How do dynamic capabilities explain hotel performance?

This research study explores the relationship between three dynamic capabilities and their impact on hotel performance. Specifically, we examine the relationship between human resource management (HRM), quality management (QM) and sustainability. In addition, we analyse how QM and sustainability explain hotel performance measured by occupancy rate, average daily rate (ADR) and revenues per available room (RevPAR). These capabilities can generate income, enabling hotels to adapt as quickly as possible to the changing environment. Findings show a significant relationship between HRM, QM and sustainability. The relationship between QM and hotel performance and between sustainability and hotel performance is fully mediated by the differentiation competitive advantage. Our results represent an advance in hotel theory and management because they integrate HRM, QM and sustainability, and show their ability to be a source of competitive advantage and profitability.     

How do hotel managers react to rating fluctuation?

Rating fluctuation is inevitable for hotels listed on hotel booking platforms, which induces potential consumers’ perception of uncertainty and risk. Managerial response is expected to be effective in enhancing the interaction between hotels and consumers. However, how hotel managers react to rating fluctuation remains unclear. In order to fill this gap in the literature, we collect customer reviews and managerial responses from a leading hotel booking platform and build a panel dataset (hotel*month). The empirical results suggest that (1) rating fluctuation induces more managerial responses and requires more response time; (2) upscale hotels are more likely to conduct frequent and timely responses when facing rating fluctuation; and (3) hotels tend to respond more frequent and timely once rating fluctuation is observed by a larger audience. This study concludes by presenting theoretical contributions to the literature and practical implications for operators of hotel booking platforms and hotel managers.     

How do lifestyle hospitality and tourism entrepreneurs manage their work-life balance?

This study uses border theory to explore how lifestyle hospitality and tourism entrepreneurs manage their work-life balance. This research utilizes in-depth interviews and observations from Dali and Lijiang, China. Three types of findings emerged. First, for lifestyle entrepreneurs, work and personal life are not divided; business is considered a style of living, not work. Second, lifestyle entrepreneurs’ boundary management tactics include temporal tactics, physical tactics, and psychological tactics. Third, the factors influencing the work-life balance of lifestyle entrepreneurs include personal factors and the contextual factors related to tourism destinations. This paper contributes to border theory by indicating how an individual’s psychological borders have a decisive effect on work-life balance perception, and how both the tourism and Chinese contexts moderate the psychological borders of work-life balance to some extent.     

How do consumers’ perceptions differ across dimensions of corporate social responsibility and hotel types?

This study develops three hypotheses regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the context of the hotel industry. First, the study examines a ranking of consumers’ perceived importance of the four CSR dimensions proposed by Carroll’s hierarchy of CSR in 1991, expecting the following orders: philanthropic, ethical, legal, and economic dimensions, from most to least important. Second, the study investigates the relationship between consumers’ perceived importance of and their overall support for CSR. Third, the study introduces the type of hotel (for example, economy, mid-scale, and upscale) as a moderator to provide a better explanation of the relationship between consumers’ perceived importance of the CSR dimensions and support for CSR. Contributions to the CSR literature in general, and also specifically relating to the hotel context, and managerial implications are discussed.     

Should I book another hotel? The effects of sickness and ethnicity on customer brand loyalty and positive word of mouth

Sickness presenteeism is working despite feeling sick. Although presenteeism prevails across different job sectors, few studies have focused on how it affects the hospitality sector. This study applied a quasi-experimental method to investigate how sick employees’ presence affects customers’ fear of contagion and, consequently, customer brand loyalty (i.e., return intentions) and positive word of mouth (i.e., recommendation intentions) due to perceived service failure. The effects of ethnicity on customers’ intentions were also explored. Data were collected from 581 participants. The results reveal that, when hospitality employees appear to be sick, customers have weaker recommendation and return intentions compared to when employees do not show any sickness. In addition, our results show that due to perceived ethnic dissimilarity, customers do not tend to withdraw from non-similar sick employees, not showing weaker recommendation and rebooking intentions toward tourist accommodations. This research enriches the very well stablished literature on consumer-brand relationships, sickness presenteeism and social cognition, as well as furthering practice by showing that sickness presenteeism, when correctly managed, can generate organizational advantages.     

What do customers expect of travel agent–customer interactions? Measuring and improving customer experience in interactions with travel agents

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to explore what customers expect of travel agent–customer interactions by developing a scale of customer service experience; further, a framework to demonstrate how to improve customer service experience derived from interactions with travel agents is proposed. The results indicate that the indirect effect of travel agent interpersonal competencies on word-of-mouth is not through cognitive customer service experience but rather through affective customer service experience. Also, the indirect effect of travel agent professional competencies on word-of-mouth is not through affective customer service experience but rather through cognitive customer service experience.     

How do monetary and time spend explain cultural tourist satisfaction?

