Exploring Airbnb service quality attributes and their asymmetric effects on customer satisfaction

With the rise of the sharing economy, Airbnb has become the predominant example of the online peer-to-peer accommodation market in the hospitality industry. This study adopts a mixed method approach to systematically and comprehensively capture various service aspects of Airbnb. Two main studies are conducted to identify key service quality (SQ) attributes of Airbnb, verify the dimensionality of the SQ attributes, and examine the effects of these attributes on customer satisfaction (CS). The first qualitative study generated a list of SQ attributes by collecting and analyzing 16,430 online reviews. In the second study, online survey (N = 322) is conducted to identify multiple dimensions of SQ attributes and examine their asymmetric effects on CS using impact-range performance analysis and impact asymmetry analysis. Findings suggest that Airbnb has multiple SQ attributes associated with website, host, and facility that produce distinctive effects on CS.     

Determinants of radical innovation in clustered firms of the hospitality and tourism industry

Social capital is a key resource encouraging innovation in clustered firms of the hospitality and tourism industry, however it may be influenced by managers perception of market dynamism. This paper analyses the moderator role of ma’rket dynamism perception among the three dimensions of social capital −structural, relational and cognitive- and radical innovation. We conducted an empirical study on a sample of 215 hospitality and tourism firms located in World Heritage Cities of Spain, by considering each city as a cultural tourism cluster. The structural equations analysis shows divergent direct and moderated effects for the dimensions of social capital. Specifically, the negative effect of structural social capital on radical innovation worsens when market dynamism perception is higher. However, market dynamism perception improves the effects of relational and cognitive social capital on radical innovation. The study contributes to the understanding of the antecedents of radical innovation at firm level in the context of cultural tourism clusters.     

An overview of Internet-based surveys in hospitality and tourism journals

Survey research has reached an era when the Internet is commonly used as a research tool in different fields of study. Yet, the use of this method in tourism and hospitality research has not been fully explored. This study provides a state-of-the-art assessment of journal publications in the past ten years to reveal how the Internet has been incorporated into tourism and hospitality research. Various aspects of online research in tourism and hospitality are identified via reviewing relevant articles retrieved from the EBSCOhost.     

A Review of Personality Research in the Tourism and Hospitality Context

Most commentators agree that human relations are central to tourism and hospitality. Different personalities thus display different reactions to the same task. This article provides an overview of prior studies on personality in the context of tourism and hospitality. Using EBSCOHost's Hospitality & Tourism Index, the largest online database for tourism and hospitality research, we analyzed published articles on the topic. Broadly speaking, prior studies can be grouped into the seven dimensions of disposal, biological, intrapsychic, cognitive, social, and adjustment in personality research, plus brand personality. Interestingly, our results show although the Internet has become one of the major marketing channels for hospitality and tourism, only a small number of published articles are related to consumers' online behavior. We thus propose that this area be further researched in the future.     

Eliciting and analysing the basic assumptions of hospitality employees about guests,co-workers and competitors

The aim of this study is to explore the content and structure of hospitality employees’ assumptions about guests, co-workers, and competitors. A qualitative study was conducted whereby 20 hospitality employees were interviewed using repertory grid and laddering. Through content analysis we identified seven assumption dimensions (predictability, control, affect, responsibility, communication, competence, and ethics). The analysis further suggested that different dimensions are emphasised in relation to the hospitality product (e.g. predictability and control), the hospitality organisation (e.g. responsibility and competence), and the hospitality market (e.g. ethics). The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for future research and managerial practice.     

Do organizational practices matter for hotel industry employees’ jobs? A study of organizational practice archetypical configurations and job outcomes

Earlier research has demonstrated that organizational environment variables influence employees’ job outcome variables. This study focuses on the organizational practice dimensions of the hospitality industry and demonstrates that: (1) employees’ perceptions of practices can be construed as a limited set of archetypical configurations, and (2) the configurations are related to job outcome variables. The practice configurations are generated by cluster analysis, and the reliability and validity of the classification is demonstrated.     

Strategy implementation research in hospitality and tourism: Current status and future potential

To achieve their business objectives, hospitality and tourism organizations need effective implementation as well as consistent strategy formulation. However, the implementation aspect of strategy has attracted relatively less scholarly interest than strategic planning despite its critical role in achieving performance outcomes. Consequently, it is timely to provide an in-depth analysis of the strategy implementation literature. This is particularly the case in hospitality and tourism management where comprehensive literature reviews of strategy implementation have been lacking. To address the knowledge gap, the authors conduct a systematic literature review of 139 articles that appeared in 42 journals over the period 1988–2019. The items were grouped into six topic clusters with a view to generating novel research questions that have the potential to advance the field. We identify four main gaps that should be addressed and suggest prospective research directions.     

