Organisational channel discrepancies between CVBs and meeting planners in the USA

The purpose of the study is to compare the perception of advertising and communication channels between convention and visitor bureaus (CVBs) and meeting planners in the USA. By employing 245 of CVBs and 226 meeting planners through an online survey method, the results of the study reveal clear channel discrepancies between CVBs and meeting planners in terms of preference, attitude and usage of communication and advertising channels. In addition, the study identifies different linkages between advertising channels and advertising effects in the two different groups. Implications for industry practitioners as well as suggestions for future study are discussed. Copyright © John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social networks' group tie strength and travel behavior

The last decades saw an increased interest in the social aspects of urban mobility, particularly in understanding the linkage between social network (SN) ties and travel behavior. Most studies analyzed ego-centric networks, focused on dyadic relations and distinguished between weak and strong ties. The purpose of this study is to understand the hidden layers connecting social network group ties and its associated travels within a meeting context. Data included 315 relations based on 137 group meetings that took place in the city of Tel Aviv, Israel at either a cafe, pub or a restaurant and involved three or more participants.We developed a group tie strength index as a spectrum ranged from weak to strong ties based on four parameters: intimacy, duration of connection, frequency, and modes of communication among group members. The study reveals that majority of the connections tend to be at the medium of the spectrum. This indicates that the common classification into weak/strong ties in relation to travel behavior is overlooking important segments of ties and that there is a difference in tie strength between dyadic and triadic/group meetings. Classification and Regression Trees (CART) model analysis explored how Social Network group tie strength (SNGTS) of members participating in a meeting event can be predicted by the event context and the contextual travel pattern. Two CART trees were found. Each started with a different variable for the first split differentiation and showed different tree paths for explaining the group tie strength for an event-based participants. These include the “communication means” that were used to arrange the meeting and the “meeting type” (i.e.- friends, family, and business- oriented meetings) variables. Five more variables were found to be related to predicting the SN group tie strength including: meeting duration, distance of meeting place from residence, transport means and travel duration to the meeting and age.     

Meetings facilities at airports

This paper investigates the extent to which airports act as venues, the importance that airports place on this type of activity, and whether it is certain categories of airport that are involved in this type of activity. Airports have always been a vital element of business travel in providing access to a destination where business can be conducted or where meetings, conferences and events can be held. In this situation it is largely the availability of air services at the airport that will attract passengers rather than the airport itself. However in recent years airports have become more than just facilitators of access and have developed infrastructure and services (’meetings facilities’) that allow them to become meeting venues in their own right.     

How to plan for regional accessibility?

In order to address some of the shortcomings of traditional urban transportation planning, it is argued that a shift is needed from planning for mobility to planning for accessibility. Accessibility is a well-known and studied concept within the scientific literature. Its use in practice however is limited. This paper explores the ways of using the concept of accessibility in planning practice, with a special focus on the phase of policy design. Using the Amsterdam Region as an example, it is illustrated how simple accessibility measures can help planners with the design of integrated transport and land-use policies that call for different solutions than the traditional approach.     

Accessibility modelling: predicting the impact of planned transport infrastructure on accessibility patterns in Edinburgh,UK

The achievement of good spatial accessibility and equity in the distribution of urban services is one of the supreme goals for urban planners. With Scottish Government backing, the City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) has started to construct a tram network to cater for the future needs of Scotland’s capital city by providing an integrated transport solution using trams and buses. Spatial Network Analysis of Public Transport Accessibility (SNAPTA) which is a GIS-based accessibility model has been developed to measure the accessibility by public transport to different urban services and activities. The model responds to several limitations in other existing accessibility models in planning practice. It offers an alternative and practical tool to help planners and decision makers in examining the strengths and weaknesses of land use – transport integration. SNAPTA has been applied to a pilot study in Edinburgh city to identify the contribution of the infrastructure improvements of the tram system and Edinburgh South Suburban Railway (ESSR) to improved accessibility by public transport to six types of activity opportunities. This paper outlines the concept and methodology of the SNAPTA model, and presents the findings related to this pilot study with a focus on changes in potential accessibility to jobs between four different public transport network scenarios. The accessibility values so obtained help to identify the gaps in the coverage of the public transport network and the efficiency in the spatial distribution of urban services and activities. The findings focus on whether the planned transport infrastructures for Edinburgh will lead to better accessibility and reduced inequity (in terms of accessibility) across the city.     

