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This paper aims to conduct a review on cruise shipping and the cruise shipping industry. The current trends are analyzed for the industry, showing that this industry is still young and has great potential to boom. Meanwhile, the Asia market is the fastest growth region among the global, to which increasing cruise ships are repositioned by major cruise lines. However, for such a promising industry, the literature review on some state-of-the-art research works suggests that the research works that have been conducted for the cruise shipping are quite limited, and the majority of the works belongs to empirical and descriptive studies, which does not provide optimization-based quantitative analysis on some operation planning problems.

This paper conducts a review on cruise shipping and the cruise shipping industry.

In reality, there are some important operation planning problems faced by cruise lines or cruise ships, and four of them are addressed in this paper in response to the fast growing trend. The addressed operation planning problems are cruise fleet management, cruise ship deployment, cruise itinerary design and cruise service planning.

The importance and the attention for the research on the problems are also elaborated in the paper.

Corporate travel represents a significant source of revenue for the tourism industry. Therefore, the quality of service is essential for maintaining and expanding corporate cliental bases. Despite the importance, the extant literature has yet sufficiently examined corporate travel service quality (SQ) and its impact. To make up for the drawback, this study aims to differentiate the impact of SQ perceptions on customer satisfaction between the online and off-line contexts through an empirical investigation in one of the top five corporate travel agencies in North America.

The well-established SERVQUAL measurement is applied in differentiating the impact of SQ dimensions between the online and off-line context. To empirically test the proposed corporate travel agency (CTA) SQ conceptual model, a set of survey data of “Welcome Back Survey” from HRG (a top five CTA in North America) was examined.

The study finds that for online services, assurance, responsiveness and empathy affect perceived SQ, whereas for off-line services, assurance, empathy and tangible are the three dimensions of perceived SQ.

By relying on the existing survey, the off-line context has one less dimension than the online context. Yet as an early effort in differentiating the differences in the impact of SQ between two service contexts, the study offers insightful findings.

The findings will be helpful for business managers of CTAs to identify the factors that influence SQ in both online booking and off-line booking context. In particular, assurance and empathy are two dimensions that exert a significant impact on customer satisfaction.

This paper is the first to compare the differences of the SQ of online and off-line corporate travel.

This paper aims to analyse challenges, trends and innovations in the hotel industry in Canada, focusing on large corporate hotels as well as small limited service hotels.

The foundation for this paper was laid during a well attended Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes (WHATT) roundtable discussion between industry leaders and hospitality educators in May 2012. The subject of hotel administration was discussed in the context of the theme for the 2012 Canadian WHATT roundtable and the strategic question: “What innovations are needed in the Canadian hotel industry and how might they be implemented to secure the industry's future?”

The paper presents findings from a recent survey on strategic issues compiled by hotel managers in the greater Toronto area (GTA). The paper lists valuable information on innovative practices in different types of hotels.

Practical tips in the body of the paper and in the conclusion section are provided.

As the team of authors includes a former president of a Canadian hotel company, a former international hotelier, and the current general manager of the largest hotel in the capital city of Canada (Ottawa), this paper will be of immense value to students, educators, and researchers, as well as industry leaders. The paper draws on expert experiences to explain how innovative initiatives can be implemented in order to achieve greater success in hotel administration.

Limited research exists on the current strategic issues and the strategies utilized by hoteliers of Ontario, Canada. The researchers conducted a pilot study by utilizing an e‐mail survey, attempting to identify the current strategic issues and strategies implemented by Ontario hotels. The results showed that the most concerned issues by the Ontario hoteliers are: lacking financial and government support, changing customer needs, increasing power of customer purchasing through the internet and the top Internal environment concern is related to the human resources. The survey findings suggest the imperative requirement for awareness and focus of the changing environmental variables affecting the Ontario lodging industry.

This paper seeks to investigate sulphur dioxide (SO₂) emissions trading practice in China and discusses what it might reveal about the suitability of using emissions trading to achieve carbon reductions in China.

The paper explores the Taiyuan SO₂ emissions trading program case through interviews with key participants in the scheme. The interview questions are developed from the literature on emissions trading practice and theory.

The Taiyuan SO₂ emissions trading program does not seem to be functioning anything like a theoretically ideal model and this brings into question proposals to introduce emissions trading in China. Limitations would seem to be the semi‐free market, the weakness of the legal system and the nature of business‐bureaucracy interactions.

This case study is geographically limited, as are most emissions trading schemes in China and the number of interviewees is relatively small. There was also little historical quantitative data because of the limited records kept in the enterprises and so there is a high reliance on interviewees' recollection.

