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The tourism industry consists of various players and tourism demand is met by the joint efforts of these players. However, it seems that there is no attempt in the tourism management literature proposing frameworks or models, which can assist the tourism companies, evaluate and control the overall tourism value chain. This paper attempts to show the usability of value chain concept in the tourism industry to manage and measure the value chain processes.

A tourism value chain model with four stages; win order, pre‐delivery support, delivery, and post‐delivery support, is developed. A value chain performance measurement model for the tourism industry is suggested according to the value chain model developed.

There is an opportunity to study the tourism industry as a value chain and to develop a value chain oriented performance management and measurement framework that would allow various players to communicate and coordinate their processes and activities in a more mature manner. Therefore, it becomes critical to measure and manage the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the tourism product and services from a value chain management perspective. The framework has some implications for both practitioners and researchers.

The tourism companies can use the suggested model as a guide to evaluate their performance in terms of customer and internal dimensions through the value chain perspective. Mapping of existing thinking on performance measurement against the proposed tourism value chain model reveals gaps for further research, such as: the need to study the tourism industry as an end‐to‐end value chain; the need for understanding and measuring the performance of front‐end win‐order and pre‐delivery‐support processes; and the need for managing the delivery process as a whole rather than as two or three unrelated services. The model is intended to be useful for the practitioners when designing and implementing a framework who search for the whole tourism chain effectiveness using both internal and customer related metrics.

The paper highlights the need to evaluate the overall tourism value chain through the customer and internal dimensions and suggests a unique model for this aim.

This study aims to examine the relationships between tourism destination competitiveness (TDC) determinants and tourism performance. This study specifically assessed the soundness of the TDC attributes and evaluated their ability in explaining tourism performance.

The Dwyer and Kim’s (2003) destination competitiveness integrated model (IM) was used. Secondary data of 115 nations available from the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI) and other international reports were also used. The hypothesised relationships were tested via partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

This study confirms that the core resources, complementary condition, globalisation and tourism price significantly explain tourism performance. Results have shown differences in the competitiveness level and actual performance among nations, highlighting specific limitations of the current TDC model and TTCI report reliability.

Future study could segment the sample base on destinations characteristic and then analyse it based on smaller sub-samples of similar destinations. Moreover, drivers of destination performance in developed and less develop destinations are quite diverse.

The incorrect competitiveness ranking evaluation will affect inward investment decisions. This study framework enables policymakers to arrive at more informed decisions than merely relying on the original competitiveness rankings.

The widespread acknowledgment of the importance of competitiveness for a tourism destination's success suggests that there is a crucial need for sound benchmarking of countries’ competitive capabilities. The proposed competitiveness determinants aid the policymakers in identifying the best competitiveness and tourism performance predictors, as well as how to identify crucial factors affecting the rankings.

The present chapter includes a case study that describes and analyzes three performance audit reports over a three decade period for one U.S. state government's destination management organization's (DMO) actions and outcomes. This report extends prior studies (Woodside & Sakai, 2001, 2003) that support two conclusions: (1) the available independent performance audits of DMOs’ actions and outcomes indicate that frequently DMOs perform poorly and fail to meaningfully assess the impacts of their own actions and (2) the audits themselves are shallow and often fail to provide information on DMOs’ actions and outcomes relating to these organizations largest marketing expenditures. The chapter calls for embracing a strategy shift in designing program evaluations by both government departments responsible for managing destinations’ tourism marketing programs and all government auditing agencies in conducting future management performance audits. The chapter offers a “tourism performance audit template” as a tool for both strategic planning by destination management organizations and for evaluating DMOs’ planning and implementing strategies. The chapter includes an appendix – a training exercise in using the audit template and invites the reader to download a tourism performance audit report of a destination marketing organization and to apply the template after reading the report.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a multidimensional model of marketing culture and performance in tourism restaurants operating in Jordan. The paper introduces a model proposing certain associations between Webster’s (1990) marketing culture dimensions and attempts to underline how such associations affect restaurants’ performance.

A structured and self-administered survey was used, targeting managers and employees of tourism restaurants operating in Jordan. A sample of 334 tourism restaurants’ managers and employees were involved in the survey. A series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to assess the research constructs dimensions, unidimensionality, validity and composite reliability. Structural path model analysis was also used to test the hypothesised interrelationships of the research model.

