A Proposed Research Agenda for the Refinement of the High Performance Work System Construct in the U.S. Restaurant Industry

Abstract

The current research proposes a framework for the investigation and conceptualization of high performance work systems in the U.S. restaurant industry. The projected U.S. restaurant industry sales for 2006 are $511.1 billion according to the National Restaurant Association (National Restaurant Association, 2005). Because of its size and impact on the foodservice industry and the hospitality industry in general, improving the performance of the restaurant industry could help increase overall revenues and guest satisfaction in the foodservice and hospitality industry. By identifying a list of high performance work practices in the industry, a more in-depth exploration of these practices and then organizational policies can be aligned together to help improve overall performance in the U.S. restaurant industry. The current study provides theoretical background and support for the high performance work systems theory.     

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。     

User generated content for exploring factors affecting intention to use travel and food delivery services

Customer reviews/comments on product-websites and on social-media pages can serve as great information sources for both customers and service-providers. For exploring the drivers of usage intention in context of Online-Food-Delivery services (OFDs) and Online-Travel-Agency services (OTAs), traditional-based (qualitative or quantitative or mixed-method) approaches may not be enough. This study utilizes a multi-method approach comprising of both traditional and Natural-Language-Processing (NLP)-based approaches. This study has captured the emic-perspectives using qualitative semi-structured-interviews and etic-perspectives using NLP-based analysis of extant literature. The conceptual model developed from the model of online-decision-making stance, was tested quantitatively using survey data and by NLP-based approach using online user reviews. The path-model was tested using Structural-Equation-Modeling (SEM). Results of this study reveal that price benefits and trust-in-service are major predictors of customer’s usage intention in OFD and OTA contexts. The study concludes with the various implications, limitations and future directions.     

Urban vs. rural destinations: Residents’ perceptions,community participation and support for tourism development

This paper investigates and compares the effects of residents' perceptions of the impacts of tourism on community participation and support for tourism development across urban and rural world heritage sites (WHSs). Partial least squares – structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), has been employed to perform the analysis. The results reveal significant differences between the effects of residents' perceptions and community participation on support for tourism development in urban and rural destinations. However, the findings did not support any differences between the effects of positive perceptions on community participation, and the indirect effects of negative perceptions on support for tourism development. This study makes a significant theoretical contribution to the urban and rural tourism and residents’ perceptions literature by comparing rural and urban WHSs residents. Furthermore, this study has a number of practical implications for the local authorities of rural and urban WHSs.     

Wisdom of crowds: Conducting importance-performance analysis (IPA) through online reviews

This paper proposes a methodology for conducting importance-performance analysis (IPA) through online reviews. The methodology is composed of three stages: (1) mining useful information from online reviews, (2) estimating each attribute's performance and importance, and (3) constructing IPA plot, where the latent dirichlet allocation (LDA), the improved one-vs-one strategy based support vector machine (IOVO-SVM) and the ensemble neural network based model (ENNM) are respectively used. A case study on two five-star hotels is given, and the results obtained by the proposed methodology through online reviews are compared with those obtained by the existing methods through questionnaires (or online ratings). The results indicate that the proposed methodology can obtain effective analysis results with lower cost and shorter time since online reviews are publicly available and easily collected. The proposed methodology can give managers or market analysts one more choice for conducting IPA or serve as a preparing process of large-scale survey.     

The critical success factors for a travel application service provider evaluation and selection by travel intermediaries

Current application service provider (ASP) is an emerging type of information technology outsourcing service that offer a comprehensive of information technology services for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to obtain information capabilities and maintain competitive advantage. Although numerous academics and practitioners have recognized the importance of information service suppliers, few studies has been conducted on decision analysis related to an ASP selection. Thus, this study combines two multiple criteria decision making tools to develop a multifaceted evaluation framework and identify the critical success factors (CSFs) for an ASP adoption by travel intermediaries in Taiwan. The empirical results implied different types of travel operations have different evaluation considerations for an ASP adoption. Travel intermediaries can devote to their core competencies, and acquire information support services through an ASP. On the other hand, ASPs can use differentiation strategies and allocate limited resources through focusing on these CSFs to enhance inter-organizational collaboration in travel supply chain.     

携程旅行网春秋国旅网e龙旅行网内容交付性研究

旅行电子商务网站成功的关键因素之一是能否提供满足消费者需求的内容,基于瑞奇曼（Rachman）和布奇南（Buchanan）的研究方法,对国内三个著名旅行网站的内容交付性进行了研究,讨论了我国旅行电子商务网站在内容建设方面存在的问题以及改进的方法。     

Early warning indicators? The effect of consumer and investor sentiments on the restaurant industry

This study looks at the influence of cyclical fluctuations of the consumer confidence index (CCI) and the volatility index (VIX) as early-warning indicators of the variations in restaurant performance. The industry has traditionally focused on past data and on microeconomic influences to anticipate its future performance, a procedure that does not consider possible cyclical fluctuations in restaurant performance metrics. These fluctuations are driven by sentiments of consumers and investors. The study uses the cyclical component of the applied data, followed by unit root and cointegration testing, with subsequent application of the Limited Information Maximum Likelihood technique. The results show both indicators have an effect on restaurant performance, where VIX has an impact on the current, expected, and overall restaurant performance, while the CCI’s influence is only partial (current performance). Policy-makers and planners could benefit from anticipating features of indicators to assess and steer the future performance of the restaurant industry.     

