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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 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.