The empirical findings indicate that the marketing culture dimensions are seven rather than six, as proposed by Webster’s (1990) original model: service quality, interpersonal relationships, management–front-line interaction, selling task, organisation, internal communication and innovativeness. “Organisation” had positively and significantly affected “interpersonal relationships”. “Interpersonal relationships” had positively and significantly affected each of “management–front-line interaction”, “selling task” and “internal communications”. On the other hand, each of “management–front-line interaction”, “selling task” and “internal communications” had positively and significantly affected “innovativeness”. However, “innovativeness” itself had positively and significantly affected each of “service quality” and restaurant performance. Finally, “service quality” had positively and significantly affected restaurants’ performance.

Only seven dimensions of marketing culture were examined; meanwhile, there could also be other dimensions that affect restaurants’ performance. This paper has also examined the effect of a multidimensional model of marketing culture on restaurants’ financial performance only; the use of other types of non-financial measures could yield different results. The fact that paper’s sample consisted only of Jordanian restaurants further limits its generalisation potential.

The paper reinforces the importance of sound marketing culture to Jordanian tourism restaurants. It further underlines the importance of several marketing culture dimensions, particularly those related to employees’ selection, development and communication. Further, the paper emphasises the particular importance of front-office employees to the success of Jordanian restaurants. Tourism restaurants’ managers and executives can benefit from such findings for designing their marketing culture strategies to achieve long-term performance objectives.

This paper represents the first empirical attempt to examine the interrelationships between marketing culture dimensions introduced by Webster (1990). Accordingly, it should shed more light on the dynamics of marketing culture within service organisations, and how such dynamics affect organisations’ performance. Further, the paper is the first of its kind to study marketing culture dynamics in the context of Jordanian tourism restaurants industry. International tourism restaurants planning to expand their operations in Jordan’s tourism industry have now valuable empirical evidence concerning the marketing culture dimensions and their effect on performance.

This study aims to propose and estimate the urban tourism performance index (UTPI), an index that can measure and track the month-by-month tourism performance on main tourism cities since the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The UTPI is estimated for the following urban destinations: Bangkok, Paris, London, Dubai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, New York, Istanbul, Tokyo, Seoul, Osaka, Phuket, Milan, Barcelona, Bali and Hong Kong.

Monthly based data measuring the tourism industry’s performance for these urban destinations has been collected. This data includes airlines’ and hotels’ performance, as well as potential tourists’ online searches. The obtained data has been combined using a principal component analysis, generating the UTPI.

The UTPI shows that all urban areas analyzed in this study experienced a devastating negative impact because of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. However, the tourism recovery evolution follows heterogeneous patterns.

The proposed index can be estimated using additional variables. Moreover, the index is only estimated for 16 tourism cities. Future studies can reproduce the methodology by incorporating further variables and amplifying the geographical coverage.

The UTPI might be useful for researchers and policymakers interested in using a measure of tourism performance during the COVID-19 pandemic in some of the most important urban destinations. Likewise, the UTPI index may serve as a suitable aggregated measure of tourism performance in a post-COVID-19 era or to monitor tourism during future crises.

This study analyzes the tourism performance during the COVID-19 pandemic from an urban perspective.

A meta-evaluation is an assessment of evaluation practices. Meta-evaluations include assessments of validity and usefulness of two or more studies that focus on the same issues. Every performance audit is grounded explicitly or implicitly in one or more theories of program evaluation. A deep understanding of alternative theories of program evaluation is helpful to gain clarity about sound auditing practices. We present a review of several theories of program evaluation.

This study includes a meta-evaluation of seven government audits on the efficiency and effectiveness of tourism departments and programs. The seven tourism-marketing performance audits are program evaluations for: Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Minnesota, Australia, and two for Hawaii. The majority of these audits are negative performance assessments. Similarly, although these audits are more useful than none at all, the central conclusion of the meta-evaluation is that most of these audit reports are inadequate assessments. These audits are too limited in the issues examined; not sufficiently grounded in relevant evaluation theory and practice; and fail to include recommendations, that if implemented, would result in substantial increases in performance.

This is a conceptual paper. Its purpose is to compare the performance measurement of manufacturing and tourism industries from a value chain perspective.

The paper achieves its objective by reviewing the relevant literature from both manufacturing and tourism fields. It compares and contrasts the particular characteristics of both industries as well as the work done in these fields with respect to performance measurement and management in their value chains.

