Hospitality Management Literature Research Articles

Critical reflection on the impact of the gig economy on the hospitality workforce

Purpose This paper aims to provide a critical reflection on the impact of the gig economy on the hospitality workforce. The impact of the gig economy on hospitality workforce management is explored, with the paper delving into both theoretical insights and practical implications. Design/methodology/approach This paper offers reflections on the emerging trend of the gig economy and its impacts on the hospitality workforce, based on evidence collected from the selected literature, industry report and authors’ personal reflections. A micro-meso-macro analytical framework was also applied to assist authors in building the arguments and propositions. Findings The findings not only revealed the impacts of the gig economy on the hospitality workforce at micro-meso-macro levels but also underscored its close relationships with various concepts in the hospitality management literature. Both future research directions and practical implications are provided. Practical implications Amid the gig economy’s transformative influence, stakeholders must continually innovate for an empowering and secure work environment. A holistic approach is necessary to establish a harmonious gig ecosystem, ensuring fair treatment, benefits and protection for workers while fostering growth and well-being. Originality/value Throughout the paper, a critical reflection on the impact of the gig economy on the hospitality workforce is presented, along with suggestions for coping with current labor issues in hospitality and tourism. Future research directions are outlined.

How and Why Commitment-Focused Hospitality Employee Recognitions Attract Growth-Minded Job Seekers: An Inspiration Theory Perspective

Applying inspiration theory, this research contrasts the effect of commitment- versus achievement-focused social media employee recognition on growth- versus fixed-minded job seekers’ perceived organizational attractiveness and job pursuit intentions. Results across two studies show that growth-minded job seekers exhibit significantly higher levels of perceived organizational attractiveness and job pursuit intentions toward commitment-focused (vs. achievement-focused) recognition. In contrast, there was no discernible difference among fixed-minded job seekers. Notably, these effects were moderated by recognized individuals’ organizational status (i.e., employee vs. management) and the recognition reshare party (i.e., recognized individual vs. company). Moreover, the findings observed that the conditional effects were underpinned by the mechanism of inspiration. This research offers valuable insights for the hospitality management literature and provides pragmatic recommendations for hospitality firms and HR professionals aiming to attract growth-minded potential employees.

CO-MOVEMENT CLUSTERING: A NOVEL APPROACH FOR PREDICTING INFLATION IN THE FOOD AND BEVERAGE INDUSTRY

In the realm of food and beverage businesses, inflation poses a significant hurdle as it affects pricing, profitability, and consumer’s purchasing power, setting it apart from other industries. This study proposes a novel approach; co-movement clustering, to predict which items will be inflated together according to historical time-series data. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the proposed approach based on real-world data obtained from the UK Office for National Statistics. The predicted results of the proposed approach were compared against four classical methods (correlation, Euclidean distance, Cosine Similarity, and DTW). According to our experimental results, the accuracy of the proposed approach outperforms the above-mentioned classical methods. Moreover, the accuracy of the proposed approach is higher when an additional filter is applied. Our approach aids hospitality operators in accurately predicting food and beverage inflation, enabling the development of effective strategies to navigate the current challenging business environment in hospitality management. The lack of previous work has explored how time series clustering can be applied to support inflation prediction. This study opens a new research paradigm to the related field and this study can serve as a useful reference for future research in this emerging area. In addition, this study work contributes to the data analytics research stream in hospitality management literature.

Communicate like humans? Anthropomorphism and hotel consumers’ willingness to pay a premium price

Using anthropomorphism in marketing communication has received increased attention from brand and hospitality management literature, but its contextually complicated effects have remained an academic niche, especially those relating to the willingness of consumers to pay a higher price for a product and service. To shed light on this topic, this research drew on cognitive appraisal theory while incorporating the dimensions of “coolness,” “warmth,” and “cuteness” to investigate the influence of anthropomorphism-based communication on consumers' emotional brand attachment and their willingness to pay a premium rate. The results demonstrated that perceived coolness, warmth, and cuteness significantly influenced consumers' emotional attachment to a hotel brand. It additionally revealed that a consumer's willingness to pay a premium price tended to be considerably affected by emotional brand attachment. The moderating role of the “need for uniqueness” was also verified. This study provides original, theoretical, and practical implications for brand anthropomorphism, hospitality management, and cognitive appraisal theory.

A critical reflection on analytics and artificial intelligence based analytics in hospitality and tourism management research

PurposeThis work consists of a critical reflection on the extent to which hospitality and tourism management scholars have accurately used the term “analytics” and its five types (i.e. descriptive, exploratory, predictive, prescriptive and cognitive analytics) in their research. Only cognitive analytics, the latest and most advanced type, is based on artificial intelligence (AI) and requires machine learning (ML). As cognitive analytics constitutes the cutting edge in industry application, this study aims to examine in depth the extent cognitive analytics has been covered in the literature.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based on a systematic literature review (SLR) of the hospitality and tourism literature on the topic of “analytics”. The SLR findings were complemented by the results of an additional search query based on “machine learning” and “deep learning” that was used as a robustness check. Moreover, the SLR findings were triangulated with recent literature reviews on related topics (e.g. big data and AI) to generate additional insights.FindingsThe findings of this study show that: there is a growing and accelerating body of research on analytics; the literature lacks a consistent use of terminology and definitions related to analytics. Specifically, publications rarely use scientific definitions of analytics and their different types; although AI and ML are key enabling technologies for cognitive analytics, hospitality and tourism management research did not explicitly link these terms to analytics and did not distinguish cognitive analytics from other forms of analytics that do not rely on ML. In fact, the term “cognitive analytics” is apparently missing in the hospitality and tourism management literature.Research limitations/implicationsThis study generates a set of eight theoretical and three practical implications and advance theoretical and methodological recommendations for further research.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that explicitly and critically examines the use of analytics in general, and cognitive analytics in particular, in the hospitality and tourism management literature.

