Tourism and the refugee crisis in Greece: Perceptions and decision-making of accommodation providers

This paper focuses on the tourism impacts of the 2015–16 refugee crisis in Greece. It examines the implications of the related publicity for the perception of Greece and the expected reaction of inbound tourists; the way refugees are regarded from a security and cultural aspect; the interaction between refugees and host communities; and the decisions made by the Greek tourism accommodation sector to face the crisis. Using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis the paper employs a nationwide survey of 811 tourism accommodation managers. The results reveal three configurations explaining the decisions of respondents characterised by refugee-centric orientation; the emphasis on the visitors-locals nexus; and the host communities' behavioural impact on tourism. The paper also compares asymmetric with symmetric analysis highlighting the suitability of the former when dealing with complexity. The modelling exercise also steps forward from fit to predictive validity. The findings contribute to both managerial and methodological aspects of tourism.     

Water use efficiency in the hotel sector of Barbados

Barbados is water stressed, with water production close to its renewable freshwater resources. The hotel sector uses far more water than the general population (756 vs. 240 L/cap-d); water savings there would improve the overall water balance. No comprehensive analysis exists for water use by the Barbados hotel industry; this study addresses the gap. Data were collected from the Barbados Water Authority and from onsite surveys; consumption patterns were compared with international studies which had established environmentally acceptable benchmarks. The water use efficiency of Barbadian hotels was also studied as a function of “influential variables”: unit water consumption was somewhat correlated with the number of rooms, average room rate, property size and number of employees. The lack of success in reducing hotels' water consumption is tied to the fact that water bills represent less than 5% of their annual expenses. A model for unit water consumption was derived using two influential variables: the annual number of guest nights and the number of employees. Ways of fostering sound water practices include promotion among guests of the need to save water, schemes to promote the financial benefits of water conservation by relating unit water pricing to total consumption and awareness-raising among hotel managers.     

Can low cost carriers deter or accommodate entry?

This paper analyses entry deterrence and accommodation by low cost carriers (LCCs) with two games. In the first game two LCCs compete in a horizontal differentiation setting. Results show that the entrant may drive away the incumbent from its original location under certain conditions. In the second game the incumbent is a LCC and the entrant a full service carrier, with vertical differentiation. The incumbent tries to deter or accommodate entry by product proliferation. We find out that the incumbent will only deter entry if it can surpass the entrant’s quality, and that product proliferation is not an accommodating strategy.     

浅析黑龙江省民营物流企业发展的不利因素及对策

我国加入世贸组织后，民营经济的发展面临一个新的环境，如何才能发现并解决原来遗留下来和在新环境中的种种矛盾成为黑龙江省民营物流企业发展的首要问题。同时，政府要切实加大民营经济的扶持力度，特别要在黑龙江省民营物流企业的市场准入权，资金融通等方面做积极工作。民营物流企业则需要做好自我调整和完善，以逐步适应这个新环境。为黑龙江省GDP的增长再作新的贡献。     

展会专业观众住宿选择行为研究

会展业和酒店行业有着密切的关系,有的酒店经营业绩极大的依托于会展客源。虽然目前针对旅游住宿和商务旅游的研究已经取得了很多的成果,但是立足于会展行业,专门对会展观众住宿行为进行的研究还比较少。本文以第33届中国(广州)国际家具博览会为例,对展会专业观众的住宿行为进行了度量和剖析,研究了展会专业观众住宿选择特征,住宿选择感知因素的重要性,并使用IPA模型分析了广州酒店经营展会专业观众的优劣势。研究发现,展会观众住宿时最看重的仍然是获得良好的休息而非现代化办公能力;宽容型、商务导向型、苛求型和实用导向型是4类最基本的观众类型;IPA方法显示广州的酒店还需要在员工服务的技能及态度,酒店互联网覆盖等方面做出努力。     

Court Standards for Terminating Employees Under the ADA: Some Questions and Answers for Managers

Since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, managers have had to wrestle with the question of what to do when employees become disabled and can no longer perform their jobs as they had before. By law, managers are required to retain such employees if, with reasonable accommodations, they are able to perform their jobs' essential functions. But the written law leaves a number of issues in doubt, such as how managers should (1) determine whether an employee's impairment qualifies as a disability, (2) identify the job functions that are essential, and (3) decide how far to go when granting an accommodation. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has issued volumes of regulatory guidelines that deal with these questions. Only now, however, is a body of case law beginning to emerge. Because case law takes legal precedence over EEOC interpretations, managers must keep abreast of court decisions, especially when the courts' edicts conflict with those published by the EEOC. This article describes ADA case law in the form of answers to questions frequently posed by managers. It is based on a review of 44 ADA court cases dealing with wrongful termination claims, 4 of which were decided by the Supreme Court.     

附加职工安置约束的国企产权拍卖机制研究

The transfer of SOE’s property right involves benefits readjustment of its stakeholders; therefore the design of the trading mechanism is not only to sell the SOE with a high price but also to realize other non-price objectives such as rearrangement of original employees, further development of the enterprise etc. This paper constructs a bidding mechanism with the constraint of accommodating employees to analyze the tradeoff between maximizing SOE auction revenue and minimizing induced unemployment. By adding that the winner is required to settle down a certain quantity of former SOE employees in the new enterprise, this mechanism brings on the competition among prospective investors in both the price and the quantity of employment, which can help the government to balance the different objectives more efficiently. However, the constraint will only work under the condition that the government has stressed sufficiently on the employees’ rearrangement and set the best constraint threshold. Moreover, the government should set an explicit compensation standard for the induced lay-offs to eliminate the investors’ accommodating cost dispersion and introduce more strategic investors with considerable heterogeneity to participate in the bidding. __________ Translated from Jingji yanjiu 经济研究 (Economic Research Journal), 2007, (10):115–125     

Employer responses to disability: Preliminary evidence and a research agenda

Representatives from 50 New Jersey private-sector businesses that had accommodated one or more workers with disabilities were interviewed about their experiences. This purposive sample included large and small businesses from a variety of industries located in every section of the state. Respondents were asked about the nature of the individual’s disability, how the accommodation was determined, what accommodations were considered and implemented, the costs of the accommodations, their success, and the performance level of the accommodated individual. Most respondents reported positive experiences in hiring, accommodating, and evaluating the performance of workers with disabilities. Fifty-four percent of the respondents who made accommodations reported that the accommodations cost nothing; another 16% spent less than $500 on the accommodation. Because so little research exists on the subject of accommodating workers with disabilities, a research agenda is proposed.     

Destination marketing,accommodation taxes,and mandated tourism promotional expenditures: may be time to reconsider

Convention and Visitors Bureaus (CVBs) play an important role in the destination marketing matrix. As a rule, most of the funds that support the marketing efforts of these organisations come from a pool of state legislated accommodation tax funds that have been collected from visitors to the destination. This paper questions the mandated use of these tax revenues for destination marketing, noting that for many communities such expenditures may fail to represent their best usage.