Carbon dioxide emissions generated by energy consumption of hotels and homestay facilities in Taiwan

In the field of the tourism, hotels and homestay facilities account for considerable amounts of energy consumption and CO₂ emissions. This study presents an investigation conducted on the CO₂ emissions from four types of hotel in Taiwan. According to the results, the average CO₂ emissions of international tourist hotels, standard tourist hotels, general hotels, and homestay facilities are 28.9, 19.2, 12.5, and 6.3 kg-CO₂/person-night, respectively. Hotels with higher service levels produce higher average CO₂ emissions per person-night. Analytical results indicate that increasing stays at hotels with low CO₂ emissions (such as homestay facilities and general hotels), accommodating more guests together per room, and enhancing energy usage efficiency, can effectively reduce hotel CO₂ emissions without reducing the total number of guests. The results of this study may be applied to CO₂ reduction programmes for tourists, hotel enterprises, and contribute toward the formulation of government policy in Taiwan.     

Do online hotel rating schemes influence booking behaviors?

Travelers’ hotel booking behaviors increasingly depend on peers' opinions and online ratings. This study investigates the effects of online hotel ratings on travelers' attitudes toward the hotel and booking intentions, using a 2 × 2 experimental research design. The results suggest that online rating lists are more useful and credible when published by well-known online travel communities (e.g., TripAdvisor). More favorable attitudes toward a hotel and higher booking intentions emerge when the hotel appears in best hotels lists. Finally, for the entries on best hotels lists, better attitudes and higher booking intentions result if the list is published on a well-known online travel community (Tripadvisor), whereas for entries on a worst hotel list, attitudes and booking intentions decrease even further if the list appears on TripAdvisor.     

A meta-analysis of behavioral intentions for environment-friendly initiatives in hospitality research

Research on environment-friendly initiatives has received increasing attention in hospitality research. However, an integrated literature review of research examining the impact of consumer perceptions of green initiatives on their behavioral intentions is lacking. To that end, a quantitative meta-analysis of 26 articles published in hospitality journals was conducted in order to determine the effect sizes of the relationship between consumers’ perceptions and their green behaviors. This research intended to examine how two broad categories – internalized perceptions (i.e. personal values, attitudes, environmental knowledge/awareness, and perceived benefits) and perceptions of the firm (i.e. hotel/restaurant image, perceived quality, and satisfaction) – influence consumers’ behavioral intentions toward green hotels/restaurants (e.g., word-of-mouth intentions, retentions, willingness to pay, and willingness to pay a premium). This meta-analysis shows that both internalized perceptions and perceptions of the firm had a strong positive association with behavioral intentions. The average effect sizes for internalized perceptions and perceptions of the firms were r = 0.3177 and r = 0.4240, respectively. The findings of this research suggest that the positive relationship between consumer perceptions and behavioral intentions is well-established. Therefore, it might not be fruitful to continue to apply identical frameworks (e.g., the theory of planned behavior or the theory of reasoned action) in future research. We thus suggest that hospitality and tourism researchers in the area of environment-friendly initiatives need to either significantly improve the existing models or look for new and more diverse frameworks in order to make meaningful theoretical contributions.     

Cigarette induced PM2.5 in hotel rooms: An assessment of the effectiveness of management’s mitigating measures

Many research evidence shows that the pollutants, especially the fine particulate matter (PM2.5), related to cigarette smoking, are harmful to the human body. Given that a hotel room is an almost air-tight setting and not very spacious, knowledge about the concentrations of PM2.5 created by cigarette smoking and the subsequent mitigation measures taken appears to be important in hotel management practice. Thus, field measurements were undertaken in a hotel room to ascertain the cigarette burning and smoking induced pollutant concentrations during the following ON and OFF conditions: with ventilation, with a window open, and using a specific air purifier designed to mitigate the effects of cigarette smoking. The investigation found that cigarette burning and smoking induced PM2.5 concentrations may reach 586 μg/m³ and 1368 μg/m³ on average when ventilation is OFF, respectively. The operation of ventilation may reduce the concentration to about 100 μg/m³. The effectiveness of opening a window as an alleviating measure greatly depends on outdoor PM2.5 concentrations; the observed threshold reference is 100 μg/m³. The tested air purifier works well for cigarette smoking, but not for cigarette burning. Implications of these results on management’s mitigation measures are further discussed in this paper.     

