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This paper combined an at-destination decision-making model with the theory of tie strength to find out information related to the referrals that travelers received and used at a major tourist destination in the southeastern United States. At-destination decisions included lodging, eating and dining, entertainment, recreation, and travel. The data indicated eating and dining, recreation, and entertainment decisions are made in large numbers at the destination. The first research question involved referral source and frequency for at-destination decisions, revealing many third-party decision-makers. Friends and family members were the most requested and local residents the least requested referral sources. The second research question inquired as to whether satisfaction scores from the referred experience differed across referral source. The researchers suggested that referrals have different perceived levels of trust, expertise, and ties, and potentially will render different sales levels. Due to this, the satisfaction outcome was measured by referral source. Results showed that referred satisfaction scores were highest from local resident referrals followed by friends and relatives – one a strong tie and one a strong–weak tie. Finally, more neutral satisfaction scores were reported from other information sources. The article closes by offering possible explanations for these differences and by providing suggestions for additional at-destination decision-making and outcome research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the referral patterns of local residents who are frequently requested by visitors to the community to provide information and/or direct venue referrals for travel‐related services. Also investigated, were the factors influencing the selection of a specific venue being referred. It is posited that visitors delay many travel decisions until they arrive at a destination and extensively utilize local “experts” in their decision strategy.

The current study expands upon previous research on visitor decision strategies for travel‐related services once that are at a destination by examining the referral activity of 180 residents in the metro‐Orlando area, a destination that attracts more than 47 millions visitors each year. A standardized questionnaire was utilized to collect data in two distinct areas of the destination, a central tourism corridor and a bedroom community.

In general, at‐destination recommendations from locals were found to be highly sought by visitors, regardless of the occupation of the perceived local expert. In addition, although the weekly frequency of requests to a local expert was typically lower in the bedroom community in contrast to the tourism corridor, they still existed in significant enough numbers such that they should capture the attention of enterprises providing such services. At the least, a partial alignment of an enterprise's promotional strategies and tactics to reach targeted visitor segments through “locals” becomes obvious. Overall, notable recommendation patterns were not uniform across type of service enterprise, and were highly evident for food and beverage and entertainment facilities, while recommendations for lodging facilities were found to be limited in this study. It was also determined that local residents were most influenced by organic factors compared to induced factors.

The results suggest that hospitality businesses should focus a portion of their marketing strategies and tactics towards the community in order to attain/drive positive word‐of‐mouth referrals. This implication is particularly relevant for restaurants and shopping venues. Finally, it is suggested that the most effective way for businesses to reach local residents is through direct contact and communication, rather than traditional advertising channels.

The paper has both theoretical and practical value, and provides further confirmation that tourists delay/make many decisions post‐arrival and that locals play an important role in travel‐decision process.

This qualitative study collected regarding recalled service encounters by consumers across a broad range of encounters not just in service failures found respondents recalled service encounters from the hospitality leisure industry in 42% of encounters. Usually, the consumer recalls and reports at least two types of fairness when recalling a service encounter with procedural fairness the most reported, followed by interactional and then distributive fairness. The study suggests using fairness across a spectrum of service encounters and not just when a service failure is recalled and is also the first hospitality or service sector study to view service encounter outcomes into types of initial satisfaction, service recovery, and double deviation and then to follow up by assessing fairness types across outcomes.

This study investigates service excellence and hospitality perceptions in a hospital setting for an exploratory study of the familiarity of hospital administration with the topic of hospitality and service excellence. It is unique from other hospitality and service research in that it considers hospitality and service excellence as separate concepts, and specifically considers hospitality, such as service excellence, as a philosophy that may be transcend its traditional industries of origin. Part of the premise of this study explores how hospitality in a healthcare setting extends past service excellence in offering a service to a patient to create a comfortable and welcoming environment to combat patient anxiety and stress. This exploratory research provides a necessary foundation for more extensive empirical testing of the premise.

Using a qualitative case study, this research measured top management's perceptions of service excellence and hospitality within one community-based hospital located in Orlando, Florida. Three conclusions were revealed: (1) a mixed commitment by top management to concepts of service excellence and hospitality, (2) the terms “service excellence” and “hospitality” were generally discussed as though they were equivalent, and (3) significant external and internal barriers to the delivery of service excellence and hospitality in the hospital setting were identified.

The study has implications for healthcare organizations seeking to implement practices of hospitality and service management to improve overall healthcare service delivery. Additionally, the study of hospitality outside of its traditional industry boundaries may result in the generation of new improvement options/opportunities for traditional managers of hospitality businesses and organizational researchers. The study can be used as a foundation for the formulation of additional studies in the area of service excellence and hospitality applied to other layers in an organization irrespective of industry setting.

This study presents a resource framework for reverse logistics operations based on widespread literature and industry experience. A common and comprehensive definition of resources that affect the implementation of reverse logistics is still patchy in the extant literature. Hence, a complete scheme, such as this, for the categorisation of resources that affect the implementation of reverse logistics is essential. This provides a useful information for business managers and extends reverse logistics research.

This study systematically identified, and validated with the help of reverse logistics experts, the resources that affect the implementation of reverse logistics.

The result is a classification scheme, termed as “reverse logistics resource matrix” (RLRM). This matrix offers a holistic overview of the resources that affect the implementation of reverse logistics for both scholars and practitioners.

To best of the researchers' knowledge, the RLRM is the first attempt to comprehensively structure the resources that affect the implementation of reverse logistics in an integrated framework.

How do we measure the success of a hotel business? What factors determine performances? This paper seeks to explore the responses which researchers and practitioners have given to these questions in the last 20 years.

The paper is based on the analysis of 152 contributions and uses the balanced scorecard as a model to rationalize the main streams of research.

The analysis of literature shows the gradually assumed importance of the balanced scorecard as a satisfactory performance measurement system. The findings related to the determinants of results are instead highly complex and far‐reaching. The determining factors are generally looked for within the enterprise. Four main functional research fields have been identified (strategy, production, marketing and organization) and for each one main research goals, findings and open questions are defined. The horizontal axis of the balanced scorecard (customer perspective, strategy and process perspective) is the area of greatest research (over half of the papers). This evidence appears in line with the structural features of the hotel business and with the importance held, respectively, by customer relations and the protection of the efficiency of management processes.

The paper shows the main weaknesses and strengths in previous research design in terms of: dependent and independent variables, sample and data sources. At theoretical level, the current research is strongly based on six countries (69 percent of the sample). Given the profound diversity of national contexts, researchers focusing on internal determinants should use external control variables more extensively. Furthermore, some recent subfields appear very fragmented especially in terms of independent variables used.

The paper identifies research streams and gaps in the field of hotel performance.