Cost savings of using a marketable permit system for regulating light-duty vehicle emissions

In the USA, each individual vehicle is required to meet uniform per-mile emission standards. The uniform standard system does not allow vehicle manufacturers flexibility in achieving overall emission reduction goals for motor vehicles. The system provides manufacturers with little or no incentive to control vehicle emissions beyond what is required. In this paper, an incentive-based marketable permit system is proposed to replace the uniform standard system. Under the marketable permit system, vehicle manufacturers are required to meet corporate average emission standards; they are allowed to buy or sell vehicle emission reduction credits among themselves to meet corporate average standards; and they are allowed to bank vehicle emission reduction credits that are accumulated in earlier years and to use the credits for meeting average standards in later years. It is estimated in this study that relative to the current uniform standard system, the marketable permit system can reduce vehicle emission control costs by $150 to $400 million per year in California, or 13–30% of the costs currently spent on vehicle emission control.     

Evidence on users’ attitudes towards road user charges—A cross-sectional survey of six Norwegian toll schemes

Attitudes towards road user charges have in the last decade become a focus of interest for researchers and planners in a number of disciplines including economics, transport planning and environmental sciences. Most of the literature has been based on single and/or hypothetical schemes and has a number of limitations, such as the potential differences in attitudes that might depend on whether users have actually experienced the gains of tolling are not considered. This paper gives further insight into user attitudes towards road user charges and overcomes some of the limitations observed in the literature. In particular, we examine attitudes towards six different Norwegian toll schemes with different characteristics and at different stages of implementation. The results show the following: (i) road users think negatively of tolls irrespective of the type of scheme or stage of charging; (ii) negative attitudes are highly correlated with the level of information given to users on the intentions of the tolling prior to implementation and (iii) toll levels significantly impact attitudes. Further, it is shown that attitudes vary significantly with socioeconomic characteristics. These findings demonstrate that governments need marketing strategies that clearly explain the benefits to users beforehand. Some of these strategies are proposed.     

The impact of local work and residential balance on vehicle miles traveled: A new direct approach

This paper introduces a new approach for explaining the effects of spatial competition for opportunities based on a cumulative opportunities measure of accessibility. We focus on the case of the labor market where some municipalities offer too few workplaces for their local population, forcing some of their residents to long drives. We apply this new accessibility measure to explain households' annual mileage in Switzerland using a Heckman model to account for carless households.We find that car travel demand is much greater in municipalities with a relative undersupply in the local labor market compared to a balanced or oversupplied local labor market. The results show that driving increases with greater distance to the labor market center. The model estimates allow policy makers and planners to quantify as a first assessment the expected average mileage in each municipality for new settlements and to identify municipalities with low expected annual mileage.     

A tool to support resource allocation at small-to-medium seasonal airports

During a few months of the year seasonal airports face the challenging task of maintaining service quality while dealing with heavy traffic, often being pushed to operate on the limit of their available capacity. Under such circumstances, efficient allocation and timely reallocation of physical and human resources is what keeps the service quality of airports at an acceptable level.The paper describes a tool to support allocation of the physical resources, developed for particular seasonal airport falling in the range 1–5 million annual passengers. The tool is designed to work with the traffic schedule – to check it against existing constraints imposed by area, and to assign the appropriate alert if any of the constraints are violated. Thus, the tool provides airport planners with a clear overview of the traffic situation. Its main function is to allow airport planners to check the effects of different actions to resolve particular constraints violations on the overall situation, before making the final decision. Due to non-disclosure agreement, the tool and its features are presented in the paper on somewhat modified example.     

Greening the lodging industry: Current status,trends and perspectives for green value

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical review of extant knowledge on green lodging integration and a compilation of empirical studies that examine the greening of the lodging industry, published between 2003 and 2014. Empirical academic studies are grouped in three pillars: (a) studies that focus on corporate perspective, (b) studies that examine the role of governmental and trade organizations and (c) studies that focus on consumers’ perceptions in regard to hotels’ green integration. Accumulated knowledge is further presented in a structured way, through a Summary Table. Finally, the paper aims at setting the future research agenda in the area of green lodging by highlighting areas where results are equivocal, areas with evolving research attention and research issues that would enhance our understanding towards a greener lodging industry.     

