Tourism’s lost leaders: Analysing gender and performance

Higher education is increasingly engaged with diversity initiatives, especially those focused on women in academic leadership, whilst there is an evolving literature across the humanities and the social, management and natural sciences, critiquing academia’s gendered hierarchies. In contrast, senior academics in the field of tourism management have largely eluded similar sustained analysis. This paper builds on recent gender-aware studies of tourism’s leading academics with three aims. Firstly, to widen evidence of gendering in tourism’s academic leadership by scrutinizing and contextualizing performance indicators, which make and mark its leaders and shape its knowledge canon. Secondly, since critique alone cannot lead to transformation, the paper seeks to ‘undo’ gender in tourism’s academy. Thirdly the paper presents interventions to accelerate academic gender equity.     

Measuring hotel performance: Using a balanced scorecard perspectives’ approach

This paper provides an examination of hotel performance research published in the seven leading hospitality and tourism journals from 1992 to 2011, through the lens of the balanced scorecard (BSC). The review seeks to answer three questions. What BSC perspectives are included in hotel performance research published in major hospitality and tourism journals? What are the trends and implications for future hotel performance research? What are the main geographical areas of publication outputs?Eleven hypotheses were tested using a database of 138 articles that fully met the key word selection criteria of hotel, BSC and performance. The results suggest hotel performance attracts widespread attention from hospitality scholars, but significant gaps remain. Researchers have recognised the benefits of including financial and non-financial indicators. Yet, more research is required in this area to offer hotel organisations better approaches to the management of their performance. We conclude by identifying three research gaps.     

Tourism – a new systematic approach?

Brian King presents a view of the current state of tourism literature, in the light of the publication of The Tourism System, which takes a different approach to the study of tourism. Although the concept is not new, it has now been substantially developed and offers an interesting way of looking at the subject.     

Tourism organizations and land trusts: a sustainable approach to natural resource conservation?

This study explores current and potential collaboration efforts between land trusts (LTs) and tourism entities in the USA. LTs and tourism entities have convergent needs and goals regarding natural resource protection, possibly making them suitable partners. Sustainable tourism development needs natural resource protection; land trusts have proved economically viable and effective methods for protecting natural areas. While some case studies have described collaboration efforts by selected LTs and tourism entities, this mixed methods exploratory study is based upon survey data from 279 local and regional LTs operating across the USA. The study is grounded in both the Primary Environmental Care (PEC) conceptual model and Jafari's Background Tourism Elements concept, providing clarity on current and potential collaboration efforts between LTs and tourism entities. The survey showed that tourism-related characteristics, especially scenic qualities, were acceptable to land trusts, and that tourism was the most mentioned industry within LT areas. Only 39% of LTs currently work with tourism entities; however, only 4% of LTs report opposition from tourism entities to their conservation work. LT managers were strongly in favor of future collaboration with tourism interests. All five of the key components required for the PEC model were found.     

A meta-analytic review of antecedents of hospitality and tourism firms’ performance: A cross-cultural comparison

Despite the magnitude of scholarly understanding of firm performance, there has been no robust statistical meta-analytic review of antecedents of firm performance in hospitality and tourism journals. Therefore, this study conducted Hunter-Schmidt random-effects meta-analyses on the relationships between firm performance and its predictors based on Kaplan and Norton's balanced scorecard framework. This study identified fourteen antecedents of firm performance, and all proposed relationships were significant. This study also examined the moderating role of culture on the relationships at continental- and national-approaches by adopting sample z-tests and meta-regression. This study found the moderating role of culture on seven relationships at the continental-level comparison and identified corresponding cultural dimensions responsible for the degree of the relationships. This study expanded the literature on firm performance and contributed to strategic and financial management literature. Based on findings, the authors presented several important practical implications.     

Exploring the discrepancies in perceived destination images from residents’ and tourists’ perspectives: a revised importance–performance analysis approach

A comprehensive and balanced understanding of both local residents’ and tourists’ perceived destination image (DI) is a pivotal step for successful tourism development. Using the revised importance–performance analysis approach, this study assesses the differences between residents’ and tourists’ perceived implicit importance and performance of DI attributes in the Liyu Lake Scenic Area in Hualien, Taiwan. A mixed methods approach was adopted. First, 30 pertinent image attributes were identified by interviewing local residents and tourists. These image attributes were subsequently used in a questionnaire survey. Results indicate that residents’ and tourists’ opinions were divided on environmental issues and purposes of visit. The most significant finding is that both the residents and tourists regarded the majority of the attributes as “possible overkill,” suggesting that destination management organization should reconsider the direction for future development and try to realize the “real needs” of the residents and tourists based on their motivations.     