Tourist expenditure is studied from many perspectives, including that of the two primary types of budget—monetary and temporal—that a tourist must manage in a destination. Yet, despite the scholarly interest in tourist expenditure, no studies to date have sought to quantify how spend type affects tourist satisfaction.Since money and time are finite, it is important to understand how they contribute to tourist satisfaction. The aim of the present research is therefore to analyze how tourist behavior in a cultural destination, taking into account the real-time spending of both monetary and time budgets, contributes to satisfaction-formation. A sample of 957 touristic activities conducted in the City of Granada (Spain) was analyzed from a multilevel perspective, measuring tourist satisfaction with the activity in real time.The study identifies several factors of interest for stakeholders of cultural tourism from a new conceptual and methodological approach in tourism satisfaction studies.     

How do hotel employees’ feeling trusted and its differentiation shape service performance: The role of relational energy

Although prior literature has generally shown that feeling trusted plays a crucial role in boosting employee performance, little attention has been paid to exploring how and when feeling trusted promotes service performance. Borrowing from the Pygmalion effect and conservation of resources theory, we craft and scrutinize a cross-level framework elucidating why and when feeling trusted shapes service performance by pinpointing relational energy as a linchpin mechanism, and feeling trusted differentiation as a key contingency. A three-wave survey design is used to examine these assumptions with data culled from 505 hotel employee–leader dyads nested in 97 groups affiliated with 16 hotels in China. As anticipated, we found that feeling trusted can evoke high relational energy, which in turn improves service performance. In addition, these observed effects of feeling trusted become stronger when feeling trusted differentiation is low rather than high. Overall, we conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.     

Effects of brand personality dimensions on consumers’ perceived self-image congruity and functional congruity with hotel brands

Brand personality plays a key role in consumer brand psychology, but researchers and practitioners lack an adequate understanding of the efficacy of individual brand personality dimensions. Drawing on the theory of self-congruity and an analysis of eight U.S. hotel brands, this study revealed the varying roles that brand personality plays in driving brand choice: in particular, consumers tend to express their self-images through the brand personality dimensions known as Excitement and Sincerity, while relying on Sincerity and Competence to evaluate how consistent a hotel's functions are with their own preferences. The study also indicates that business travelers are more likely than leisure travelers to value functional congruity, while self-image congruity is more important to leisure than business travelers. The paper offers hotel practitioners a better understanding of the personality dimensions they should position or strengthen for their hotel brands to deliver to customers based on each dimension's utility.     

Modelling Australian domestic and international inbound travel: a spatial–temporal approach

In this paper Australian domestic and international inbound travel are modelled by an anisotropic dynamic spatial lag panel Origin-Destination (OD) travel flow model. Spatial OD travel flow models have traditionally been applied in a single cross-sectional context, where the spatial structure is assumed to have reached its long run equilibrium and temporal dynamics are not explicitly considered. On the other hand, spatial effects are rarely accounted for in traditional tourism demand modelling. We attempt to address this dichotomy between spatial modelling and time series modelling in tourism research by using a spatial-temporal model. In particular, tourism behaviour is modelled as travel flows between regions. Temporal dependencies are accounted for via the inclusion of autoregressive components, while spatial autocorrelations are explicitly accounted for at both the origin and the destination. We allow the strength of spatial autocorrelation to exhibit seasonal variations, and we allow for the possibility of asymmetry between capital-city neighbours and non-capital-city neighbours. Significant temporal and spatial dynamics have been uncovered for both domestic and international tourism demand. For example we find strong seasonal temporal autocorrelations, significant trends and significant spatial autocorrelations at both the origin and the destination. Moreover, the spatial patterns are found to be most significant during peak holiday seasons. Understanding these patterns in tourist behaviour has important implications for tourism operators.     

How to enhance hotel guests’ acceptance and experience of smart hotel technology: An examination of visiting intentions

Smart hotel is a novel concept in the hospitality industry, and few studies have examined hotel consumers’ intentions to visit smart hotels. This study investigates the relationship between technology readiness (TR) and technology amenities (TA) as antecedents to visiting intentions, using an extended technology acceptance model (TAM). Based on an online survey with 648 valid responses, the results indicate that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness are correlated with TA, but not with TR. Furthermore, TR affects intentions to visit smart hotels, but TA does not. The findings enrich the hospitality literature and have practical implications for hospitality marketers designing technology-related marketing strategies to maintain competitiveness. This study contributes to raising awareness of the importance of technological amenities and services for the future visiting intentions of hotel consumers.     

How do changes in human resource management practices influence employee engagement? A longitudinal study in a hotel chain in the Philippines

ABSTRACT

Drawing from social exchange theory, this study investigates how changes in human resource management practices influence and affect employee engagement in a hotel chain. Changes in human resource management practices were identified, and corresponding changes in the level of employee engagement were observed. One hundred forty-five employees from a hotel chain in the Philippines participated in a longitudinal study. Results show that improvements in human resource management practices, particularly in the areas of reward management and training and development, yielded positive and significant change in the level of employee engagement. Implications for human resource management, particularly in the hospitality and tourism context, are discussed.     

