Tourism in China and professionalism: An insider's perspective

This paper starts with an overview of tourism development in China in the past two decades. While highlighting much of the government initiative which makes progress possible, it tries to pinpoint the primary cause of the existing problems China faces. It is the lack of professionalism, which can be found in government decision making, business management and operation, education and training. The solutions will come mainly from the inside, and one can see efforts being made by policy‐makers and the front‐line people, but it is believed that overseas professionals have a positive role to play, as they have done in China's hospitality industry in the past.     

Risk Perception and Buying Behavior: An Examination of Some Relationships in the Context of Cruise Tourism in Jamaica

Cruise tourism continues to grow substantially, even as many other forms of travel stagnate. In this era of increasing worldwide violence against tourists, safety, security, and risk abatement are becoming principal components in travelers' decision-making processes. This work examines the issue of perceived risk and safety and what impact these perceptions have on shopping behavior. The research takes place in Jamaica, a country with a reputation for aggressive vendors. Findings indicate that those visitors who traveled with others spent more time shopping and purchased more. Additionally, it was found that first time visitors express higher levels of discomfort with their surroundings than did repeat visitors, thus inhibiting purchase behavior. Finally, it was found that levels of perceived risk and security did have an impact on a traveler's intention to return to Jamaica.     

The U.K. Conference and Meetings Industry

Abstract

During the last ten years, the U.K. meetings industry has developed rapidly. Regard for the industry and competition amongst venues is growing. The industry is attracting increasing levels of attention, while an intensified incidence of venues other than hotels are competing within this sector. This progressive expansion of demand experienced by the industry heightens the importance of the quality provision for customers when differentiating between venues. The ultimate aim of the research is to determine whether gaps exist between the attributes employed to assess the quality and desirability of a U.K. conference venue-firstly by conference organizers and conference delegates and secondly between their perceptions and the characteristics of the product provided. This paper presents an approach to the development of a research instrument to measure and compare an inventory of service quality attributes as perceived by meetings organizers and delegates.     

A New Tune from an Old Instrument

SUMMARY

The ability to provide high quality customer service and to deliver customer value is critical to attracting customers in the competitive tourism service environment. This research seeks to explore whether the instrument developed by Zeithaml et al. (1990), referred to as SERVQUAL, can be applied to a tourism service business to provide a quantifiable method of measuring service quality. An adaptation of SERVQUAL was applied to a business operating tours through a brewery in Tasmania, Australia. The instrument proved to be adequately internally reliable and provided apparently useful and easily interpretable diagnostic data to the management of the business. It was concluded that SERVQUAL has the potential to be a useful management tool provided care is taken to adapt the instrument to the individual needs of the user while remaining within the underlying theoretical framework. Adaptation and simplification of the complicated instrument provides small tourism businesses with a new way of gaining theory-based diagnostic data that can be self-administered by management on an ongoing basis and is not a burden to the customers.     

Why do customers switch? More satiated or less satisfied

This study investigated whether restaurant customers switch to other restaurants due to satiation or diminished satisfaction. To achieve its objectives, this study extended well-known relationships among perceived quality, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions by including satiation and further examined the role of satiation on switching intentions. The results of this study showed that satiation was negatively associated with satisfaction but differed from diminished satisfaction. Further, the study results endorsed that satiation significantly influenced switching intentions, whereas satisfaction did not. This supports that customers switch to other restaurants not because they are less satisfied but because they are satiated. Regarding the relationship between perceived quality and satiation, service quality and food quality considerably reduced satiation levels, whereas physical surroundings were associated with an increase in satiation. In addition, satiation fully mediated the relationship between perceived quality and switching intentions, which emphasizes the importance of satiation in customer switching intentions. Findings and implications are provided in the main body of this paper.     

Antecedents of mandatory customer participation in service encounters: An empirical study

The literature on service quality and customer loyalty has long focused on enhancing the work of service providers. This study examined “the other side of the coin” in service co-production or value co-creation in service encounters by investigating how service providers might take a proactive approach to building relationships based on mandatory customer participation (MCP). The research evaluated how such antecedents as role clarity, self-efficacy, purchase importance, and servicescape could influence MCP. Path analysis revealed that these four factors significantly influenced different dimensions of MCP; which in turn had a significant impact on customer loyalty. Using these insights, managers could develop a strategic approach to managing customer roles in the service delivery process. This study adds to the body of knowledge on service quality by demonstrating empirically the determinants and structure of MCP and their relationships with customer loyalty in service co-production processes in a hospitality setting.     

饭店服务质量的测量与改进

饭店服务质量是饭店的生命。为了改进饭店的服务质量，基于Parsuraman提出的SERVOUAL方法，本文提出了饭店服务质量的满意度测量法，然后，采用鱼刺图对饭店服务质量问题进行分析并提出改进方案，新悦饭店的示例表明，本文所提出的方法是有效的。     

Service quality and customer satisfaction: The moderating effects of hotel star rating

This research contributes to customer satisfaction knowledge with regard to accommodation in South Africa whose star grading differs. A multi-group analysis and an importance-performance map analysis by means of PLS-SEM allow us to differentiate between service quality performance scores and their influences on customer satisfaction across accommodation with a different star grading. The two most important predictors of satisfaction with one-star and two-star category accommodation are the accommodation infrastructure and the employee expertise. Both predictors were found to have relatively low levels of performance. Safety and security and room quality are two significant determinants of satisfaction with three-star establishments, although they under-perform with regard to safety and security. In respect of four-star and five-star accommodation, waiting time and customer interaction, both of which have above average performance scores, influence customer satisfaction. We provide specific guidelines for managerial interventions to improve service quality and guests’ satisfaction for each grading category.     

The U.S. tourists’ perceptions of destination China over two transformative periods

This study conducted a textual analysis of The New York Times to examine the U.S. tourists’ perceived image of China as a destination by comparing the two periods of January 1980–May 1989 and January 2005–December 2015. The study found a drastic shift of the U.S. tourists’ affective image of China as a destination from being favorable and positive in the early period to being unfavorable and negative in the recent period. The affective image was characterized by the two domains of Exoticism and Sense of Superiority in the 1980s, as compared to the two domains of Ordinary and Negative National Image in the recent 10 years. Paradoxically, such a sentimental shift on the part of the U.S. tourists occurred while their perception of China’s destination attributes either did not change or grew more positive.     

休闲与生活质量关系的量化考察:国外研究进展及启示

参与休闲活动能够提高人们的生活质量,这是国内学界普遍认同的观点.然而这个观点更多地是从逻辑推演而来,还缺乏实证的量化考察.对休闲与生活质量关系的量化考察,涉及主客观两类指标的设置;而其最终价值在于帮助决策者制定和调整相关政策,采取有效措施,从而全面改善居民的休闲状况,提高其生活质量.