Learning orientation and self-initiated expatriates’ work performance: a moderated-mediation model

The hospitality industry is looking for talent beyond national boundaries. Self-initiated expatriation is a widespread phenomenon that has gained limited attention. This study investigates if learning orientation and cultural distance affect the work performance of self-initiated expatriates. The study also tests the moderated-mediation effect of prior international experience on work performance when mediated through cross-cultural adjustment. The authors collected data from 311 self-initiated expatriates from the Malaysian hotel industry. The results confirm that learning orientation was positively related to work performance when mediated through cross-cultural adjustment. The greater the distance between home and host country culture, the higher the cross-cultural adjustment, thus supporting the cultural distance paradox. Prior international experience moderated the relationship between learning outcome and work performance when mediated through cross-cultural adjustment, thus supporting the moderated-mediation model. This study includes the theoretical and practical implications of the findings. It also outlines the limitations and avenues for further research.     

Explaining tourists´ attitudes to environmental support: a multilevel approach

This article contributes to a better understanding of tourists’ attitudes to environmental support when they make their holiday plans. Modelling these decisions is a challenge because although environmental concerns are heterogeneous across countries, they also depend on the individual characteristics of the tourists from each country. This article uses a multilevel approach, using a two-level structure, in which individuals are nested into countries. This approach may be helpful for understanding the contextual and compositional effects simultaneously. The estimates from a two-level random intercept logistic model and the post-estimation analysis, based on non-parametric techniques, demonstrate that the effects of country vary randomly, and that there is significant variance in the level of tourists´ environmental support within and between countries. Regarding the contextual effect, the post-materialist hypothesis explained most of the heterogeneity between the EU-27 countries. The affluence hypothesis was rejected and the challenge response hypothesis was only partially supported. The results from the compositional effect support the attribution hypothesis, demonstrating that the environmental concern of tourists is higher when travelling domestically than abroad.     

Medical Tourism: Consumers’ Concerns Over Risk and Social Challenges

This paper studies factors that motivate an American’s decision to seek medical care outside the United States. Principal components analysis yielded three factors – risk, social-related, and vacation. We found that the middle-income earners and recipients of Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly, are more motivated by risk-related factors to travel for care, but the middle-aged and older, and the married are more motivated by social-related factors to travel for care. Medical tourism has the potential to ease the strain on the healthcare systems of developed countries. How well it does this will depend on how policy makers address these factors.     

Deal characteristics and M&A performance: How do hospitality firms fare?

The global hospitality industry has experienced significant consolidation in the past several decades. While evidence in the general business literature suggests that the target firm shareholders gain instead of the acquiring firm shareholders, some studies in the hospitality industry have suggested that mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are also beneficial to acquiring firms. Using a comparative study design and a comprehensive sample over 41 years, we empirically examine whether M&As create more value in the hospitality industry than in other industries and whether certain deal characteristics may explain the potential performance differential. Overall, we find that M&As in the hospitality industry outperform M&As in non-hospitality sectors. When examining deal attributes, we find that relative size of target, cash method of payment, and an unlisted target are characteristics positively related to merger performance and help explain some of the performance differential. We contribute theoretically and empirically to the literature by demonstrating that industry and deal effects play an important role in M&A performance.     

The effects of festival impacts on support intentions based on residents’ ratings of festival performance and satisfaction: a new integrative approach

Festivals can provide an effective vehicle for sustainable tourism. It is therefore necessary to examine the impacts of festival tourism as well as their consequences in order to manage their relevance to the local community. The lack of a multiple mediation approach, however, has hampered research on the psycho-social process through which festival impacts (perceived benefits, costs, and affective impact) influence resident support. We propose a new integrative approach in which resident-rated festival performance and satisfaction are putative mediators that transmit the effects of the three festival impacts to support for future festivals. The theoretical foundations of this integrative approach or model are jointly built on social exchange theory, the affective theory of social exchange, and the theory of reasoned action. The integrative model was successfully validated using eight sample festivals within China, which included 353 observations with 10,000 bootstraps. The empirical findings reveal that 14 out of the 17 hypotheses received empirical support in this study, and it thereby contributes significantly to new understanding in the literature.     

The role of green human resource management in driving hotel’s environmental performance: Interaction and mediation analysis

Previous studies have paid little attention to the links between green human resource management (GHRM) and environmental performance, especially examining an interaction and mediation analysis in the hospitality management. Therefore, the study bridges this research gap by extending the Ability-Motivation-Opportunity theory to explore the direct, indirect, and interactive roles of GHRM practices. A survey of 220 respondents at hotels suggests that: (1) training and employee involvement are critical tools in directly stimulating employee commitment and organisational citizenship behaviour towards the environment (OCBE), and hotels’ environmental performance; (2) OCBE plays an essential role in mediating the effects of training and performance management on environmental performance; and (3) the vital interaction of training and employee involvement significantly strengthens environmental performance. However, unexpected results are found: (1) performance management is an unimportant consideration in analysis of direct and interactive influences and (2) employee environmental commitment does not mediate the GHRM-environmental performance relationship.     