Hotel chain affiliation as an environmental performance strategy for luxury hotels

Stakeholders are increasingly aware of the potential of environmental performance to benefit their health; however, there is a paucity of sustainability studies addressing the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance and the brand equity of hotel chains. Unlike traditional economics that treat undesired outputs such as carbon emissions as costless, this research presents an accurate, concise and clear empirical examination of hotel chain affiliation strategy through the Malmquist-Luenberger index to measure the brand competitiveness of the strategy while considering carbon emissions reduction using objective official panel data from Taiwan. The findings reveal that a group of hotel chains has a significantly higher average energy efficiency and branding value than those of a group of independent operators when holistic carbon emissions reduction is considered. Thus, this study encourages stakeholders to promote green hotel policies to independent hotel operators to achieve a higher brand value with lower carbon emissions and to adopt greater use of business intelligence to assist the decision-making of hotel operators in conformity with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).     

U.K. Conference Venues

ABSTRACT

The following paper investigates the supply and demand for conference venues in the United Kingdom (U.K.) over the past 40 years. The main data relates to trends in the type of venue facilities provided in the U.K. and how the varying market sectors use these. It is suggested that the patterns of venue development have often been in response to perceived opportunity for business rather than actual demand. The concern is raised that current business levels cannot support the growing supply of venues and that continued new developments may not be the most appropriate method of approaching the situation.     

The evaluation of tourism destination competitiveness by TOPSIS & information entropy – A case in the Yangtze River Delta of China

Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) was proposed by Hwang and Yoon as a multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) method, which identifies solutions from a finite set of alternatives. TOPSIS is based on the concept that the chosen alternative should have the shortest distance from the positive ideal solution (PIS) and the farthest distance from the negative ideal solution (NIS). In this study, the method was applied to evaluate the tourism destination competitiveness (TDC) of the Yangtze River Delta in China. This empirical study was based on a two-step procedure. The first procedure consisted of three hierarchies, four aspects and 35 evaluation indices, which were weighted by the information entropy weight (IEW). Secondly, the TOPSIS method was applied to the ranking analysis. This gave the most important index for each aspect by IEW. It also provided the ranking for 16 cities in the Yangtze River Delta based on four aspects, as well as the final overall ranking among them. Finally, the tactics and means for the cities to improve their tourism competitiveness were discussed. The results showed that TOPSIS & IEW can be implemented as an effective method in TDC evaluation.     

旅游目的地形象之IPA分析——以西安居民对海南旅游目的地形象感知为例

尽管我国在旅游目的地形象方面的研究取得了长足的进步,但是仍然存在诸如定性研究多、定量研究少、缺乏研究方法上的创新等问题.为进一步提高我国旅游调研特别是旅游目的地形象调研的科学性、实用性和针对性,本文以西安居民对海南旅游目的地形象的感知分析为例,介绍和运用了当今国外广泛运用的IPA分析法,即重要性(Importance)及其表现(Performance)分析法(Analysis).     

我国区域旅游卫星账户理论与实践的若干问题研究

在对TSA一般理论进行较深入的分析和论述的基础上，本文结合江苏省正在编制的、严格遵从国际规范的省级区域旅游卫星账户的实践，分析和论述了我国区域旅游卫星账户的一些理论与实践问题，如区域旅游卫星账户的特点、编制过程、主要困难等。     

Impact-range performance analysis and asymmetry analysis for improving quality of Korean food attributes

The objective of this study is to assess the key-drivers of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction and their asymmetric effects in the formation of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction in Korean restaurants by using impact-range performance analysis (IRPA) and impact asymmetry analysis (IAA) approaches. Two hundred thirty-nine diners at two Korean restaurants in a U.S. southern metropolitan city participated in this study. Results validated the rigor of IRPA and IAA for identifying key determining factors and assessing magnitude among various restaurants’ attributes. Food taste, presentation, cleanliness, and fair price had severe impacts on CS. The theoretical and practical implications of this study's findings are included to enrich both academicians’ and restaurant industry professionals’ understanding of customers’ perceptions of and attitudes toward restaurants, and development of a marketing strategy.     

An integrated approach for selecting corporate social responsibility programs and costs evaluation in the international tourist hotel

The purpose of this paper is to present an integrated approach and scientific techniques for corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs selection decisions and costs evaluation in the hotel industry. First, experts are chosen to conduct the analytic structure construction for CSR programs selection by identifying cost and differentiation advantage criteria and CSR program candidates that can benefit society and competitive advantage for hotels. Second, the DEMATEL (Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory) method is used to detect complex relationships and build a network structure among the cost and differentiation advantage criteria. Third, the ANP (Analytic Network Process) is used where the criteria are dependent. Fourth, the ANP results are applied to ZOGP (Zero–One Goal Programming) formulation to find the optimal CSR program portfolio under limited resources and constrained situations. Finally, ABC (Activity-Based Costing) model is used to calculate each chosen CSR program's costs in order to acquire accurate cost information. The result shows that the improvement on the image of an organization is the major dispatch for driving the international tourist hotel to fulfill CSR goals. The integrated approach can help international tourist hotels’ managers to select CSR programs more scientifically and to make decisions conforming to the reality.