Leadership research in the root of hospitality scholarship: 1960–2020

This study documents the intellectual structure and progress of hospitality leadership research over the past sixty years by presenting a perspective and conspectus. The authors use text mining analysis to explore topic highlights and how they have shifted over time. Leadership development has been the predominant feature followed by contemporary leadership behaviors. Of the eight leadership domains revealed by the co-citation and text mining analyses, four are associated with leadership styles, which in their turn impact on employees. LMX is the leading theme in hospitality leadership research, with growing attention to the darker side of leadership, particularly abusive supervision. The current study contributes to the hospitality literature by considering coverage of leadership issues since the 1960 s. Furthermore, it encompasses the evolution of hospitality leadership research from the development of theory to a focus on impacts, thereby providing crucial insights that may allow industry professionals to lead their organizations more effectively and efficiently.     

How to win the consumer’s heart? Exploring appraisal determinants of consumer pre-consumption emotions

Emotions are key drivers of consumption in the tourism and hospitality sector. Therefore, advancing our understanding of the determinants of consumer emotions is critical for tourism and hospitality marketers to effectively influence consumer affect-driven consumption behavior. However, research on the determinants of pre-consumption emotions remains under-explored. This study aims to fill the research gap and proposes a theoretical framework to explain affect-driven behavior. Grounded on the cognitive appraisal theory of emotions, we hypothesize that marketing stimuli are personally appraised based on several dimensions such as novelty and goal relevance. These appraisal dimensions determine the elicitation of positive emotions, leading to behavioral intentions. A total of 655 participants were recruited for an empirical study to test this framework in the context of a tourism event experience. We use an experimental research design to examine consumer appraisals, emotions and behavioral intentions in four conditions: two marketing visual formats (poster vs. video) over two delivery channels (advertising vs. e-word-of-mouth). Research outcomes support the theoretical framework of consumer affect-driven behavior, suggesting that the elicitation of positive emotions beneficially guides consumer behavior in goal striving and novelty seeking. Based on this, emotion-focused marketing implications are recommended, including goal-based segmentation, goal-relevant content development and the use of eWOM as an emotion-enhancing message delivery channel.     

What can big data and text analytics tell us about hotel guest experience and satisfaction?

The tremendous growth of social media and consumer-generated content on the Internet has inspired the development of the so-called big data analytics to understand and solve real-life problems. However, while a handful of studies have employed new data sources to tackle important research problems in hospitality, there has not been a systematic application of big data analytic techniques in these studies. This study aims to explore and demonstrate the utility of big data analytics to better understand important hospitality issues, namely the relationship between hotel guest experience and satisfaction. Specifically, this study applies a text analytical approach to a large quantity of consumer reviews extracted from Expedia.com to deconstruct hotel guest experience and examine its association with satisfaction ratings. The findings reveal several dimensions of guest experience that carried varying weights and, more importantly, have novel, meaningful semantic compositions. The association between guest experience and satisfaction appears strong, suggesting that these two domains of consumer behavior are inherently connected. This study reveals that big data analytics can generate new insights into variables that have been extensively studied in existing hospitality literature. In addition, implications for theory and practice as well as directions for future research are discussed.     

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.     

Leveraging human-robot interaction in hospitality services: Incorporating the role of perceived value,empathy, and information sharing into visitors’ intentions to use social robots

Social robots have become pervasive in the tourism and hospitality service environments. The empirical understanding of the drivers of visitors' intentions to use robots in such services has become an urgent necessity for their sustainable deployment. Certainly, using social androids within hospitality services requires organisations' attentive commitment to value creation and fulfilling service quality expectations. In this paper, via structural equation modelling (SEM) and semi-structured interviews with managers, we conceptualise and empirically test visitors' intentions to use social robots in hospitality services. With data collected in Singapore's hospitality settings, we found visitors' intentions to use social robots stem from the effects of technology acceptance variables, service quality dimensions leading to perceived value, and two further dimensions from human robot interaction (HRI): empathy and information sharing. Analysis of these dimensions' importance provides a deeper understanding of novel opportunities managers may take advantage of to position social robot-delivered services in tourism and hospitality strategies.     

Conceptual model for analysing management development in the hospitality industry: A UK perspective

This paper presents a conceptual, contingent model of hospitality management development (MD). Having explored the dimensions and relationships in the model, it is then applied to the UK hospitality industry through analysing the nature of the hospitality industry for potential influences on MD and evaluating research into its practice. The embryonic model is presented as a vehicle to enhance understanding of the complex influences and contexts of hospitality MD and to distinguish distinctive characteristics of MD in the hospitality industry.     