Examining key drivers of customer delight in a hotel experience: A cross-cultural perspective

Welcoming all guests is the calling shared by those who work in the hotel industry. Everyday hoteliers strive to provide a service of excellence to all of those who visit. This can be somewhat of a complex endeavor, as hotels receive guests from different nationalities and cultures. Previous research in the area of customer delight has revealed some of the factors that define and drive the customer delight experience. Despite the emerging literature on the subject, the question remains: are guest from different cultures likely to be delighted by different things? In the present study, the researchers conducted extensive semi-structured interviews (n = 228) with guests from different nationalities visiting the Central Florida area. The guests interviewed came predominantly from the United States, Brazil, Germany, and Canada. Using a process of content analysis, the researchers analyzed the drivers of customer delight and concluded that while some universal service elements exists, guests from different cultures can also be delighted by different services and amenities.     

Carbon dioxide emissions from transport in Taiwan's national parks

Transport profoundly affects energy use and carbon dioxide emissions in the tourism sector. This study focuses on five national parks in Taiwan, namely Kenting National Park, Yushan National Park, Yangmingshan National Park, Taroko National Park and Sheipa National Park, and applies a bottom-up approach to determine the amount of CO₂ emissions from domestic tourism transport in 1999–2006. The CO₂ emission factor of private car derived in this study reveals a higher value than that of previous study due to its lower load factors. Moreover, CO₂ emissions per person are different in each national park, influenced by the attributes of travel distance and transport mode. The scenario analysis indicates that CO₂ emission can be reduced by increasing load factors of transport, tourist switching from private cars to public transport and going to destinations close to their points of departure, which can be achieved by authorities through activity management, regulation control and price adjustment. This is also an adequate solution for Taiwan Government owing to the increases in transport volume and the limited tourism budget.     

Prediction of pollutant emission through electricity consumption by the hotel industry in Hong Kong

This paper estimates the quantity of pollutants produced by the hotel industry through its electricity consumption. A survey of 17 hotels in Hong Kong was carried out to collect 3 years of energy consumption data. Regression analysis indicated that gross floor area was a major and statistically accepted factor in explaining the electricity consumption in hotels. It was found that the average electricity consumption was about 342 kW h/m²/year. Then, based on some established pollutant emission factors of coal and natural gas, the amount of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxides, carbon dioxides and particulates created by the hotel industry's electricity usage during a 10-year period from 1988 to 1997 was estimated. The study further predicts the increase in these amounts in 1998–2003 accompanying the rise in the number of hotel properties. The findings indicate that the existing green measures and devices are inadequate to cope with the increase in pollution emission in the near future. We believe that the hotel industry should adopt a more proactive approach to reduce electricity usage and propose the inclusion of environmental reporting in trade journals.     

International hotel chains and environmental protection: an analysis of Hilton's we care! programme (Europe, 2006–2008)

Using the case study method, this paper evaluates and analyses Hilton's we care! programme for improving the environmental performance of the 70 Hilton Worldwide hotels in operation in Continental Europe in 2006–2008. It explores the practical dimension of “greening” hotel operations in the context of corporate social responsibility (CSR), and demonstrates the close links between CSR and human resource management (HRM) in hotels. It deepens the understanding of corporate environmentalism and seeks to disseminate best practice among hospitality managers. The programme's distinctive and innovative character as well as its weaknesses and strengths are highlighted. Barriers to behavioural change in hotel operation are discussed. The programme involved over 16,000 employees, created hotel-specific action teams linking all employee levels and reduced energy use per square metre by 15%, water use and CO₂ emissions per guest night by 8% each over three years. Avoided utility costs totalled US$16 million, of which US$9.6 million can be attributed to changes in human behaviour. The paper makes a case for a holistic approach that combines the introduction of IT-based measurement and performance-assessing tools with genuine employee empowerment and green awareness raising. The study concludes with future managerial policy recommendations that simultaneously bear upon corporate environmentalism and HRM.     

Effects of temporal distance and related strategies on enhancing customer participation intention for hotel eco-friendly programs

Hotel eco-friendly programs (HEFP) depend on the support of both internal and external customers. While hotel environmental management has received considerable attention, little research focuses on how customers evaluate and respond to HEFP, particularly in the context of variable temporal distance. This study thus examined the effects of different temporal distance strategies on promoting customer participation in HEFP. Based on data collected from 235 undergraduate students, this study employed two 2 × 2 between-subjects design experiments by using foot-in-the-door and outcome simulation strategies for the hypotheses testing. The analytical results indicated that the foot-in-the-door strategy significantly increases distant-future HEFP intention while the outcome simulation strategy significantly enhances near-future HEFP intention. Implications for green hotel management strategies were also discussed.     