The evidence suggests that a national carbon trading scheme may not be suitable in China in the short run because the implementation of the program and emissions trading market are very important.

This is the first paper investigating the actual performance of SO₂ emissions trading practice in China and also the first one discussing the suitability of using emissions trading to achieve carbon reductions in China based on the existing practice.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a portable all‐position welding robot for the welding of intersected pipes.

A complete procedure is adopted to conduct the design. The task and motion of the robot are analyzed and a mathematical description of the pose and position of the welding tool is given. Based on that, three representative types of robot are chosen in the type synthesis of mechanism. Two new indices proposed to evaluate required properties of the robot, along with the traditional dexterity index, are chosen to be the criteria in the dimension synthesis of mechanism. Through the optimization by genetic algorithm, the best robot in type and dimension is determined after comparison on their performances. Finally, the prototype is developed.

The paper finds a new robot for welding intersected pipes.

A new robot is introduced for the welding of intersected pipes. A complete design procedure is adopted to conduct the design. Two new indices are constructed for evaluating the required properties of this robot.

The purpose of this paper is to review the impact that the 2003 SARS epidemic had on tourism and summarize the lessons that were learned from this crisis. To offer both practical and strategic tips for hoteliers and destination marketers in the Niagara region should a similar crisis affect this region.

Findings were derived from the analysis of both secondary and primary data. The popular press and academic journals as well as reports, briefs, and presentations were analyzed. A questionnaire was designed to investigate the impact of SARS, management during the crisis, recovery strategies, and formal planning.

Provides information on how industry dealt with a major, extended crisis. Recognizes the importance of an integrated strategy for dealing with a crisis.

The paper concentrates on the effects of an epidemic in two large North American cities. The strategic and practical tips may not be suitable in other jurisdictions.

This paper provides information on how the tourism industry can prepare itself for a crisis or disaster and describes how all stakeholders must work together to better deal with the effects of a crisis.

This paper summarizes the effects that SARS had on the tourism industry and offers practical and strategic tips for preparing for and managing crises.

Genetic algorithms have been extensively used in different domains as a type of robust optimization method. They have a much better chance of achieving global optima than conventional gradient‐based methods which usually converge to local sub‐optima. However, convergence speeds of genetic algorithms are often not good enough at their current stage. For this reason, improving the existing algorithms becomes a very important aspect of accelerating the development of the algorithms. Three improved strategies for genetic algorithms are proposed based on Holland’s simple genetic algorithm (SGA). The three resultant improved models are studied empirically and compared, in feasibility and performance evaluation, with a set of artificial test functions which are usually used as performance benchmarks for genetic algorithms. The simulation results demonstrate that the three proposed strategies can significantly improve the SGA.

The main purpose of this research is to empirically test how animosity, religiosity, and ethnocentrism interact to affect judgment about US products and purchase action of consumers in a progressive Islamic country like Malaysia. There are many studies that have been conducted in conservative Islamic countries such as Iran, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

The product chosen for this research is US fast food restaurants. A questionnaire was constructed and responses were obtained from 410 Malaysian consumers from different ethnic backgrounds. The authors tested the framework using structural equation modeling (SEM).

Based on the test results, the authors conclude the following significant relationships: animosity on purchase action of consumers, ethnocentric tendencies on animosity of consumers, religiosity on ethnocentric tendencies of consumers, religiosity on animosity of consumers, ethnocentric tendencies of consumers on judgment of foreign product, foreign product judgment of consumers on purchase action, and animosity and ethnocentrism play mediating roles.

The current study adds significantly to the body of knowledge on consumer behavior, especially the roles of animosity, religiosity, and ethnocentrism. The findings can help marketing managers to formulate appropriate strategies when consumers decide to boycott US products.

Wireless sensor networks, due to their potentially wide application perspectives, may proliferate in future. Two major stumbling blocks are the dynamic variance of the network caused by both the capacity constraint of sensor nodes and uncertainties of wireless links, and secure routing in the special security sensitive environment. Therefore, adaptable and defendable routing mechanism is in urgent need for the deployment of sensor networks. This paper aims to propose a feedback‐based secure routing protocol (FBSR).

Feedback from the neighboring nodes serves as the dynamic information of the current network, with which sensor nodes make forwarding decisions in a secure and energy aware manner. Feedback message is included in the MAC layer acknowledgement frame to avoid network congestion, and it is authenticated with the proposed Keyed One Way Hash Chain (Keyed‐OWHC) to avoid feedback fabrication. FBSR's resilience to node compromise is enhanced by statistic efforts accomplished by the base station.

Both mathematical analysis and simulation results show that FBSR is not only reliable but also energy efficient.

The paper introduces a novel routing scheme for wireless sensor networks.