Random Notes on the Temples in Beijing

How many temples are there in the capital Beijing?No exact figure can be given,but one poeric line seens appropriate:"four hunbred and eighty temples existed in the Southern Dynasties,and many more towers were shrouded in smoke and rain."Only the time has changed and no perennial rain prevails in Beijig.     

The impact of the ‘Girls on the Move’ Leadership Programme on young female leaders’ self-esteem

Using findings obtained from an evaluation of the ‘Girls on the Move’ Leadership Programme in Scotland, this paper assesses the impact physical activity leadership courses and leading physical activities had on young women’s global self-esteem. While research has shown that engagement in youth development activities can contribute to an individual’s self-esteem, less is known about the impact of youth leadership on young people’s self-esteem. Based on pre-course and six-month follow-up surveys and using the Rosenberg self-esteem scale, it was found that increases in global self-esteem scores were highest in those that maintained an involvement in leading activities. The self-esteem of those attending training but not taking on leadership responsibilities remained largely unchanged. The findings indicate that youth leadership development has the power to make important contributions to the development of young people and youth development professionals should seek to provide meaningful leadership experiences for young people.     

Egyptians’ Hotel Booking Behavior on the Internet

The expansion of booking hotel rooms online has changed the booking process in the hotel market environment. This investigation evaluates Egyptians’ attitude as an overall inclination towards booking hotel rooms online. It consists of two phases: a focus group phase and a survey phase. Initially, focus groups were formed for the purpose of identifying general perceptions of Egyptians with respect to the use of hotel booking websites. Information generated from the focus group study contributed toward questionnaire (survey) development. Results suggest that Egyptians generally show positive attitudes towards booking hotel rooms online. The implication for hotel brands is that they should focus on making the experience of online booking safer in order to convert non-bookers to bookers. This is important because the safety features of online booking (secure transactions, privacy of information, and online fraud) appear to be more important than the usability features (convenience, usefulness, ease of use, and efficiency) for nonbookers.     

Estimating the impact of showroom entertainment on the gaming volumes of Las Vegas hotel–casinos

Increases in showroom headcounts are found to increase casino gaming volumes in two Las Vegas Strip casinos. This study examines long-standing assumptions regarding the indirect contribution of investment-intensive showroom entertainment. Such contributions are difficult to measure and the literature contains no rigorously derived estimates of gaming contributions from in-house entertainment venues. Despite the paucity of research, gaming companies are willing to invest staggering sums in showroom entertainment, based in large part on the belief that traffic from these venues will increase gaming volumes. Using estimates produced by time series regression models, the two showrooms produced average gaming win contributions of $11.28 and $19.32, per paid showroom attendee. Based on these estimates alone, extravagant investment in showrooms would have to be justified by other means. Future studies aimed at understanding the showroom contributions to non-gaming profit centers and the role of showrooms in the high-roller's patronage decision are both recommended.     

A review of the literature on culture in hotel management research: What is the future?

This paper aims to provide insights into the development of research on culture in the hotel industry by reviewing the existing literature. A total of 107 journal articles published between 1985 and 2010 were retrieved from 12 refereed journals, all of which could be accessed online. The papers were categorized into six major groups according to Pizam's (1993) hierarchy of cultures, and were further sorted by year of publication, source, subject area, region of focus, and the nature of the research. National culture, organizational culture, and cross-cultural comparison were found to be the most popular research topics. In contrast, few studies have investigated industry, occupational, and corporate cultures in association with hotel management studies, prompting concern for future research. In summary, this review paper offers a first and important attempt to understand the development of research on culture in the hotel management field and identifies future research opportunities.     

Climate Variability in the Origin Countries as a “Push” Factor on Tourist Arrivals in the Philippines

The objective of this paper is to test the impact of climate variability in origin countries as a “push factor” on tourist arrivals, specifically in the Philippines, and to select a suitable proxy to measure climate variability. This paper uses the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) constructed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Climate variability is strongly linked to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and this link is used by meteorologists to forecast changes in weather globally. SOI is a widely used indicator of the ENSO and its best known extremes are the El Niño (warm phase) and La Niña (cold phase) effects. The study proves to some extent that there is a significant increase in US tourist arrivals in the Philippines when La Niña-like weather conditions prevail in the USA. More importantly, the SOI proved to be a good measure of climate variability.     