What do hotel employees think about service robots? A qualitative study in Turkey

This study aims to determine Turkish hotel employees' perceptions towards service robots. Data were collected through 40 in-depth interviews with hotel employees from different departments. Data were analysed through thematic analysis. The results revealed that the word “robot” evoked negative emotions for hotel employees. While the hotel employees think that service robots may provide different benefits and advantages for employees and businesses, they also believe that service robots may create some problems during communication with the customers. The hotel employees also think that service robots would lead to an increased unemployment rate in the future.     

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.     

How risky are services? An empirical investigation on the antecedents and consequences of perceived risk for hotel service

Previous research does not systematically investigate the antecedents and consequences of perceived risk for services in emerging markets. The present research aims to fill this void in the literature and examines the determinants and consequences of consumer risk perceptions for an experience service, hotel service. The present research models the antecedents at both the firm (company reputation and perceived price) and individual consumer (risk aversion and face consciousness) levels, and the consequences comprise word-of-mouth communication and switching intention. Though perceived risk is a multidimensional construct, past research tends to operationalize risk narrowly as either performance or financial risk. The author overcomes this limitation by studying perceived risk at the component level, and examines psychological, social, performance and financial risks separately. The results of a survey on Chinese consumers who have purchased hotel service recently indicate that both firm-level and individual-level antecedents directly influence perceived risk. While psychological and social risks positively affect word-of-mouth, they do not have significant influence on switching intention. In addition, performance risk increases switching intention but decreases word of mouth. The author discussed the theoretical and managerial implications, and suggested future research directions.     

How do advertising expenditures influence hotels’ performance?

Existing studies have shown a positive relationship between advertising and hotel room revenue. However, it is not clear through which channel advertising affects hotel revenue. We contribute to the literature by showing that advertising has a significant positive impact on hotel room price, but not on room occupancy. Thus, advertising affects room revenues through room price, not quantity demanded.     

“How was your meal?” Examining customer experience using Google maps reviews

The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of restaurant attributes and the underlying factors impacting overall customer experience within a range of different restaurant types. To understand their experiences, this study analyses online reviews of restaurants which have become important sources of customer experience data. This current research utilises a combination of quantitative analyses to examine 935,386 Google Maps reviews of 5010 restaurants in London, Birmingham, and Manchester. The authors used the VADER sentiment analysis algorithm to measure the sentiment of four key restaurant attributes: food, service, atmosphere, and value. Logistic regression was conducted to test the relationships between these attributes and a 5-star rating. Furthermore, logistic regression was used to compare the changes of odds at different star rating levels. To understand the factors that drive positive and negative reviews, the top 30 food items of 8 types of restaurants were analysed.     

The power of design: How does design affect consumers’ online hotel booking?

Emphasizing experiential appeals to consumers through design is most notable in the emerging lifestyle hotel segment of the lodging industry. This study identifies which lodging design mechanisms evoke consumer responses and provides a novel understanding of the relationships among consumer perception of hotel product/service design and booking intention by incorporating consumer emotional arousal and quality expectations in a theoretical model. The findings of this study suggest that aesthetics and symbolism in hotel design shape booking intention through emotional arousal and quality expectation. The functional dimension of design affects booking intention only through quality expectation. The findings will be particularly meaningful to the lodging industry because online booking requires both emotional and cognitive responses on the part of consumers.     

How do Chinese tourists perceive tranquillity during the tour?

Tranquillity is considered a preferred travel experience for people. Despite there are many researches on the measurement and evaluation of tranquillity, little has explored the perception of tranquillity during the tour. Through the study of Chinese tourists, we try to cover the gap by exploring how tourists perceive tranquillity in different tranquil areas. This study expounds the Chinese understanding of tranquillity and adopts the grounded theory to systematically analyse the real experience of tourists. The study summarizes 3 major categories and 20 types of tranquil areas. The environmental characteristics of tranquil areas are classified into 4 dimensions: quietness, stable society, natural scenery and local culture. We propose a geographical process of perceiving tranquillity in tourist destinations, which includes the relationship between tourists and motivation, environment (landscape and soundscape), behaviour, emotion and psychological activities. These relations are helpful to provide a new perspective on tranquillity outside the post-positivist research paradigm.     

How does hotel pricing influence guest satisfaction by the moderating influence of room occupancy?

Whether the product price increases customer satisfaction or rather decreases it has been actively debated for some time. A non-linear correlation between the hotel price and guest satisfaction, explored empirically in this paper, implies that the two phenomena are actually not inconsistent with one another At the low price level, room price and food and beverage (F&B) price leads to an increase in guest satisfaction whereas the high price level could have just the opposite effect The results suggests an inverse U shaped relationship between price level and guest satisfaction On the other hand, the room price guest satisfaction link could be affected by the moderating influence of room occupancy to be a U shaped function This paper reports results from a study on the influence of hotel pricing on guest satisfaction in the context of room products and F&B products in Taiwanese international tourist satisfaction It is found that the hotel pricing has a quadratic effect on guest satisfaction