Gender diversity in hospitality and tourism top management teams: A systematic review of the last 10 years

Due to women still accounting for less than a quarter of hospitality and tourism executive-level positions, the purpose of this paper was to identify antecedents to and outcomes of gender diverse hospitality and tourism top management teams, describe potential mediators and moderators to these relationships, and provide directions for future research. A systematic review of gender diversity in hospitality and tourism top management teams (TMTs) was conducted between the years 2010 and 2020, resulting in 26 articles used for the thematic analysis. Antecedents, outcomes, mediators, and moderators of gender diverse hospitality and tourism TMTs were identified. The results indicated female role models, organizational structure, and organizational support as antecedents, while financial performance, business growth, and human resource outcomes were consequences. The resource advantage theory is proposed as an explanation for each of these relationships. This study fills a gap in previous literature by conducting a review of gender diversity, identifying critical gaps, and proposing an overarching theory.     

Gender and empowerment: assessing discrepancies using the resident empowerment through tourism scale

While gender equality and empowerment are core components of sustainable tourism, most of the literature has approached the concepts from qualitative perspectives, thus limiting the ability to empirically test for empowerment discrepancies between men and women. With this gap in mind, this study sought to test the widely held notion that empowerment discrepancies exist between men and women in tourism development. Discrepancies in psychological, social and political empowerment were tested for using the 12-item Resident Empowerment through Tourism Scale (RETS). The RETS was administered across five sample populations, with results revealing that gender discrepancies were present, but surprisingly, not in the direction suggested in previous literature. In all three US samples, there was evidence that women were more likely to perceive themselves being empowered than men. The results from the two Japanese samples did not find any significant differences, which is of interest because Japan is traditionally seen a very patriarchal society. Applications of the RETS can be paired with qualitative research to better understand empowerment success stories and then to apply these best practices to other destinations where empowerment discrepancies are present. Future applications of the RETS are suggested to help initiate “gender mainstreaming” within the sustainable tourism literature.     

Mixed methods in sustainable tourism research: an analysis of prevalence,designs and application in JOST (2005–2014)

This article analyses the use of mixed methods in papers published in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism over the 10 years, 2005–2014. First, a content analysis of the articles shows that mixed methods are used primarily for expansion and development of results, and less often for triangulation or complementarity. Sequential designs are slightly more popular than simultaneous designs, with qualitative research preceding the quantitative element. In the majority of cases, both the quantitative and qualitative methods have equivalent importance, yet where one is dominant, this is usually the quantitative part. Second, we contextualise the content analysis by exemplifying the use of mixed methods in selected papers, using commentary from authors who have recently published mixed methods papers. We reflect on the reasons for, strengths and weaknesses of using mixed methods, and we argue that mixed methods provide sustainable tourism academics with more opportunities for pragmatic transformative research for societal change, and increasing research reliability in relation to social desirability bias, stakeholder comparisons and transdisciplinarity. The paper notes the need for greater understanding of mixed methods by researchers, its special value and growing importance in sustainable tourism research, and its challenges and strengths for authors and editors.     

Human-robot interaction: Conceptualising trust in frontline teams through LEGO® Serious Play®

Due to fast-paced developments in the technological sphere, we witness robots becoming commonplace in hospitality. While research has focused on technical and functional aspects of robots, the ways in which robots could become effective members of human service teams are less understood. By taking a human-robot interaction (HRI) lens, this study investigates the impact of integrating non-human service providers into human teams with a focus on trust. A qualitative focus group approach with the LEGO® Serious Play® method is employed to open novel avenues in tourism research, and to build, visualise and distil what human-robot interaction in hospitality frontline teams could look like. The study's contribution is a conceptual framework that reveals three dominant factors of trust and their sub-dimensions necessary for successful future human-robot interaction in frontline teams in tourism, hospitality and the wider service sector.     