Impacts of peer-to-peer accommodation on the hotel industry: Hoteliers’ perspectives

The sharing economy is a new phenomenon that has considerable implications for traditional industries in general and the hospitality sector in particular. Although some recent studies have investigated the effects of sharing economy on the hotel industry, they primarily focused on quantifying its effects which are not exploratory for a phenomenon. This study attempts to achieve two research objectives. First, an exploratory qualitative method via a semi-structured in-depth interview is employed to investigate the impacts of P2P accommodation on the industry from hoteliers’ perspectives in China. Second, the current study provides valuable insights about traditional hotel marketing and operations. A social science perspective is proposed because prior hospitality research, merely in its commercial sense, fails to capture the essence of hospitality. Results indicate that P2P accommodation has effects on the hotel industry in terms of host–guest interactions, product offerings, staff empowerment, and platform collaboration. The study also suggests that the extent to which P2P accommodation impacts the hotel industry is different in terms of hotel star ratings and operating model. P2P accommodation and the hotel industry in China have a supplementary relationship. This study contributes to social studies of the hospitality literature by gaining insights from hotel senior management level. It also has great implications for the hotel marketing and management practices within the sharing context.     

Exploring the influence of tourists’ happiness on revisit intention in the context of Traditional Chinese Medicine cultural tourism

Based on how tourists interpret the destination experience and on attachment theory, this study investigates the influencing mechanism of tourists' happiness on revisit intention for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) cultural tourism destinations. Three tourist samples confirm the three dimensions of tourists' happiness: positive emotions, engagement, and meaning. Two surveys were conducted to test the direct and indirect influence of tourists' happiness on revisit intention and the moderating role of tourists' health consciousness. The results show that tourists' happiness promotes memorable tourism experience and place attachment, in turn stimulating revisit intention. The results also support health consciousness as a significant moderator between happiness, place attachment, and revisit intention. The findings enrich theoretical understanding of tourists’ happiness and provide marketing and management advice for TCM cultural tourism destinations.     

De‐exoticizing Tourist Travel: Everyday Life and Sociality on the Move

Abstract

Tourism is traditionally treated as an escape from everyday life and tourism theory is concerned with extraordinary places. Tourism and everyday life are conceptualized as belonging to different ontological worlds. The former is the world of the extraordinary while the latter is one of the ordinary. This interdisciplinary review article argues that this separation is flawed by examining research that shows how leisure travel, tourism and everyday life intersect in complex ways. It begins with a conceptual discussion of the everyday, which works as the theoretical foundation for the article. Then the article outlines how everyday routines and conventions inform tourism performances: much traditional tourism revolves around socializing pleasantly with one’s co‐travelling family and friends, while more and more tourism concerns visiting friends and family members living elsewhere. The conclusion discusses what consequences an everyday life perspective has for future tourism research.     

Children's Influence on Purchasing Tourism Products via the Internet: Parental Power Versus children's Power—the Social Power Perspective

An integration of the social power theory, which simultaneously incorporates parental power and children's power into the framework, was used in this research to investigate the causal relationships among perceived parental power, adolescent Internet mavens, and children's influence on purchasing tourism products via the Internet. The cluster sampling approach was used to collect samples from three tutoring schools in Taiwan. A total of 266 student-parent questionnaires was analyzed. The results show that both perceived parental power and adolescent Internet mavens are critical antecedents of children's influence on purchasing tourism products via the Internet. The results also indicate that adolescent Internet mavens exert moderating effects between perceived parental power and children's influence. These findings have managerial implications and provide useful reference data for future research.     

The impact of uncertainty on tourists’ controllability,mood state and the persuasiveness of message framing in the pandemic era

Drawing on uncertainty theory, this study examines how to boost travel intention by analyzing the impacts of uncertainty on the effectiveness of destination marketing messages. Three studies (including four scenario-based experiments and five pretests) were employed to examine these impacts. Study 1 demonstrated that travel outcome uncertainty impacts travel intentions and revealed controllability and mood state as parallel and serial mediators. Study 2 showed that a combination of low (vs. high) uncertainty and gain (vs. loss) framing leads to higher travel intentions. The results further show that in the temporal distance condition, the effect of message framing is attenuated. Study 3 revealed that a combination of low (vs. high) uncertainty and hedonic (vs. utilitarian) attributes increased travel intentions. The research also provides practical implications for global tourism marketers to lower the uncertainty barrier.     

Is There Any Gender effect on the Relationship Between Service Quality and Word-of-Mouth?

Gender is an important discriminator of market segment in the service industry. When considering the word-of-mouth (WOM) effect as a powerful tool of the market channel, it is vital to understand the characteristics of gender and to establish different strategies for providing services depending on how males and females deliver their perceptions of service quality to other people. This study examined the differential role of gender on the relationship between core/relational service qualities and WOM. Data from 277 travelers who have stayed in midscale hotels with Food and Beverage were analyzed. The results suggest there are within-gender differences in the effect of service qualities on word of mouth, but there is no significant difference across the genders.     

