Day tour itineraries: Searching for the balance between commercial needs and experiential desires

Little research has been conducted examining the factors that influence the development of day tour itineraries. While the literature suggests that a combination of commercial, operational, political and experiential factors contribute to itinerary development, this article argues that it is the business model chosen that affects it the most. Essentially two business models predominate: commission-based and noncommission-based. This study examines the impact of the business model on the selection of day tour itineraries in the Macau Special Administrative Region of China. It finds that experiential values are traded off almost entirely in the itineraries of commission-based tours, while a better balance between experiential and operational considerations drives itinerary choices for noncommission-based tours.     

A comparative study of hospitality and tourism graduates in Australia and Hong Kong

This paper evaluates the career experiences and perceptions of graduates from the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the School of Hospitality, Tourism and Marketing at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia towards the programmes that they undertook. The two cohorts of graduates exhibited broadly similar career histories and expressed similar attitudes towards the quality, strengths and weaknesses of their respective programmes. In both cases, female students dominate the graduate cohort and about half of the respondents were found to have left the tourism or hospitality field within 3–5 years after graduation. Graduates believe that their general business and general education subjects play a stronger role in acquiring their first and current jobs than specialist tourism, hotel management and food service subjects. The findings highlight the challenge facing the university sector in attempting to balance the desire to provide a broadly grounded liberal education with the student desire for practical training. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Testing a cultural tourism typology

This paper tests further a cultural tourism typology based on the interface between centrality of cultural tourism as a trip motive and the depth of experience. Five types of cultural tourist are identified that represent five benefit‐based segments. The segments are tested against a variety of trip, demographic, motivational, preferred activity, awareness, cultural distance and activity variables. Significant differences are noted between the groups, suggesting that the model presented may be effective in segmenting the cultural tourism market. Moreover, although the segmentation process is predicated on two variables, these variables are reflective of underlying trip motivation, activity preference and cultural distance factors noted between the different types of cultural tourist. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Technology agreements and industrial relations in Belgium

Belgium has a very developed system of national collective bargaining and as a result, it is one of the few countries with a national technology agreement. An analysis revealed that this agreement was not used very much. This article looks at the use and importance of technology agreements for unions.     

Community empowerment in vogue or vain?

Community is in vogue. But what does it mean and what could it mean, particularly for the residents of inner city areas and peripheral estates faced with poverty and deprivation and cut off from mainstream economic opportunities? This paper examines the concept of community drawing upon work recently undertaken on community involvement in City Challenge (Docklands Consultative Committee and Barrow Cadbury Trust, 1994). We ask the question, has urban policy really engaged with urban communities, and if not, how could it do so?

Urban policy has zigzagged from one set of initiatives to another. Whilst policy has been moulded over time to reflect differing government ideologies seeking to account for the root of the urban malaise, essentially many of Britain's inner cities are still facing the same deep-seated socio-economic problems, identified in the government's 1977 White Paper, A Policy for the Inner Cities.

Community involvement in these initiatives has had a chequered history. First, it was a starting point for tackling deprivation in the Urban Priority Areas, and then incorporated into the Community Development Projects of the early 1970s. In the 1980s urban communities reverted to a role as spectators to property-led regeneration. In the 1990s, the word “community” is being extensively employed in the urban debate.     

The halo effect in store image measurement

This research investigates the use of alternative rating procedures, familiarity, attribute importance and respondent sex on the magnitude of the halo effect present in store image, measurement. The results indicate that while there was little difference in the impact of the two measurements on the halo effect, both subjects’ familiarity with the store and attribute importance had an impact on the degree of halo effect present. Further, respondent sex interacted with attribute importance such that females were less subject to halo effects than males when important attributes were involved.     

Nuclear energy: Tenfold expansion or phase-out?

Today, consensus is strengthening that mankind ought to prevent atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations from more than doubling, since such a doubling is likely to cause a significant interference with the planet's climate system, to which it might prove difficult to adapt. Nuclear energy possesses large disadvantages, among which waste, proliferation and safety. An expansion of nuclear energy would encounter great social, institutional and economic barriers. Because the 21st century requires a radical transformation of global energy production and consumption towards nonfossil fuels, however, it is one of the noncarbon emitting alternatives that, at present, deserve enhanced research and development efforts. If nuclear energy were expanded 10-fold, it could contribute significantly to mitigating carbon emissions: a 10-fold expansion of nuclear energy could avoid about 15% of cumulative carbon emissions over the period 2000–2075. Nuclear energy, however, can be no panacea for the problem of global warming. Even with a massive expansion, nuclear energy should be complemented by drastic fossil fuel decarbonization measures or the development of renewable energy resources. Preferably, a combination of both should be targeted and complemented by far-reaching efficiency and savings regimes. Since the risks for humanity resulting from climate change are high, it would be unwise to currently abandon any noncarbon energy resource, including fission. A central thrust of continued research and development into nuclear energy ought to be the design of satisfactory nuclear waste depositories and of safe reactors that are less susceptible to proliferation risks.     

The dual contributions of information instruments in return models: magnitude and direction predictability

By partitioning asset return prediction errors, we show explicitly the dual role of magnitude and sign prediction of return instruments. We demonstrate analytically that sign prediction directly affects heteroskedasticity in asset returns; increases in precision attenuate the heteroskedasticity. Our findings with monthly asset returns are consistent with earlier evidence and indicate that our proposed analytical model captures the sign predictive component of returns. Our results are supportive of a nonlinear return generating model that can be thought of as the product of a model, perhaps linear, for forecasting return signs and a model for forecasting return magnitudes.