overview of the significance of this theme issue.

The introductory paper draws from macro data of tourism growth in various countries and highlights the rapid rate of tourism growth in many, especially developing countries. The paper ventures the possibility of an anti-tourism wave in many destinations as a result.

To prevent tourism from displacing and disrupting the lives of residents in many countries, as well as from diminishing the experience for many visitors, the rate with which tourism grows must be studied and managed.

The value of this paper is that it highlights the rate of tourism growth and not tourism growth per se as the critical factor in making tourism a positive or negative force for change in many communities.