Evaluating the efficiency of a small hotel chain with a Malmquist productivity index

By applying data envelopment analysis (DEA) a two‐stage procedure is followed to evaluate the determinants of efficiency of a Portuguese public‐owned hotel chain, Enatur for the period 1999 to 2001. In the first stage the paper estimates the Malmquist index and breaks it down into technical efficiency and technological change. In the second stage, a Tobit econometric model, designed to relate efficiency scores, along with other managerial and contextual variables, is used to identify the efficiency drivers. The implications of this study for managerial purposes are then discussed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The performance of the Slovenian hotel industry: evaluation post‐privatisation

This study analyses the technical efficiency of Slovenian hotels using the data envelopment analysis method. Multiple inputs and outputs are included in the analysis, ranging over the period 2005–2007. The results reveal an increase in efficiency over the period analysed. The results also confirm that factors such as the hotel's year in business, star rating and size are positively related to efficiency variations between hotels. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Estimating efficiency and its determinants in the hotel sector using a profit function

Inefficiency in the hotel sector is normally estimated through cost and scale efficiencies. This paper estimates hotel profit efficiency and its determinants employing a stochastic frontier profit function and the inefficiency effects function. The key advantage of this methodology is its ability to estimate efficiency for each hotel and the factors that explain differences in efficiency in a single-stage sampling procedure. The sample consists of 231 hotels in Spain in the period 2008–2012. Empirical evidence shows that the average level of profit efficiency is 45.85% and that age, labour productivity and location are determinants of this efficiency. Policy implications for the improvement of less efficient hotels are noted.     

Four decades of airline productivity and efficiency studies: A review and bibliometric analysis

Airline productivity and efficiency have remained an area of tremendous interest among both academics and industry analysts since the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 was enacted in the United States. This paper provides a bibliometric analysis of airline productivity and efficiency studies during the period from 1979 to 2020. The results show that the Journal of Air Transport Management, Transportation Research Part A, and Transportation Research Part E were the top three outlets preferred for publications in this area during the study period, and productive authors were likely to produce influential works. Research interest in airline productivity and efficiency has spread to encompass more diversified geographical regions over time, and new researchers from a broad range of fields continue to become interested in this field of research. Data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis are shown to be the most popular methods used by researchers, and studies are increasingly attempting to incorporate undesirable outputs, such as carbon emissions, flight delays and accidents, into the measurement and analysis of airline performance. The results from this study can provide guidance for future research issues and directions.     

Post-2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup: oversupply and location of luxury hotel rooms in Cape Town

An excess of hotel rooms in cities preparing to host a mega-event such as the FIFA Soccer World Cup is not a new occurrence. Between 2007 and 2010 the number of five-star hotel rooms in Cape Town increased by 50% and four-star hotel rooms by 20%. A spatial database of three-, four- and five-star hotels was compiled for the hotel sector of Cape Town. This paper reveals the global–local nexus of luxury hotel development in Cape Town (South Africa) and three different contexts in which the oversupply of hotel rooms must be understood. First is South Africa as a developing country engaged in hosting a hallmark event and engrossed in concomitant inflated tourism-related expectations. Second is the vulnerability of Cape Town's hotel sector with its overdependence on long-haul holiday tourists from a narrow northern-hemisphere market experiencing the worst economic recession since the 1930s. Third is the favourable economic trends in South Africa from 1999 to 2007 that have trapped hotel developers in a ‘fallacy of composition’.     

