Applicability of the market appeal—robusticity matrix: a case study of heritage tourism

Hong Kong is a city where contemporary global culture coexists with traditional Chinese heritage. One way of promoting Hong Kong's traditional built heritage is to develop a number of linked sites as a heritage trail. For helping the development of such, this study evaluates the applicability of the market appeal—robusticity matrix on heritage tourism development, by assessing the potential for tourism in the single-surname villages of Hong Kong's New Territories. The study techniques include documentary research, questionnaire survey and interviews. The findings indicate the matrix is effective for enabling the assessment of heritage tourism potential because it simultaneously demonstrates the importance of two major considerations for both tourism industry and heritage managers, namely market appeal—an asset's appeal to tourists, and robusticity—its ability to endure visitation. The shortcomings of the model includes the inappropriateness of the technical term “product design needs” in the market appeal subset and lack of community concerns in the robusticity subset of the matrix.     

Restaurant food waste and the determinants of its effective management in Bulgaria: An exploratory case study of restaurants in Plovdiv

Restaurant food waste represents a significant societal challenge in transitional economies where frequency of dining out is rising. The problem of restaurant food waste in this context is however under-researched which hampers understanding of its causes and effects. This paper contributes to knowledge with a case study of food waste management in restaurants of Plovdiv in Bulgaria, a transitional economy in South-Eastern Europe. Through the lens of qualitative research, it establishes the causes of restaurant food waste and explores managerial approaches to mitigation. The study highlights the crucial role of targeted governmental support in more effective management of restaurant food waste. The government should train restaurateurs on how to quantify and characterise major food waste streams. It should further provide reliable services of municipal waste collection to facilitate on-site food separation and recycling. Lastly, public awareness campaigns should be developed to better engage customers in restaurant food waste minimisation.     

Embedding research and academic service in teaching: a case study of a hotel sales management course

Lecturers in Thai universities have to meet several key performance indicators (KPIs), posing a heavy burden and demanding much time and effort. A new teaching model is explained and proposed where several KPIs can be met through progressive teaching. Embedding academic service and research projects in a course involves the participation of students, employing progressive teaching methods, and helping lecturers to meet various KPIs more effectively. This article describes how the above method is applied in a Hotel Sales Management course at Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality, Dhurakij Pundit University, Thailand. The benefits and difficulties faced during the project are described.     

Developing sustainable tourism through adaptive resource management: a case study of Machu Picchu,Peru

Machu Picchu, Peru, is recognized as a top international travel destination. Pressure from the approximately 900,000 tourists who annually visit the ancient Inca city threatens the ecological integrity, physical substance and cultural authenticity of the World Heritage Site and surrounding area, including the Inca Trail. Multiple organizations and agencies currently involved in the management of Machu Picchu have distinct agendas for the conservation and development of the city, and conflicts regarding public access, economic growth and cultural preservation are rampant. Attempts to establish carrying capacities have failed, with proposed daily visitor levels ranging from 800 to 4000. This paper explores the complex issues surrounding tourism at Machu Picchu and presents a potential solution: an adaptive management approach based on the UN World Tourism Organization's (UNWTO) sustainable tourism framework. This integrative strategy accounts for multiple perspectives and synthesizes disparate goals embraced by diverse stakeholders, including the Peruvian government, international conservation organizations, foreign tourists, private tour operators, regional authorities and indigenous communities. The focus on Machu Picchu as an adaptive management case study site outlines key steps leading to implementation, offering planning and policy implications for sustainability initiatives at numerous developing-world tourism destinations facing similar political and socio-economic challenges.     

Energy saving and carbon reduction management indicators for natural attractions: a case study in Taiwan

The growing impact of global warming has made energy saving and carbon reduction (ESCR) by natural attractions an important issue. A set of clear and defined ESCR management indicators could help manage and control attractions, thereby facilitating sustainable development at those places. This study consists of three sub-studies in Taiwan. The first adopted qualitative methods to review related literature and documents and interview experts from industry, government and academia, and thus constructed 35 ESCR management indicators of natural attractions under five domains and seven dimensions. The second sub-study utilised the analytic network process (ANP) to conduct a relative weight analysis of the management indicators and domains. The third sub-study further developed the management indicators into a field survey questionnaire. Four natural attractions were chosen to test the questionnaire and ensure the feasibility of the application of the management indicators. Key areas for improvement were revealed, including using buses to reduce carbon reduction, providing staff training on energy and environmental education and establishing detailed environmental policies and indicators. “Business policy and management” actually bore the highest weight and should be improved first. Positive interaction between tourists and operators is also essential. Suggestions are proposed for the application of these management indicators.     

The importance of career goal in relation to academic performance: a case study of hospitality management students

ABSTRACT

Hospitality management programs have commonly offered exclusive learning opportunities to talented students in order to keep “brains” in the industry. While academic performance indices are often used to identify “brains” in the education sector, scant research has empirically examined whether “brains” are intended to stay in the industry. This study surveyed 304 hospitality management students and examined the relationships between their career-goal related factors and academic performance. Findings indicate that career goal and positive job valence toward the hospitality industry are significantly related to academic performance. The results of this study contribute to the limited literature on the relationship between career goal and academic performance.     

A phenomenological explication of guanxi in rural tourism management: A case study of a village in China

Drawing on hermeneutic phenomenology in tourism studies as well as Heidegger's concept of being-in-the-world, this paper reveals how tourism can and should be done in a Chinese rural village. This research contributes a contextual interpretation of guanxi in Chinese rural tourism development through an empirical study of a traditional agricultural village in China that has been transformed through tourism development. The paper argues that for the Chinese indigenous residents who are the primary actors engaged in tourism, guanxi is, neither a Confucian political ideal nor an instrumental tool, but the specific manner in which they dwell in their place. It demonstrates how the tourist destination, landscape and managerial regulation have been modified and adapted in a guanxi way. The paper suggests that an emic understanding of guanxi and the roles it plays in tourism participants' daily life is warranted and can provide a more holistic picture of tourism development in rural China.     