旅游研究中的性别话题

社会性别研究已成为国际人文社会科学领域中一个重要的热点话题.旅游研究中的性别话题在国外始于20世纪70年代,从最初对女性的单一研究发展到今天从社会性别视角对男女两性的全面对比,研究内容多样,理论体系初步形成,并已积累了大量的研究案例.国内旅游研究中对性别的关注则多集中于对女性旅游市场、女性旅游者行为、旅游与少数民族妇女发展等几方面,且大多是在统计年鉴分析和文献归纳基础上的简单描述和总结.本文从研究对象、研究内容、研究方法等方面评述了国内外旅游中的性别研究,并对相关研究的不足和未来关注点进行了分析和预测.     

Breaking barriers for Bangladeshi female solo travelers

Asian Muslim women's travel habits are sorely under-researched. In response to various calls for research in this area, this study utilizes Hofstede's five cultural dimensions to determine how Bangladeshi cultural values inhibit and/or enhance travel constraints for solo Muslim female travelers and the subsequent effects on solo travel behavior. We propose solo travel as a strategic tourism development tool to achieve mobility rights and gender equality particularly for destinations that are highly populated with more women than men. Introducing an interpretivist qualitative approach, the study extracted both survey and open-ended responses from 307 frequent Bangladeshi solo travelers that were recruited from a women-only English-speaking Facebook Bangladeshi travel group. The findings reveal that this group is constrained by a unique combination of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural factors. Power-distance, masculinity, and uncertainty-avoidance also play key roles. Sustainable and practical applications are outlined for destination management organizations, travel planners, policy makers, non-governmental organizations, and for-profit tour companies that benefit both Bangladeshi solo female travelers and those with whom they interact.     

Cross-institutional collaboration networks in tourism and hospitality research

This paper examines cross-institutional collaboration in tourism and hospitality research using a co-authorship network model based on papers published in six top-tier tourism and hospitality journals over the past 20 years. Data analysis reveals that multi-author, multi-university studies are the fastest-growing type of authorship structure in tourism and hospitality research. We use several network measures to evaluate the intensity of research collaboration among academic institutions in tourism and hospitality disciplines. Institutions with tourism and hospitality programs worldwide are ranked according to their centricity in cross-institutional research collaboration networks and categorized according to their characteristics in collaboration. The empirical analysis shows significant associations between research performance and a university's centricity position in cross-institutional research networks. Through advanced social network analysis, this study provides new insights into institutional collaboration in tourism and hospitality research over the past two decades.     

定性旅游研究：表达规范与反思--基于2000-2013年《旅游学刊》载文分析

鉴于学科分野的原因,不同学科有着不同的定性研究表达传统,在学科内部的交流并不会形成交流障碍或批评焦点。而旅游研究是一个多学科交叉领域,定性研究方法及其成果表达常会形成分歧。文章在总结定性研究评价相关研究的基础上,以《旅游学刊》2000—2013年定性研究论文为分析对象,从定性旅游研究的表达规范与表达逻辑等几个方面对57篇样本文献进行元分析（meta-analysis）,发现目前定性研究表达主要存在的问题是对研究问题的概念关系与理论框架、研究策略与研究方法过程介绍不充分,对研究问题与研究方法、研究材料与研究结论的逻辑一致性关注不够,对研究结论的可信度影响因素未进行充分说明。在此基础上,作者反思了旅游定性研究的发展趋势与关注重点。     

The female tourist experience in Egypt as an Islamic destination

In Islamic destinations female tourists face the added challenge of negotiating their way through male constructed local norms. This paper fills the gap in gender and tourism research with a focus on female tourists’ experiences in Egypt as an Islamic destination, outlining the diverse ways in which gender shapes and influences their experiences. A qualitative approach was taken to explore women’s coping strategies with the male sexualised gaze that they encountered during their holiday in Egypt, and sheds light on measures taken towards safeguarding themselves. Their experiences were highly influenced and often involuntarily altered by unwanted male attention and sexual harassment, as the women felt the need to fit into local female norms of behaviour in order to safeguard themselves.     

Performing femininity: Women at the top (doing and undoing gender)

Tourism research has primarily treated gender as a male-female dichotomy and has been constrained by a heterosexual matrix for empirical inquires. Such research, however, has failed to acknowledge the fluidity and multiplicity in theorizing gender. To redress this overlook, this study moves away from the conventional binary thinking and views gender as a performativity which is resulted from repetitive social performance. By conducting multiple field observations and interviews with 17 hotel female general managers working in Mainland China and Taiwan, this research presents the ways of doing and undoing gender by tourism female leaders and the extent to which the everlasting gender logic can be questioned.     