Tourists' information search: the differential impact of risk and uncertainty avoidance

While studies in and out of tourism contexts have explored risk and/or uncertainty avoidance's impact on information search, few have clarified whether the two constructs impact differentially on information search. To examine this issue, data were collected from large online panels in Australia, China and Japan. The risk and uncertainty avoidance scales were reliable, had convergent and discriminant validity and were invariant across the three country samples. As expected, uncertainty avoidance was positively related to the extent of information search in all three country samples, whereas risk avoidance was not. This suggests that the constructs are distinct and may impact at different stages of decision‐making. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Family Members and Vacation Satisfaction: Proposal of a Conceptual Framework

This study aimed to investigate the extent to which the other family members (spouse and/or child/ren) in a family influence the vacationers' overall vacation satisfaction and future behavioural intentions. As part of the study, a conceptual framework was proposed where overall vacation satisfaction mediates the relationships between spouses' and child/ren's vacation evaluations and respondents' return and recommending intentions. The methodology included self‐administered surveys of 445 families from the UK, which were completed at a Turkish resort airport in August 2007. The results indicate that the respondents' vacation satisfaction is influenced more strongly by spouses. Furthermore, the results show that respondents' return intentions are determined by their and their spouses' vacation satisfaction, whereas respondents' recommending intentions are determined by their and their child/ren's vacation satisfaction. These results bring new insights into the post‐purchase vacation behaviour for both theory and practice. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Concentration,productivity and profitability in the Italian commercial accommodation sector

This study avails itself of the Aida data bank from which were taken the accounting data for the 2,518 limited companies active in the Italian accommodation sector in the years 2000–2006. The research aims at describing the structural characteristics and the competitive advantages of the Italian accommodation sector. The Italian position as leader would seem to be threatened by the entry into the market place of new‐comer countries. Understanding the sector's industrial organisation would appear to be a particularly important step towards the implementation of an effective policy for the industry. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modelling roles of task‐technology fit and self‐efficacy in hotel employees' usage behaviours of hotel information systems

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between hotel information system (HIS) users' personal perceptions and beliefs of the given system and their daily routine usage intention via the technology acceptance model (TAM), considering the two external variables (motivational variables) of the model — ‘task‐technology fit’ (extrinsic motivation; system feature) and ‘self‐efficacy’ (intrinsic motivation; personal feature). Data were collected from hotel employees of 13 upscale hotels in Jeju, South Korea, and path analysis was utilised to test structural model and hypotheses. The results provided empirical support for an extended TAM, and verified its robustness in predicting hotel employees' intention to use a HIS. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Platform coopetition in the tourism industry: conflicts and tensions caused by the closure of Booking.com in Turkey

In March 2017, as a result of a precautionary interim decision made by the courts based on the case relating to ‘unfair competition practices’, Booking.com closed its platform for inbound tourism in Turkey and ceased operations. This was the first instance of an online booking platform halting access for inbound bookings for the domestic market. This platform-based relationship involves both cooperation and competition, and thus this paper identifies this relationship as platform coopetition. Based on the governance network theory and employing a case-study approach, the Booking.com case is examined from the viewpoint of tourism coopetition from two perspectives: industry-wide and agent-specific. The paper provides an analysis of these perspectives and the past and on-going process of Booking.com’s platform closure. The constitutive dynamics this case endangers the coopetitive environment of the tourism industry and thus creates destructive uncertainties, especially for small hotels. This analysis also reveals the issues in terms of political representation for digital service platform companies.     

Japanese-airport benchmarking with the DEA and endogenous-weight TFP methods: testing the criticism of overinvestment in Japanese regional airports

As aviation demand increased constantly along with the rapid economic growth in Japan and surrounding East Asian countries over the last several decades, Japanese government promoted airport construction since 1950s. However, the recent change in the economic background has made rise to a criticism toward the inefficient public investment, especially the transportation infrastructure. In this criticism, it has been argued that some of the small regional airports are indeed suffering the issue of overinvestment. Thus this paper attempts to verify the validity of such criticism by statistically measuring the efficiency of Japanese airports and conducting comparative analysis. For this objective, the paper employs two distinct methods namely data-envelopment analysis and endogenous-weight TFP methods. The results from these methods consistently indicates that the efficiency of regional airports in mainland Japan are lower than others, and that those airports constructed in the 1990s are relatively inefficient.     