Carbon footprint of tourism in Barcelona

This study evaluates the carbon footprint (CF) of Barcelona tourist activity taking into account the above 30 million visitors who visit the city every year. This study analyzes the main sources of emissions considering direct (Scope 1) and indirect emissions (Scope 2 and 3) as a consequence of energy use. This research has been carried out in close collaboration with Barcelona City Council and in the context of the new Strategic Tourism Plan for Barcelona city. The impacts of arrival and departure transport, accommodation, leisure and professional activities and Intra-urban transport from Barcelona city were all included. The total CF of Barcelona tourist activity is about 9.6MtCO₂eq/year, which represents an emission of 96.9 kg CO₂eq/visitor·day. The main source of emissions is arrival and departure transport (95.6%), and particularly aviation. These results show that if substantial reductions in CO₂ emissions are to be achieved, initiatives strategically focused on transport and also accommodation are necessary.     

Impact of tourism on CO2 emission: evidence from Pakistan

This study investigates the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission–tourist arrival–growth in Pakistan by taking time series data from the period of 1972 to 2013. The study applied three approaches of co-integration (autoregressive distributed lag bounds test, Johansen and Juselius and Gregory and Hansen structural break test) to confirm the valid long-run positive interaction between CO₂ emission and tourist arrivals. The robustness of cointegrating vectors is further checked using fully modified ordinary least square and dynamic ordinary least square tests and results validate the long-run coefficients. The results of variance decomposition method exhibit the uni-directional causality between CO₂ emission and tourist arrivals running from tourist arrival to CO₂ emission. It was therefore noted that policies which moderate the influence of tourism development to emission are necessary for reducing the harmful effect of tourist activities and also to increase the impact of tourism upon the economic growth. The study may guide policy-makers in formulating categorical energy and tourism development policies for sustainable growth for long periods.     

An empirical study on the influence of economy hotel website quality on online booking intentions

This study investigates the potential theoretical relationships among economy hotel website quality, eTrust, and online booking intentions in China. A questionnaire survey was performed, and 298 samples were collected from the users of three economy hotel websites (7 days, Home Inns, and Hanting Hotel) in Guangzhou, China. Results of a detailed data analysis demonstrate the influence of the four dimensions of economy hotel website quality (usability, ease of use, entertainment, and complementarity) on eTrust and online booking intentions. Specifically, (1) the usability, entertainment, and complementarity of economy hotel websites significantly positively affected eTrust; on the contrary, the influence of ease of use on eTrust was insignificant; (2) complementarity showed a more positive influence than the three other attributes on online booking intentions; and (3) eTrust significantly positively influenced online booking intentions. These findings contribute to economy hotel online marketing in China by bridging the gap between the exploration of hotel website quality and its influence on online booking intentions.     

Tourists' strategies: An acculturation approach

Acculturation theory has been widely used to understand and explain migrant and sojourner adaptation. However, it has yet to be examined in a tourist context. We extended the literature by evaluating the applicability of Berry's (1997) bidimensional acculturation model to a sample of 668 recent and prospective international travelers from China (n = 205), Germany (n = 201), and the United States (n = 262). Our results suggested that the acculturation model can be extended to tourist contexts and used for segmentation purposes. Specifically, tourists' acculturation strategies were associated with their preferences for home culture maintenance and host culture immersion, as well as behavioral, holiday, and activity preferences. Ethnocentrism and uncertainty avoidance were also found to vary as a function of tourists' acculturation strategy.     

Please,talk about it! When hotel popularity boosts preferences

Many consumers post on-line reviews, affecting the average evaluation of products and services. Yet, little is known about the importance of the number of reviews for consumer decision making. We conducted an on-line experiment (n = 168) to assess the joint impact of the average evaluation, a measure of quality, and the number of reviews, a measure of popularity, on hotel preference. The results show that consumers’ preference increases with the number of reviews, independently of the average evaluation being high or low. This is not what one would expect from an informational point of view, and review websites fail to take this pattern into account. This novel result is mediated by demographics: young people, and in particular young males, are less affected by popularity, relying more on quality. We suggest the adoption of appropriate ranking mechanisms to fit consumer preferences.     

Parametric prediction on default risk of Chinese listed tourism companies by using random oversampling,isomap, and locally linear embeddings on imbalanced samples

This research pioneers the default risk parametric prediction of Chinese tourism companies with random oversampling and manifold learning for parametric modelling on imbalanced samples to relax the requirement on sample availability. Four specific approaches were employed: standardization; standardization → random oversampling; standardization → isomap + locally linear embeddings; and standardization → random oversampling → isomap + locally linear embeddings. Empirical results indicate that: random oversampling successfully improved the tourism default risk prediction; the integration of isomap and locally linear embeddings is beneficial in default risk prediction using highly skewed tourism data with absolute minority samples; and after the use of random oversampling on initial data, the integrated approach improved in forecasting tourism default risk prior to two years versus one year.     