Designing Collaboration Process Facilitation in Hotel Management Teams to Improve Collaboration Performance

This study proposes a structured collaboration process providing procedural guidance to facilitate smooth collaboration among hotel management teams. Design science research (DSR) and action research methodologies were followed to develop and evaluate an effective process facilitation based on collaboration engineering (CE) for group-oriented solutions in the hospitality industry. We interviewed members of the hotel management teams who used our process for insights and feedback and conducted a second-round iteration to optimize the designed artifact. According to the research findings, the designed artifact was perceived as easy to follow. Hospitality groups that deployed the proposed process facilitation reported good collaboration performances. Interviewees listed several merits of our collaboration process, including structured collaboration guidance, strict time control, and idea generation encouragement. As one of the first studies to adopt DSR methodology in hotel management teams, this paper puts forth a valuable approach to collaboration engineering in the hospitality industry.     

International academic impact of Chinese tourism research: A review based on the analysis of SSCI tourism articles from 2001 to 2012

Between 2001 and 2011 Chinese authors published over 838,000 articles in SSCI rated journals, second only to authors in the United States. However Chinese tourism academics lagged behind their counterparts in obtaining such publications, with only 157 papers in the Thomson Reuters SSCI listing for tourism and hospitality. However in recent years the numbers of Chinese authored publications have significantly increased. The paper argues that access to SSCI ranked publications is important for Chinese tourism academics because (a) it helps inform the world of developments in Chinese tourism, (b) it is a recognition of the standards of Chinese research and a means of improving Chinese research and (c) it provides a motive for international collaboration between Chinese researchers and their counterparts.     

Differences between male and female sport event tourists: A qualitative study

This qualitative study, using the Zaltaman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET), investigated differences between male and female sport event tourists. Study participants cited different attributes, consequences, and values with respect to the five themes that emerged from this study: loyalty, socialization, self-actualization, volunteering, and equality through sport. The use of a grounded qualitative research approach made it possible to discover that the act of sport spectating could give sport event tourists the opportunity to reach other goals (e.g., social responsibility, self-actualization and healthy lifestyle). This study made several unique contributions to event tourism research. The most important finding, however, had to do with self-actualization. Socialization, travel, volunteering, and promoting gender equality and other social responsibilities through sport enable people to reach their potential and achieve a healthy lifestyle. These singular findings have implications to sports event management and marketing strategies.     

Tourism gender research: A critical accounting

This paper seeks to rouse debate about the workings of tourism enquiry as a knowledge-generating system through its critical accounting of the sub-field of tourism gender research. This accounting includes a gender-aware bibliometric analysis of 466 journal papers published during 1985–2012, which categorises the sub-field’s prevailing themes and methodologies and identifies its most prolific authors and popular journals. It contends that, despite three decades of study and a recent increase in papers, tourism gender research remains marginal to tourism enquiry, disarticulated from wider feminist and gender-aware initiatives and lacks the critical mass of research leaders, publications, citations and multi-institutional networks, which characterise other tourism sub-fields. The paper identifies two possible futures for gender-aware tourism research: stagnation or ignition.     

Recontextualising gender in entrepreneurial leadership

Drawing on the literature examining the nexus between gender, entrepreneurial leadership and entrepreneurial performance, this article critically explores a framework for analysing the role of gender in shaping entrepreneurial performance and leadership in tourism firms in a non-western context. Utilising a poststructural feminist lens that challenges normative accounts of entrepreneurial leadership practices, a qualitative analysis of interview data from tourism entrepreneurs in Ghana and Nigeria provides evidence of how entrepreneurial performances and leadership are gendered, fluid and constantly being negotiated. The article extends current discussions within tourism entrepreneurship to engage more meaningfully with gender, thereby assisting in deconstructing homogenous, fixed conceptualisation of entrepreneurial leadership - often evident within the broader leadership and entrepreneurship literature dominated by Anglo-Western approaches.     