Civil aviation regimes and leisure tourism in Europe

The paper discusses the implications of modern civil aviation regimes for tourism in Europe. A discussion of the relation between air transport and tourism sets the foundation for the study focus. The market strategies of the players involved are examined within a multidimensional framework of corporate rivalry during regulation and liberalisation. The connotations for tourism origins, destinations and consumers are presented and policy measures are suggested for the alleviation of emerging problems.     

Citizen involvement in promoting sustainable mobility

This article proposes a methodology for promoting public involvement in the planning process for the promotion of sustainable mobility. The concept of the focus group (FG) is widened and a method based on holding larger groups defined as mega focus groups (MFG) is proposed. These MFG allow all sections of society to be represented in the participation process, thereby involving the population at a strategic level in subjects of general interest to society and later, holding smaller FGs on more specific subject matters (tactical level).The advantage of the larger MFG over the smaller FG is that they can obtain more information (between 40 and 60 people take part) from easily run meetings (similar to the FG). The MFG also provide a territorial representation of peoples’ opinions and serve as a mechanism for selecting the participants in the smaller focus groups. The information extracted from both the MFG and FG about people’s perceptions of sustainable mobility provides the background to the design of pilot surveys on urban mobility. For a better understanding of the development of this method and its possible applications in any town or city the article includes its practical application in the medium sized city of Santander (Northern Spain).     

Exploring the green image of airlines: Passenger perceptions and airline choice

During the last few years there has been an increasing trend for companies to market their products or services as green or environmentally friendly as part of their corporate social responsibility. Few studies have analyzed the effects of this recent focus on the environment and its impact on airline passengers. Therefore, we examine passengers' general attitudes towards the green image of different airlines, perceived differences in eco-friendliness among these airlines, and effects on airline choice during booking. We also investigate how passengers' recent experiences with an airline affect perceived eco-friendliness of that airline. In addition we compare passenger ratings of airline eco-friendliness to those published by independent 3rd parties. Our findings show that the green image of airlines does influence airline choice during booking. We observed a passenger willingness to pay extra for a green image, however, not as much as their willingness to pay extra for amenities, such as additional legroom.     

Concentrated ownership and corporate performance revisited: The case of shipping

This paper addresses the issue of ownership structure and corporate performance. It employs a sample of 107 internationally listed shipping firms (about 60% of the total) and examines their financial data and ownership concentration for the year 2009. Ownership is treated as an endogenous variable and GMM estimation is used incorporating the significant advance provided by Lewbel (1997). Empirical results suggest that concentrated ownership is positively and strongly associated with better firm performance in the shipping industry. Furthermore, this paper offers evidence on ownership concentration and shows that despite the different corporate governance settings, ownership structures are quite similar in shipping.     

Comparing paratransit in seven major African cities: An accessibility and network analysis

Accessibility to transit, together with other important system characteristics such as network coverage and frequency, is a crucial driver of modal choice for urban commuting. In turn, commuting is a major driver of energy consumption and of socio-environmental externalities in cities. So far, few quantitative and comparative assessments of paratransit in cities of Africa have been carried out due to data scarcity and the prevalence of informal services. Here we leverage the recent release of General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data to produce comparative metrics of accessibility, network, and service quality of paratransit in seven major cities in sub-Saharan Africa (Abidjan, Accra, Addis Ababa, Freetown, Harare, Kampala, Nairobi). Our results allow for a first-order assessment and comparison of different crucial paratransit characteristics in these cities, shedding light on transport inequality and urban segregation dynamics. The analysis and metrics produced can support transport systems planners in major cities of low-income countries. Further research should focus on approaches for overcoming the residual data limitations and expand the quantitative understanding of paratransit.     