Beyond irrationality and the ultras: some notes on female English rugby union fans and the ‘feminised’ sports crowd

In the Academy, female fandom is often conceived of in ways which consciously exclude sport, and women are often marginalised by research on sports fandom. There is also little convincing qualitative research on the experience of mainstream female sports spectators, despite competing claims about the meaning and nature of today’s alleged ‘feminised’ sports crowds. Much of the qualitative work which does exist in this field focuses on younger male soccer fans and pathologises, the experience of female spectators. Instead, in this paper we explore the experiences of mainstream female fans from a sport which is much under‐researched, English rugby union. Drawing on qualitative data from semi‐structured interviews with female rugby union fans from Leicester, we explore these women’s fan experiences in the context of claims about the recent ‘feminisation’ of the late‐modern sports crowd. We focus empirically on three key issues: the early sports encounters of female spectators and their possible links with fandom; changes in women’s access to leisure time and to spectator sport; and women’s shifting experiences of watching rugby union in the new ‘professional’ era of the game. We end with a call for more qualitative work on the changing experience of female sports fans and for more theoretical and empirical work on the supposed ‘feminised’ sporting cultures of late‐modernity.     

Appraising the Economic Impact of the “Opening up to Mainland Chinese Tourist Arrivals” Policy on Taiwan with a Tourism-CGE Model

The purpose of this study is to establish a tourism-CGE model to appraise the “opening up to Mainland Chinese tourist arrivals” policy on Taiwan. Using the model, this study suggests that the multiplier effect of the Mainland Chinese tourists’ expenditure in Taiwan is 1.378, which is slightly lower than that for tourists from Japan and Korea. With 1,000 (3,000) Mainland Chinese tourist arrivals per day, labour demand for about 48,000 (144,000) people would be created, along with 38,146 (114,463) million New Taiwan dollars volume of product, which would account for about 0.354% (1.063%) of annual GDP growth. The results also reveal that the policy would not necessarily contribute positively to every industry, and industrial restructuring might occur. Finally, some tourism policy recommendations are discussed.     

Sustainable development and hospitality education: employers’ perspectives on the relevance for graduate employability

This paper examines hospitality employers’ perspectives of sustainable development (SD) and the implications for hospitality education, particularly graduate employability. An exploratory approach is used in this research where semi-structured interviews were conducted with employers of hospitality graduates. The results established that respondents had mixed understandings of the meaning and relevance of SD. These employers are, however, gradually recognising the value of sustainability for their business. Though it is not currently a priority in terms of a critical employability skill specifically for the hotel sector, related industries seem more mindful of the implications of sustainability credentials. Thus, hospitality educators need to take appropriate actions in subject-specific areas where SD is critical to employment opportunities, creating more industry-ready graduates who are also globally aware citizens.     

Introducing the concept of environmental policy integration into the discourse on sustainable tourism: a way to improve policy-making and implementation?

Many studies have explored how the tourism sector and tourism policies understand and relate to the concept of sustainable development. A common conclusion is that tourism concentrates on economic and social viability at the expense of environmental sustainable development. This paper considers if and how the concept of environmental policy integration (EPI) could improve sustainable tourism policy implementation. It defines EPI, and explores both the three-level (co-ordination, harmonization and prioritization) and four-level (inclusion, consistency, priorities and reporting) EPI approaches. It notes that there is both strong and weak EPI, and both political systems and policy analysis approaches. The paper then describes Norway's post-2007 adoption of sustainable tourism as a central part of its national tourism development strategy, with 10 defined principles, and suggested defined development standards, and assesses the implementation of the national strategy through the lens of the EPI concept. While there are now 18 pilot sustainable tourism destinations, with 44 criteria and 108 indicators, there remain many difficult issues to address. A series of suggestions are made, the chief of which is the need for a politically strong central authority that has been entrusted with having environmental concerns within the tourism sector as its key mandate.     

A strategy for enhancing senior tourists’ well-being perception: focusing on the experience economy

This study was designed to examine how to form well-being perception in the senior tourism industry. More specifically, this study proposed (1) the casual relationships between four dimensions of the experience economy (i.e. education, entertainment, esthetics, and escapism) and well-being perception, (2) the effects of well-being perception on consumer attitudes toward a brand, brand attachment, and brand loyalty, and (3) the moderating role of advertising effectiveness. Data were collected from 323 senior tourists in Korea. The results showed that all of the four dimensions have a positive influence on well-being perception, which in turn positively affects outcome variables. Lastly, this study found that advertising effectiveness has an important moderating function in the relationship between education and well-being perception.     

A longitudinal study of Olympic Games’ impact on the image of a host country

This study tracked the change in Brazil’s image due to hosting a mega event. The authors measured perceptions of Brazil before and at three points in time after the 2016 Summer Olympics. The findings revealed some differences in the country image but no significant changes in destination image or Olympics image over time. This may indicate how difficult it is to change people’s perceptions positively in a world filled with negative media coverage, such as what Brazil received leading up to and during the Olympics. For DMOs, controlling the media narrative is more important than ever when forming the destination image.