Uncovering crowdsourcing in tourism apps: A grounded theory study

Even though crowdsourcing emerges as a new business principle of many successful tourism apps, its underlying mechanism in tourism remains unexplored. This research note explores this topic with a qualitative design through interviews with stakeholders involved in a crowdsourcing tourism app, Gold Medal Tour Guide. Applying the grounded theory, researchers propose a framework of crowdsourcing in tourism apps consisting of six themes and 15 subthemes. The framework identifies the drive of crowdsourcing and discusses the complexities and contradictions in multi-stakeholder collaboration. The contextual impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the crowdsourcing phenomenon are also examined. The findings provide practical implications for tourism destinations to take advantage of the crowdsourcing mechanism for sustainable operation and development.     

Sustainability perspectives on Oulanka National Park,Finland: mixed methods in tourism research

This paper positions mixed methods as a complement to traditional qualitative and quantitative research. It provides an example of conducting mixed methods research by analysing the sociocultural sustainability of tourism as perceived by local stakeholders nearby Oulanka National Park in north-eastern Finland. Semi-structured interviews were linked concurrently to survey data from the same respondents. First, four discourses were identified based on 40 interviews with respondents about tourism development pertinent to the Protected Area Network (PAN) Parks international certification. Second, the differences between the representatives of the discourses were examined using non-parametric statistics. Results of the qualitative and quantitative analysis supplemented each other. The survey results supported the identification of four discourses and provided information about the representatives using the discourses. The discourse groups differed according to length of residence in the area, distance from the park, gender, employment in tourism, familiarity with PAN Parks, benefit from PAN Parks status, belief in the benefits of PAN Parks, satisfaction with tourism and park development, importance of the environmental dimension and satisfaction with various dimensions of sustainability. The study demonstrates that a better understanding of a problem may be acquired by using a mix of survey methods and interviews.     

The tourism partnership life cycle in Estonia: Striving towards sustainable multisectoral rural tourism collaboration

Estonian rural tourism partnership sustainability is analysed according to the tourism partnership life cycle model, which employs qualitative methodology. Leadership, confusing aims, decreasing communication, time availability, uncertain funding, institutional changes and lack of collaboration with urban centre – trigger deceleration of partnership and therefore influence partnership sustainability.Social aspects play a major role in affecting partnership and include internal and external influences. While each partnership phase is important for its sustainability, the partnership can simultaneously follow different timeline paths that have formal and informal life cycles. If the partnership exists in multiple timelines, its life cycle follows a more circular than cyclical form. Community-initiated partnerships are evolving and adapting platforms where new partnership forms emerge, creating social and economic benefits for stakeholders. When collaboration is initiated by local communities, partnerships can change and alter their form more sustainably compared to situations in which they have a more centralised character.     

女性高管会提升旅游企业绩效吗?——来自旅游上市公司的经验研究

旅游业是女性就业较为集中的行业。近年来,我国旅游企业中女性高管不断增加,文章以2003-2016年期间我国旅游上市公司作为样本,基于高阶理论构建研究假设,并利用非平衡面板数据建立计量经济学模型,实证研究我国旅游上市公司中女性高管对企业绩效的影响。研究发现,旅游上市企业中女性高管对企业绩效具有显著促进作用;然而,对酒店行业的进一步分析表明,女性高管对酒店企业绩效的正向作用,会因为行业高度竞争压力的存在而受到抑制。研究结果丰富了现阶段女性研究相关文献,也为旅游企业管理决策提供了理论依据和经验支持。     

Silk and steel: A gendered approach to career and life by upper echelon women executives in the hospitality and tourism industry in China

This qualitative study represents one of the early attempts to uncover the lived experience of thriving of top female leaders in the tourism and hospitality industry in China. Based on the narratives of 21 women executives in the hospitality and tourism industry in China, this study reveals that upper echelon (top management) females thrive by taking a gendered approach to life and career in a cultural environment with a strong Confucian tradition. This research systematically explored the unique gendered orientations and strategies these women executives used to achieve optimal functioning, as manifested in their thriving in both life and career. They acknowledge gender differences, embrace female qualities rather than deny them, and leverage these qualities to their advantage. The study findings offer significant theoretical and practical implications by illuminating a thriving perspective of the career advancement of women.