Organizational sustainability in transportation planning: Evaluation of multi-jurisdictional agency collaboration

Although significant effort is being made in addressing infrastructure design, construction, operations, and maintenance, there is the need for assessing organizational sustainability within transportation planning. Transportation planners have identified coordination and collaboration as fundamental steps in addressing issues related to transportation network planning and sustainability initiatives. This research explores multi-jurisdictional collaboration between agencies using a case study on Pennsylvania Metropolitan/Rural Planning Organizations (MPOs/RPOs) and non-designated areas. The agencies are surveyed and the results are analyzed using a network analysis software, Gephi. In order to compare the collaboration network analysis (survey results) to influential factors, such as geographic adjacency and geographic proximity (reflective of transportation networks), GIS is used in combination with Gephi to complete geographical network analyses. The three analyses are compared using average degree, density, and average path length. The results indicate that the MPOs, RPOs, and non-designated areas within the state of Pennsylvania are collaborating, on average, beyond the geographical adjacency but below the level of geographical proximity network. In addition, email and phone communication forms are the most widely used for high frequency connection while face-to-face meetings are more likely for biannual and annual collaboration. The results of this study serve as a foundation for measuring and monitoring multi-jurisdictional collaboration to promote sustainable organizational planning in transportation.     

Host community attitudes toward tourism and cultural tourism development: the case of the Lewes District,southern England

Increasingly research is being conducted on host community attitudes toward tourism. However, few studies have been conducted at a regional level and none have examined the attitudes of the host community towards both tourism and cultural tourism development. This paper outlines a study conducted in the Lewes District of southern England and notes that although residents are generally supportive of tourism development and cultural tourism development, there are differences in opinion concerning the perceived economic and social benefits. In particular, levels of income and proximity to the tourist centre were major influencing factors. Conclusions and recommendations are made concerning the need for tourism planners to distribute the benefits more widely and to engage residents from different socio‐economic groups and localities in tourism planning and development activities. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Zero acquaintance benchmarking at travel destination websites: what is the first impression that national tourism organizations try to make?

This paper examines the marketing effectiveness of hospitality and tourism websites. An extensive review of literature on website effectiveness in hospitality and tourism revealed a total of 47 different instruments that have been used to evaluate hospitality and tourism websites. Using the grounded theory technique, a website evaluation tool called the online promotion evaluation instrument was developed with the aim of condensing the 47 existing tools into one benchmarked instrument with applicability across the various hospitality and tourism sectors. The developed online promotion evaluation instrument comprised three main features—aesthetics features (destination visualisation and Web design); informative features (uniqueness, monetary value and cultural promotion); and interactive features (e‐travel planners and online communities). The instrument was tested using a random sample of 25 National Tourism Organization websites worldwide. The results of the instrument development and testing process are presented in this paper with directions for future research in website evaluation. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Developing a TOD typology for Beijing metro station areas

Across the world, Transit Oriented Development (TOD) offers a strategy to integrate land use and transport systems by clustering urban developments around public transport nodes in functionally dense and diverse, pedestrian- and cycling-friendly areas. Even though the basic philosophy of TOD seems to be the same in all contexts, its specific applications greatly differ in form, function and impacts, calling for context-based TOD typologies that can help map these local specificities and better focus policy interventions. In recent years, TOD has also been widely advocated and applied in China; however, so far no study has systematically developed a TOD typology in a Chinese context. This paper fills this gap for the case of the Beijing metropolitan area. The approach is based on the node-place model, introduced by Bertolini (1996, 1999) to chart ‘Transit’ and ‘Development’ components, expanding it with a third, ‘Oriented’, dimension to quantify the degree of orientation of transit and development components towards each other. The paper reviewed the main TOD indicators in the international literature, selected those appropriate for the Beijing context, and classified the metro station areas into TOD types through a cluster analysis. The six identified types of metro station areas in Beijing demonstrate how the context-specific typology can support local urban and transport planners, designers and policymakers when considering future interventions.     

Economic measures of tourism yield: what markets to target?

An understanding of the yield potential of different source markets and segments can underpin destination marketing by both public and private sector organisations. The standard yield measure relates to expenditure injected into a destination from different market segments. This measure has several limitations, which are discussed in the paper. With the increasing sophistication of economic models such as computable general equilibrium, models, it is now feasible to develop new and more useful measures of tourism yield, which directly measure the gains to different stakeholders. Several economy‐wide impact measures of yield are developed and contrasted for selected Australian inbound tourism markets. The measures produce conflicting signals for public and private sector tourism marketers and planners. The reward from further research in developing and operationalising yield measures is more informed policy‐making by destination managers in respect of destination marketing and new product development, resulting in greater economic gains from inbound tourism. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.