Information and communication technology,co-innovation,and perceived productivity in tourism small and medium enterprises: an exploratory analysis

With the aim of providing new evidence and a practical instrument to measure co-innovative sources of productivity in tourism small and medium enterprises (SMEs), this article presents a newly designed questionnaire that has been validated by exploratory factor analysis. The empirical study was conducted on a representative sample of 500 tourism SMEs in Catalonia (a region in north-eastern Spain). Three factors emerged from the analysis: (1) Internet use; (2) firm innovation; and (3) new forms of work organization. Together, these factors explained 45.4% of cumulative variance. The reliability coefficients obtained for the three factors were high (α_1?=?0.76; α_2?=?0.72; and α_3?=?0.71). The study also identified a specific form of co-innovation in SMEs, which is based on bringing radically innovative products and services to the market, and on Internet use and work organization practices that are clearly orientated towards increasing income and optimizing resources. The combination between economics of the firm and statistical validation tools is a source of originality of the paper. Strategic guidelines to improve SMEs productivity have also been discussed.     

Functional efficiency in airport terminals: A review on Overall and Stratified Service Quality

This paper presents a review of the existing approaches for functional efficiency assessment in airport passenger terminal buildings (PTB). The literature has been classified into two broad study levels and a set of 58 Key Performance Indicators are identified. These are further classified based on their application in processing, holding and circulation activities and sub-classified as objective and subjective indicators. Analytical methods adapted for service quality (SQ) assessments are comprehended. This paper identifies emerging Stratified SQ indicators and stochastic approaches for performance evaluation considering the spatial, operational and technological transformations of PTBs. Critical gaps from literature and scope for further research are discussed.     

Establishment and application of fuzzy decision rules: an empirical case of the air passenger market in Taiwan

This paper develops a framework for creating fuzzy decision rules by socio‐economic variables, transactional record variables and customer benefit variables. Fuzzy decision rules may be applied on marketing systems of businesses. This research uses fuzzy k‐means algorithm and C4.5 decision tree algorithm to generate fuzzy decision rules. The framework is applied on the air passenger market of Taiwan for an empirical case study. Results of this research found two non‐fuzzy (crisp) decision rules and two fuzzy decision rules, which can be applied on the customer relationship management systems of airlines. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Drivers of operational efficiency and its impact on market performance in the Indian Airline industry

India is considered to be one of the toughest aviation markets in the world, due to high fuel prices, overcapacity and intense price competition. It is therefore important to identify critical drivers of performance, which enable the airlines to survive and succeed in this emerging market with huge growth potential. In the current empirical study, we investigate the linkages between various performance drivers, operational efficiencies and market performance. An extensive data collection using primary and secondary sources enabled us to gather data on all the airlines operating in India, both private and public, for the period 2005–2012, on a variety of important parameters. We carried out a two-stage empirical analysis, which involved estimation of operational efficiencies during the first stage using Data Envelopment Analysis, and determination of performance drivers during the second stage using a two-way random effects GLS regression and also a Tobit model. Our findings suggest that while some of the structural and regulatory factors have an undesirable impact on airline performance, the low cost carriers in India have managed to achieve significant operational efficiencies. In addition, we find that, while cost efficiency is driven by a variety of factors, it is the technical efficiency which brings in better market performance through pricing power in the Indian airline industry.     

Attitudes in the Danish tourism industry to the roles of business and government in sustainable tourism

The introduction of more sustainable forms of tourism in a country is likely to be the result of a combination of government regulations and other interventions and businesses making their own decisions in response to the market. This paper examines attitudes among senior managers in the Danish tourism industry to where prime responsibility lies for promoting sustainable tourism practices. The opinions of these senior industry managers are also reported on incentives and obstacles to the adoption of sustainable tourism practices, on external assistance that may encourage the introduction of these practices, and whether there should be more government regulations to encourage their adoption. Industry attitudes in Denmark to these issues are of particular interest because of the relative prominence of environmental issues in the country. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.