The paper finds that in the manufacturing industry the latest thinking in supply chain management, and consequently value chain management, has led to the development of performance measurement frameworks for the entire supply chain – such as the SCOR model. The tourism industry, on the other hand, consists of various players and tourism demand is met by the joint efforts of these players. Consequently, the interdependency of tourism organizations is high. Although recent works demonstrate an increasing interest towards performance measurement in the tourism industry, it is still an immature area. The paper demonstrates the usability of SCOR‐like frameworks in the tourism industry to manage and measure the value chain processes.

The paper shows mapping of existing thinking on performance measurement against the proposed tourism value chain model reveals gaps for further research, such as: the need to study the tourism industry as an end‐to‐end value chain; the need for understanding and measuring the performance of front‐end win‐order and pre‐delivery‐support processes; and the need for managing the delivery process as a whole, rather than as two or three unrelated services.

The paper demonstrates the potential benefits of taking a value‐chain approach to the tourism industry as well as conceptually demonstrating how performance of such a value chain may be managed through a framework of performance measures.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) dimensions on firm performance in the tourism sector. The goal is twofold: on the one hand, the paper aims to test whether EO dimensions are still significant determinants of performance after controlling for possible confounding factors; on the other hand, it aims to address the question of which EO dimension exerts the strongest effect on performance.

A survey was carried out in the Sardinian accommodation sector in 2012 and 224 questionnaires were collected. The multidimensional EO constructs were adopted.

The results show that innovativeness, proactiveness and autonomy were significantly associated with tourism firm performance, whereas risk-taking and competitiveness were not.

The results are limited to the Sardinian accommodation context. Self-reported data were used to measure firm performance. Further research works could replicate the analyses using objective firm performance not only in similar touristic destinations but also in other countries and incorporating other industries.

The study suggests educational and managerial implications. Entrepreneurs in the tourism sector should be encouraged to adopt an innovative, autonomous and proactive approach in managing their firms.

The study advances entrepreneurial knowledge in the tourism sector and in particular in the accommodation industry. The multidimensional EO approach has never been adopted among touristic firms. Furthermore, considering that EO research has been overlooked in the country of Italy, this study’s contribution is also providing evidence from an area that has received minimal attention to date.

Grounded in human capital theory and resource‐based view, this paper aims to examine the effect of the entrepreneur's human capital and the venture's resources on the performance of small‐ and medium‐sized tourism ventures (SMTVs) in Ghana.

The data were collected from 247 SMTVs, defined as tourism establishments employing less than 100 employees in the Western and Central regions of Ghana. Hypotheses derived from human capital and resource‐based theories were tested to assess the relationship between the theories and SMTV performance.

The study found a significant positive relationship between education, experience and performance. However, the hypothesised positive relationship between entrepreneurial family background and SMTV performance was inconsistent with prior studies. The findings with respect to the hypothesised relationship between venture resources and SMTV performance were mixed.

The study suffers from industry‐specific, size‐specific and region‐specific limitations. Another limitation is the focus on human capital and venture resources as the determinants of tourism venture performance.

Knowing that education and experience per se impact on tourism venture performance, it behoves entrepreneurs in the tourism industry to endeavour to acquire the requisite education and experience. The finding has policy implications in the provision of tailor‐made training and incubation programs for SMTV entrepreneurs.

The study adds to the understanding of the unique nature of entrepreneurship in tourism by identifying the significance of human capital factors and venture resources on the performance of tourism ventures.

Monitoring and assessment are essential in the measurement of tourism business performance. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to illustrate how monitoring and assessment procedures can be applied in the hospitality business.

A case study and micro examples provide a framework for the monitoring and assessment of business performance in the hospitality business.

This chapter provides reasons why the tourism business uses control measures to monitor business performance. This is complemented with practical steps in the assessment procedures and guidelines for assessments. Different types of assessment procedures together with the characteristics of performance management provide a well-rounded overview to tourism business owners on how to conduct monitoring and assessment.

Due to the explorative nature of the monitoring and assessment case study, more empirical studies are needed to investigate and test performance measurement from a developing country perspective.

Discussions from the case study support the steps and practical guidelines in the monitoring and assessment of the tourism business.

The case study offers new practices into prospective entrepreneurs’ measurement and understanding in the monitoring and assessment of business performance.