Review of tourism forecasting research with internet data

Internet techniques significantly influence the tourism industry and Internet data have been used widely used in tourism and hospitality research. However, reviews on the recent development of Internet data in tourism forecasting remain limited. This work reviews articles on tourism forecasting research with Internet data published in academic journals from 2012 to 2019. Then, the findings ae synthesized based on the following Internet data classifications: search engine, web traffic, social media, and multiple sources. Results show that among such classifications, search engine data are most widely incorporated into tourism forecasting. Time series and econometric forecasting models remain dominant, whereas artificial intelligence methods are still developing. For unstructured social media and multi-source data, methodological advancements in text mining, sentiment analysis, and social network analysis are required to transform data into time series for forecasting. Combined Internet data and forecasting models will help in improving forecasting accuracy further in future research.     

What does it mean to follow? An exploration of a followership profile in hospitality and tourism

Although leadership has received considerable attention from many scholars, much less research has focused on those who follow leaders; yet, followers contribute much to the success of an organization. This study explored the followership profiles of stakeholders in hospitality and tourism education. The findings summarize the followership dimensions of a sample of hospitality students, educators, and industry professionals. For each of the five followership dimensions the mean scores for industry professionals were rated higher when compared with students and educators, with courage to participate in transformation being the highest rated among all three groups. Implications for hospitality education are presented.     

Predictors of Career Success Among Lodging Revenue Managers: Investigating Roles of Proactive Work Behaviors

This study integrated the growing literature of proactive work behavior with career success among lodging revenue managers. Proactive work behavior is a timely, relevant, and important research topic for today’s workplaces in the hospitality industry. The aim of this research was to test a model for linkage among four dimensions of proactive work behavior and career success, among 280 lodging revenue managers, while controlling for work experience, age, and gender. First, the confirmatory factor analyses examined the measurement models of proactive work behavior and career success. Next, hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that all four dimensions of proactive work behaviors contributed positively to subjective career success, but not objective (extrinsic) career success.     

Mapping the progress of social media research in hospitality and tourism management from 2004 to 2014

ABSTRACT

One hundred and five articles on social media in hospitality and tourism during 2004–2014 were identified from three databases and seven journals. Seven dimensions were used for analysis. Results indicated that social media research in hospitality and tourism is in its early stages with two turning points. The number of articles rose dramatically in 2010 and unexpectedly dropped in 2014. Research gaps are apparent in several industry sectors in topics beyond online reviews and in research methods, where literature reviews suffer from small numbers and few prominent researchers. Implications and future research directions are also discussed.     

Bibliometrics of social media research: A co-citation and co-word analysis

This study combined two bibliometric analysis methods to provide a systematic and holistic review of social media-related academic literature. A total of 406 publications related to social media between 2007 and 2016 were identified from 16 business and hospitality/tourism journals. Co-citation analysis identified Word-of-Mouth as the major theoretical foundation of social media research in business, while the hospitality/tourism field presented a diverse theoretical foundation. The study then employed co-word analysis to identify the evolution of research themes over time in both fields. The comparison of social media research between the two fields highlighted four similarities, including the growth of research over time, the term “social media” gaining popularity, the new trend of social networking sites, and managerial applications as research focus. Finally, the study called for a future research agenda on social media research in the hospitality/tourism field.     

Categories of Participants Based on Their Expectations of Instructor-Led Training

SUMMARY

Trainees' expectations of training are important considerations in the development of training programs, yet a lack of research exists to understand the expectations of trainees as they relate to various training delivery methods. To investigate the underlying dimensions or factors that determine trainees' expectations in instructor-led training sessions, 164 surveys were collected from attendees at six different hospitality industry instructor-led training sessions. Utilizing a factor analytic procedure, the following five dimensions of trainees' expectations were identified: courtesy, entertainment, climate, tangibles, and relevance. These expectations of training dimensions were then used to cluster analyze trainees into three groups: “the good-timers,” “the high hopes,” and “the serious students.”     

Do consumers care about CSR in their online reviews? An empirical analysis

This research investigates how consumers assess hotels’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices when writing online reviews. The study explores the CSR discourse in online reviews over a 10-year period, highlighting how CSR’s social and environmental dimensions relate to the main hospitality topics (experience, amenities, location, transactions, value). Based on a longitudinal automated text analysis covering 480,000 reviews across six European cities, the findings reveal that hotel customers have gradually begun paying more attention to CSR factors, particularly to social and environmental ones. However, the aggregate results suggest that the overall CSR consumer discourse is still very limited, although it does have important implications in terms of consumer emotions and hospitality dimensions.