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This study aims to identify key factors influencing Chinese domestic travelers’ behaviors in hotel selection from a pool of budget hotel attribute-based factors and customer personal characteristics and determine the extent to which these factors impact on domestic Chinese travelers’ hotel selection preferences.

This study uses a discrete choice experimental design and a multinomial logit model to examine the key influential factors contributing to Chinese domestic travelers’ choice behavior to budget hotels. Both hotel attribute-based and personal trait factors were tested.

Results indicate that location, price and business functions were factors influencing guest choice behavior. For budget hotels, being located in the traditional central business districts and having a restaurant would leverage guest preference to stay. Among consumers’ personal characteristics, income, occupation, purpose of travel, personal attitude and past experience were found to be determinants of guest choice behavior.

This study contributes to the understanding of Chinese domestic travelers’ choice behaviors toward budget hotels and offers insights for industry practitioners to better design budget hotel products and service.

This research is the first that integrates hotel attributes with travelers’ characteristics and quantitatively evaluate the determinants affecting hotel choice behavior in China. The insights are of value academically to our understanding of cognitive mechanism underlying choice behavior.

Corrosive agent constitutes a major problem for constructions located in coastal areas, since it keeps affecting their durability. This phenomenon, in synergy with moisture and high temperatures, leads to premature deterioration of the structures. Under these conditions, the need for management of the problem of resistance of steel against corrosion is an issue of paramount importance and a challenge to the structural integrity and reliability. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The need for management of the problem of resistance of steel against corrosion is an issue of paramount importance and a challenge to the structural integrity and reliability. In the present study, an effort was made to increase the corrosion resistance of the high strength and ductility dual-phase steel B500c category, with the use of different shot blasting processes, without any interference in the chemical composition or in the production mode. In particular, shot blasting treatment was used for both cleaning and creating compressive stresses on the surface of steel bars, according to the pertinent protocols. The modified samples were studied via both conventional characterization methods and electrochemical techniques.

Through the whole surface treatment process of B500c steel, a positive impact came about not only the corrosion resistance, but also the mechanical performance.

Shot blasting process aims to increase the corrosion resistance of high ductility dual-phase steel (B500c), without any interference in the chemical composition or in the production mode.

The purpose of this study was to identify the most important influencing factors in choosing a hospital by a patient.

This study involved a mixed research design. Focus groups and in-depth individual interviews were conducted with patients to explore reasons for choosing a hospital. In addition, this study involved survey-based research on the patient choice.

Type of the hospital, type of the service, word of mouth, cost of services, the health insurance programme, location, physical environment, facilities, providers' expertise and interpersonal behaviour, and reputation of the hospital influenced patients' choice of a hospital. Doctor recommendations and health insurance programme were the main reasons for choosing a hospital for inpatients and outpatients respectively.

Identifying and understanding key factors that influence a patient choice of a healthcare setting helps managers and policy makers invest their resources in those critical areas and improve those aspects of their services to attract more patients.

This article contributes to healthcare theory and practice by developing a conceptual framework for understanding the factors that influence a patient choice of a healthcare setting.

To analyze the limitations of two methods used in the identification of satisfaction attributes in products and services – importance performance analysis (IPA) and Kano method – and to propose a new method for identification of improvement opportunities based on the competitive analysis of the improvement gap.

A case analyzing attributes of the service “rodizio de pizzas” a kind of pizzeria found in Brazil, was used to illustrate the proposed method. Resulting from a focus group, four attributes, one of them being an innovation, were specifically chosen to include the different categories of the Kano model: basic, performance and excitement attributes. A survey was conducted with a random sample of 110 undergraduate students that eat regularly at pizzerias.

As a major limitation, IPA leads to different conclusions depending on how an attribute's importance is figured. Also, it does not take into consideration the non‐linear relationship between the performance of the attributes and customer satisfaction, possibly misleading improvement decisions and hindering the introduction of innovations. The Kano method identifies the non‐linear relationship between performance and satisfaction, but it does not take into consideration the current level of attributes' performance in the analysis. The proposed method successfully identified improvement opportunities in a service case, including the possible impact of including a new attribute, i.e. an innovative attribute, overcoming limitations of the IPA and of the Kano method.

The paper provides an intuitive and simple method that correctly identified improvement decisions in the case studied, including the introduction of an incremental innovation.

It is axiomatic that construction is a fast-paced and competitive industry, which goes hand in hand with many construction professionals suffering from stress including construction project managers (C-PMs). The role of C-PMs is crucial to achieving project success as they are responsible for planning the project, organising human resources, controlling operations and the budget, and forecasting probable difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the causal relationships between stressors, stresses, stress-coping behaviours and their impact on the performance of C-PMs.

