U.S. Tour Operators and Travel Agencies

Abstract

The purpose of the study reported in this paper was to explore the services and package tours for people who have difficulty walking provided by U.S. tour operators and travel agencies, and to identify barriers encountered when planning and operating the tours. Accommodations and eating-drinking establishments were the least desirable environments for people who have difficulty walking due to inaccessibility and negative staff attitudes. Attractions and transportation staff displayed higher attitudes but facilities were not accessible. The graphical display of data of accessibility barriers and staff attitude barriers indicated that the four tourism sectors did not comply with the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.     

Consumer Confidence as a Leading Indicator of Change in U.S. Travel Volume

This analysis tracked 12 published indicators of the U.S. economy as a means of understanding monthly fluctuations in the U.S. leisure and business travel volume. A relatively simple published measure of consumer confidence frequently predicted the direction of change in U.S. travel volume over a five-year period. This finding underscores the importance of understanding the overall sense of optimism consumers have for their short-term economic future as being a force shaping the U.S. economy.     

对美国LNT(Leave No Trace)游客教育项目的探讨

美国不留痕迹教育项目(LNT)的目标是避免或减少对自然区域的资源影响，并帮助所有游客获得愉悦的旅游经历，本文介绍了美国不留痕迹项目(LNT)的发展。LNT项目作为一种重要的机制被用于把科学研究成果应用于持续改善低影响技术。通过科研，LNT能够为管理者开发适当的培训资料，并为游客提供“怎样做”的出版物。另外，在美国联邦土地机构、国家户外学校之间的伙伴关系，以及零售商的支持合作使这种模式获得极大成功，并能使项目持续良好运转。     

U.S. Virgin Islands National Park:

No abstract available for this article.     

Management fees and hotel performance in the U.S.

A management company takes care of the day-to-day operations of a hotel and thus has a great amount of influence on the hotel's financial performance. Adopting models from O’Neill, Hanson, and Matilla (2008) and Hua, Morosan, and DeFranco (2015), a set of empirical models, with same-store data from 1471 hotels from 2011 through 2017, was used to test the impact of the total management fee and its subset of the base management fee and the incentive management fee on the hotels' rooms revenue and gross operating profit while controlling for potential confounding factors including chain scale and location.This is the first paper to empirically validate the value of a management contract for both the owners and the management company, including the positive and significant effects that base management and incentive management fees have on hotels’ room revenue and gross operating profit.