Problematising ‘Festival Tourism’: Arts Festivals and Sustainable Development in Ireland

This paper problematises the term ‘festival tourism’. It conceptualises festivals as socially sustaining devices and argues that while they frequently function as tourist attractions, their social significance extends far beyond tourism. Using empirical material gathered in two case study arts festivals in Ireland, the paper demonstrates how festivals can contribute to arts development by inter alia creating demand for the arts, enhancing venue infrastructures, encouraging local creativity and animating local involvement. The paper contends that arts festivals, irrespective of their initial objectives almost inevitably develop tourist profiles over time and it proceeds to examine how changing tourism priorities in the two festivals studied impact upon sustainable festival practices. The findings suggest that tourism emerged as a key force promoting festival growth and expansion. It was found to be associated with increased revenue flows but also with increased arts activity on a year-round basis and with an improved venue infrastructure in both places. However, problems were identified with respect to the quality of the relationship forged between the festivals and local populations in the respective places. The paper concludes by arguing that festivals’ engagement with tourism needs to be carefully managed in the interests of promoting the socially sustaining function of festivals and of encouraging sustainable approaches to tourism development.     

SCP-relevance and class-effect in performance – A comparative analysis of restaurants and petroleum firms

The importance of industry-specific factors for a firm's performance has often attracted the attention of researchers, managers, and investment analysts. This research uses random-effect variance component analysis to examine the relevance of structure-conduct-performance (SCP) paradigm in the context of restaurant and petroleum/natural gas firms. The study further investigates class-effect in firm performance by analyzing whether the relative importance of industry-and-firm-level effects varies across different performance groups. Results suggest a direct relevance of the SCP paradigm and industry-specific factors for firm performance, and a distinct dominance of industry-effect over firm-effect regardless of the choice of accounting or value based performance measures. Results further reveal varying roles of industry and firm-level factors (corporate or strategic) across middle-of-the road and non-average (exceptional) performance groups. As such the importance of SCP paradigm and the strategic role of both industry-and-firm effect factors for value creation in US based restaurant firms is better understood.     

Hotels’ environmental leadership and employees’ organizational citizenship behavior

Expanding on a stream of literature connecting employee motivation to environmental practices, this research investigated why hospitality employees participated in organizational citizenship behaviors related to company sustainability efforts. The results of this study suggest that employees’ environmental belief partially mediates the influences of both environmental-transformational leadership and environmental policies on organizational citizenship behavior toward the environment, while it fully mediates the association between environmental training and the outcome. The findings also demonstrate that employees’ perception of organizational support moderates the relationship between environmental belief and organizational citizenship behavior toward the environment. Pointedly, hospitality workers reported they were increasingly more likely to engage in ecologically friendly organizational citizenship behaviors as their environmental beliefs increased, and as such, organizational support moderated the association so that the more support received, the more likely workers would engage in such behaviors, and the less support received, the less likely they were to do so.     

Residents’ Perceptions of the Role of Leisure Satisfaction and Quality of Life in Overall Tourism Development: Case of a Fast-Growing Tourism Destination – Macao

The previous literature has examined leisure satisfaction and quality of life but majority of studies were conducted in Western countries. Policy makers worldwide have struggled to balance residents’ leisure satisfaction and tourism development. This study is conducted in Macao, China, a fast-growing tourism destination in Asia. Results indicated that local residents’ leisure satisfaction is positively related to their perceived quality of life while local residents’ perceived quality of life is positively associated with their evaluation of the perceived benefits of tourism. The results generated from that evaluation positively lead to residents’ support of tourism development. Results indicated that it is worthwhile for the policy makers to invest resources in local residents’ leisure satisfaction and quality of life since this will eventually help to support tourism development. The results of this study provide significant implications for policy makers.     

Determinants of hotels’ environmental performance: Evidence from the hotel industry in Accra,Ghana

This study explores the factors that account for the environmental performance of hotels in the special context of a developing country, Ghana. It also examined the socio-demographic characteristics of managers and organizational characteristics that determine the environmental performance of Ghanaian hotels. A stratified random sampling method was employed to survey 200 hotel managers from different categories of hotels in Accra. Ninety-four per cent were independent, and Ghanaian-owned. Sixty-seven per cent had fewer than 20 rooms; only 45 had more than 100 rooms. Only 11.6% were affiliated to foreign multinational companies in any way. Six key factors that accounted for the environmental performance were extracted from a factor analysis. They included, in order of most practised, the environmental education and training for staff, measures to support for the host community, conservation project support, compliance with environmental regulations, waste management, and voluntary programmes. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated that larger size and better class of hotels, as well as those with membership of the national hotel trade association, had better environmental performance as did hotels with better paid managers. Affiliation to foreign multinational chains did not predict better performance. A series of suggestions are made to improve the environmental performance of Ghana's hotels.     

Transport and Tourism: Cycle Tourism – A Model for Sustainable Development?

Whilst the relationship between transport and tourism has been a subject of discussion in the literature, research has focused primarily on an evaluation of transport as a means to an end rather than as a contextual component of the tourism offering, especially at the destination. This paper evaluates the concept of a planned sustainable transport network, the National Cycle Network in the UK, as a potential model for the integration of transport, tourism and recreation. The paper concludes by exploring a number of implications, which may be considered when developing similar tourism transport networks. A model of sustainable transport development is presented.