Teaching HRM in contemporary hospitality management: a case study drawing on HR analytics and big data analysis

In this article, we discuss how hospitality students can leverage new technology and new HRM metrics from a combination of a traditional format case study and innovative data spreadsheets. We offer a teaching case study that combines the strategic dimensions of HRM with practice-driven data analysis anchored in HR analytics and HR big data mining. We argue that this combination helps identify, develop, and promote appropriate managerial skills among students.     

Visitor management in the public planning policy context: A case study of Cambridge

Visitor management plans are increasingly seen by local authorities as an essential contribution they can make towards sustainable tourism. However, tourism is subject to many external influences and is only part of the system of activities and land uses at the destination. Successful visitor management must, therefore, be broadly based and rooted in a wide range of policies. The objectives for sustainable tourism in Cambridge are supported by policies at the European, national, regional, county and local level covering tourism, recreation, transport, the environment, land use and economic development. This results in an integrated policy framework that ensures consistency, encourages cooperation and long‐term planning, makes the best use of resources, opens up additional sources of finance and provides a firm justification for refusing undesirable development. Achieving integration requires the visitor management plan to be seen neither as an end nor as a beginning, but as part of a process. In Cambridge this has involved a commitment to monitoring and reviewing strategies and to ensuring a policy input on tourism issues at all levels of decision making. Appropriate ad hoc bodies have been set up. Visitor management cannot succeed in isolation: other policies must be made to work for it, not frustrate action.     

South seas cruise a case study of a short-lived society

In spite of its importance to the tourism industry, vacation cruising has been little researched. This paper describes an atypical cruise on a small ship in the South Pacific. It advances the concepts of “short-lived societies,” “cruise culture,” and the ship as “environment” to explain the behavior of passengers, and the ways in which they relate to each other. Passengers are described as an aging, upper middle class group, still physically active, flexible in relating to members of their class, yet cautious in developing social intimacies. Self-improvement is seen to be the moral rationale of many passengers in justifying a relatively expensive trip. Passenger expectations and behavior on small cruise ships, it is suggested, are quite distinct from what is found on large ships.     

Firm formation and operating characteristics in the Cornish tourist industry — the case of Looe

G. Shaw and A. Williams, of Exeter University's Geography Department, examine the organization of the tourism industry in the county of Cornwall, UK, taking the town of Looe in south-east Cornwall as a specific example. Factors considered include the way in which tourism businesses are set up, how they obtain their start-up capital and the types of person involved.     

Facets of Type A personality and pay increase among the employees of fast food restaurants

Employee satisfaction continues to be a key to an understanding of relatively high turnover rates within the hospitality industry. The present study explores the personality characteristics of employees who receive pay increases in the restaurant industry. One of the two facets of Type A personality ‘achievement striving’ was found to be positively related to all three measures of pay increases but the other facet ‘impatience and irritability’ was not related. The implications of the findings for selection, retention and motivation of restaurant employees are discussed.     

Profit improvement programmes in food and beverage operations: a new technique of profit management

For several years now the author has run profit improvement programmes (PIP) for food and beverage operations throughout the U.K. In the paper which follows he explains the underlying philosophy of PIPs, describes the methodology and demonstrates their success.     

A view of the strengths and weaknesses in the teaching of practical food studies, within a degree framework

Should the practical food studies of hospitality degree courses be taught from the commencement of the course, in the context of the hospitality industry, or should a more disciplined academic study of foods be the starting point? In establishing effective teaching of food studies, an examination is made of the organisation of these studies, the role of the teacher and the integration of related subjects which are required to achieve academic standards.     

Workplace deviance and human resource management relations: A case study of Turkish hotel employees

The main purpose of this study is to examine the negative associations between employees' perception of the effectiveness of performance appraisal practices and deviant workplace behavior. This study also tests the mediating effect of the forms of organizational justice in the relationship between performance appraisal practices and deviant workplace behavior. Moreover, it also investigates how line managers' performance appraisal politics may influence the relationship between perceptions of performance appraisal practices and employee deviant workplace behavior. In order to facilitate this study, the research team employed a survey design. A total of 193 service employees from different service establishments attended the forum where the study was conducted in the capital city of Turkey, Ankara. The results of this study strongly support the premise that effective performance appraisal practices influence employee deviance behavior, and especially that interactional justice is an important predictor of employee violative behavior. Moreover, the findings indicate that there is no evidence regarding the moderating effect of employees' perception of managers' appraisal politics in the negative relationship between performance appraisal effectiveness and employee deviance.     

When wildlife tourism goes wrong: a case study of stakeholder and management issues regarding Dingoes on Fraser Island, Australia

Images on brochures, web pages and postcards lead to an expectation by tourists and visitors that interaction with Dingoes (Canis lupus Dingo) will be part of their Fraser Island experience. Yet, as the number of tourists to the island increase, so do the reports of Dingo attacks. The first recorded death from such an attack on Fraser Island occurred in April 2001, and was immediately followed by a government-ordered cull of Dingoes. This paper explores issues surrounding both this decision and the management strategies implemented afterwards. Based on interviews with a variety of stakeholders, many conflicting perspectives on human–wildlife interaction as a component of tourism are identified. The conclusion is drawn that while strategies for managing Dingoes are essential, if such attacks are a consequence of humans feeding wildlife and resultant wildlife habituation, then strategies for managing people are also necessary for this example of wildlife tourism to be both successful and sustainable.