A Study on Pollutant Emission Through Gas Consumption in the Hong Kong Hotel Industry

A survey of 11 hotels in Hong Kong was carried out to collect three years' energy consumption data. Regression analysis indicated that gross floor area was a major and statistically acceptable factor in explaining the gas consumption in new hotels. Based on past consumption data and some established pollutant emission factors, the amount of sulphur dioxides, nitrogen dioxides, carbon dioxides and particulate created by the Hong Kong hotel industry's gas usage during a 10-year period from 1989–1998 was estimated. The study predicts the increase in these amounts in 1999–2003 accompanying the rise in the number of hotels. The findings indicate that emissions will rise by nearly 40% in the next few years, requiring urgent discussions. The study also finds that a heat pump running on coal-fired electricity and with a coefficient of performance (COP) greater than 3 could produce lower level emissions than a gas-fired boiler. It is further suggested that an effective method to reduce the emissions is to substitute naptha with natural gas as the fuel for generating town gas and electricity. We believe the hotel industry should adopt a more proactive approach to reduce gas usage and propose the inclusion of environmental reporting in trade journals.     

A means-end chain of fuzzy conceptualization to elicit consumer perception in store image

This paper discusses how the uses of a means-end approach with fuzzy conceptualization in eliciting consumer requirements provides a better understanding of the consumers’ perceptual orientation toward store image. We provide a hierarchy value map that fuses attribute–consequence–value (A–C–V) chains and fuzzy linguistics to effectively and efficiently understand store image processes and consumer satisfaction. A fuzzy set is also adopted to address the ill-defined nature of the consumer linguistic judgments required in the proposed means-end chain. The findings of this research imply that, overall, consumers are most concerned with the dominant perceptual orientation of store image, that is, eye-catching poster → visual satisfaction → satisfaction and display with theme → recommendation to others (willingness to talk to salesperson) → satisfaction (happiness).     

The effects of acculturation,social distinctiveness,and social presence in a service failure situation

Going beyond the traditional East/West consumer differentiation in studying service failure, this article examined the effect of acculturation, both independently and together with social distinctiveness and social presence, on the perceptions and behavioral responses of Chinese–Australian consumers. The research employed a 3 × 2 × 2 between-subject experimental design in which data were collected from 224 Chinese–Australians. Results showed that the different acculturation levels of these consumers did not affect their perceptions and behavior in a service failure situation. Instead, where and with whom a service failure was experienced had pronounced effects on consumer behavior depending on the extent to which the consumers acculturated to the culture of their host country. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are also discussed.     

Service encounters and face loss: Issues of failures,fairness, and context

This study examines the influence of various aspects of a hospitality service failure event, including social context, interpersonal treatment, and favorability of outcome on consumer evaluations of face (feeling of respect). A 2 (social exposure: public/private) × 2 (interpersonal treatment: positive/negative) × 2 (outcome fairness: favorable/unfavorable) between-subjects experimental design was employed in the study, which collected data from 576 Chinese respondents in Beijing and Shanghai. Evidence suggests interpersonal treatment style and the favorability of outcome fairness directly influence Chinese consumers’ self-reported loss of face. However, interaction effects affected the influence of the independent variables. Consumers’ face evaluations were significantly lower if outcome fairness was unfavorable (versus favorable) and received in private (rather than in public) and if the interpersonal treatment style was poor. Regression analysis demonstrated that outcome favorability had a strong association with negative word of mouth in a public situation, and face had a strong association with levels of satisfaction in both public and private situations. Management implications for hospitality operators include the need to reconsider standard practices relating to service failure negotiation and to adopt public resolution arrangements.     

Customer responses to intercultural communication accommodation strategies in hospitality service encounters

With the increasing pace of globalization, hospitality firms are serving more and more international customers from distinctively different cultural backgrounds. In order to enhance intercultural consumption experiences, some hospitality firms have implemented two types of communication accommodation strategies: (a) match the cultural background of the service provider and the customer and/or (b) use the customer's native language to facilitate communications. This study aims to examine how such intercultural communication accommodations influence customers’ service encounter experiences. A 4 (communication accommodation: language congruence, ethnic congruence, language and ethnic congruence, and no accommodation) × 2 (focus of communication accommodation: intercultural vs. interpersonal) factorial between-subject experimental design was employed using videotaped hotel check-in scenarios as experimental stimuli. The findings suggest that consumers respond to communication accommodation strategies with increased felt pleasure, arousal, and dominance. Furthermore, accommodation strategies contributed to the perceived symbolic value of the service encounter, especially when employees expressed the intercultural focus of communication accommodation practices. The study results provide insights for hospitality practitioners in managing service encounters in today's highly global world.