To investigate the relationships between stress and performance among C-PMs, a questionnaire was designed based on the extensive literature, and was sent to 150 C-PMs who had amassed at least five years’ direct working experience in the construction industry. A total of 44 completed questionnaires were returned. Correlation analysis and structural equation modelling were employed to understand the integrated relationships between these factors. Based on the data collected and analysis of the results, an integrated structural equation model of the stresses and performances of C-PMs was developed using AMOS version 22.0.

The results of structural equation modelling reveal the following: burnout is the type of stress that has the highest impact on the performance of C-PMs, being detrimental to their interpersonal performance (IPP) and positive for their organisational performance (OP), whereas physiological stress worsens the task performance of C-PMs and objective stress improves their IPP. The most active stressor towards the performance of C-PMs is “workgroup cooperation”, which has an impact on the IPP in a positive way but is detrimental to the OP. Career-developing environment, poor organisational structure and role conflict affect both stress and performance together.

This study provides a comprehensive investigation into the impact of various types of stress on the performances of C-PMs. The result constitutes a significant step towards the stress management of C-PMs in the dynamic and stressful construction industry.

THE remarkable strides made by designers of commercial and military aircraft during recent years have been most strikingly evidenced by the ever‐increasing performance of their products. This progress has been gained, to a great extent, in two ways: by improving the aerodynamic cleanness of the aeroplane and by increasing the specific power output of the engine. However, the successful utilisation of both methods has been complicated by the difficulty of providing the higher‐powered engines with proper cooling and accessibility while retaining the cleanness of the aeroplane. Each addition to the power‐plant output has not only further complicated that unit and made necessary more controls and accessories, but has also made the engine harder to cool. Designing the cowl to favour the cleanness of the aeroplane has often proved to be detrimental to both proper cooling and accessibility.

Fluid power systems can look good on the drawing board, go together well, work on commissioning, and then inexplicably fail. Alan Goldsmith FRMS, argues that hydraulic support equipment in aircraft ground servicing (Mobiles — Test Stands and Flushing Rigs) should, in their design, maintain a fluid cleanliness rating better than the design rating of the supported unit.

This study aims to examine the effect of hotels’ star ratings and customer ratings on online hotel prices from both supply- and demand-side perspectives.

To compile the supply-side data, a Web crawler was designed and implemented to read online prices and characteristics of available hotels from Trivago. Demand-side data were compiled from surveys conducted using the Amazon Mechanical Turk portal. Data were analyzed with an array of advanced machine learning regression models.

The results show that while a star rating is the most important predictor of price from both supply- and demand-side perspectives, customer rating influences the price much more significantly on the demand-side. Customers showed a tendency to overestimate the room price of three- and four-star hotels and underestimate the price of five-star hotels. Customers placed a heavier weight on customer ratings when estimating prices particularly when the average rating was above 7.5 (out of 10). The study also confirms the strong effect of price adjustment for customers when they were exposed to the prices of other similar hotels. Finally, the study examines the impact of demographics on the perceived hotel value. Age, ethnicity, education and income are shown to be the most significant demographic characteristics.

The results are valuable from a research perspective because they demonstrate how to price rooms more effectively based on their perceived value from consumers’ perspectives. From a practical standpoint, the findings provide useful managerial tools for pricing in competitive environments.

THE trend of design in the modern aeroplane has been toward improved performance realised through external cleanness. It is apparent that the number of essential units comprising a modern aeroplane is nearly a minimum at the present stage of the art, and it appears also that the possibilities of further striking reductions in the drag of these units, due to change in form or shape either individually or in combination, are not great.

This study aimed to examine young, middle-aged and mature air-travelers’ perceptions of the quality levels of in-flight physical surroundings and service encounters, and investigated the drivers of their repurchase intentions in the low-cost airline industry.

A sample of 402 passengers on international flights was used. An ANOVA and a series of multiple-regression analyses based on Baron and Kenny’s (1986) suggestion were used.

In general, significant differences in quality attributes were identified across age groups. Additionally, the role of these quality components, perceived level of the airfare and trust in the airline were found to be decisive in low-cost airline passengers’ decision formation. Further, the mediating impact of perceived level of the airfare and trust was identified.

Research about air-travelers’ decision formation by considering their age is rare in a low-cost airline context. Results of the present study provided meaningful insights for researchers and practitioners in the airline industry.