Brand Experience Research in Hospitality and Tourism

This article aims to present a critical review of brand experience (BE) research in hospitality and tourism brand management literature based on a systematic literature and content analysis of 40 articles published in 25 peer-reviewed journals. The concept of BE is discussed by identifying leading journals, research methodologies, research contexts, country of research distribution, dimensionality approaches, and theoretical perspectives. Quantitative research was applied in most reviewed papers, and structural equation modeling (SEM), together with factor analysis (FA) emerged as preferred data analysis techniques. A steady increase in research papers exploring the construct of BE in an online context has been observed. The study suggests that BE is a critical and substantial ingredient of successful hotel, place, destination, restaurant, coffeehouse, cruise, and casino brand management. Additionally, key insights from previous empirical research were discussed from the perspective of antecedents and consequences of BE to provide a comprehensive conceptual framework. Drawing on the findings, potential themes for future research within six important areas of BE in hospitality and tourism were identified.

Ghost production: applying the Servuction model to establish a typology and propose a research agenda for on-demand restaurant food delivery

PurposeThe rapid growth in volume and value of on-demand restaurant food delivery, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is causing a paradigm shift in the food service sector. However, there is a lack of hospitality management research into this emerging phenomenon. To address this gap, this paper defines and develops a novel conceptual model and typology and proposes a research agenda for ghost production in the context of food service.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses the Servuction model to explore, define and model the radical separation between food service production sites, points of sale and consumer interaction from the perspective of on-demand restaurant food delivery. A novel typology is developed and illustrated with eight industry examples from the UK and an accompanying cost benefit analysis. Future research priorities are identified.FindingsIn the hospitality literature, little attention has been paid to changes on-demand restaurant food delivery brings to production and business models of food service organisations, resulting in significant gaps between food service practice and theory. The knock-on effects to stakeholders include increased convenience for customers, uncertain employment status of riders and, for restaurants, striking a balance between capturing new markets and losing control of the customer. Additionally, for aggregators, there is a lack of profitability in existing models, despite holding the balance of power (and data).Originality/valueThe concept of “ghost production” and its associated typology is novel and offers a contribution to hospitality management literature by defining the term, scope and scale of this new phenomenon. Practical implications are proposed.

Behaviour-Driven Energy-Saving in Hotels: The Roles of Extraversion and Past Behaviours on Guests’ Energy-Conservation Intention

The growing environmental concerns and the significant energy consumption in hotel buildings make the ability to proactively manage energy and lower carbon intensity essential in the global hospitality industry. Activating guests’ energy-conservation behaviours is a potential strategy for sustainable hotel operation and maintenance. Yet, the psychological mechanism of hotel building energy-conservation intention and the roles of personality traits have not been sufficiently investigated. This study aims to examine the role of guests’ extraversion levels in their hotel building energy-conservation behavioural intention using a modified theory of planned behaviour (TPB) model. The study extends the TPB model with personal norms and past behaviour as two additional factors and employs past behaviour as a moderator to bridge extraversion and other psychological factors. A field experiment was conducted consisting of 530 hotel guests in Shanghai, China. The results demonstrate the relationships between attitude, behavioural control, personal norms, past behaviour and energy-conservation intention. Specifically, extraversion negatively influences perceived behavioural control (PBC) (β = −0.176, p < 0.001) and positively impacts on personal norms (β = 0.290, p < 0.001), both of which significantly contribute to guest energy-saving intention. In addition, past behaviours positively moderate the effects of extraversion on subjective norms and personal norms. This research enriches the hospitality and tourism management literature by shedding novel light on how guests’ personality characteristics influence their pro-environment intentions during their stays in hotel buildings. The findings would drive the hotel building energy management forward through actionable and effective energy-conservation interventions and enhanced guest satisfaction.

Feeling Luxe: A Topic Modeling × Emotion Detection Analysis of Luxury Hotel Experiences

As the luxury market and associated experiential consumption continues to rise, the hospitality management literature lags somewhat behind practice in examining luxury experiences. This research presents an exploratory analysis of luxury hotel experiences via the approach of topic modeling and emotion detection in online luxury hotel reviews. Results demonstrate that “people” and “product—activity & wellness” aspects of luxury hotel experiences tend to be positively associated with online review ratings. The “product—food & beverage” and “physical evidence and place” aspects may produce mixed effects on rating levels. Finally, the “process” and “price and promotion” aspects tend to be negatively associated with online review ratings. Findings further reveal that such effects function via the mediation paths of various categories of discrete emotions. These results offer enriching insight for hospitality management research and practice regarding luxury hotel experiences.

Building a thematic framework of identity research in hospitality organizations: a systematic literature review approach

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to systematically review and synthesize identity research in the hospitality management literature. A critical revision of identity research in hospitality organizations, built on major identity constructs in the general management literature, is conducted to create thematic frameworks. This framework yields theoretical and practical future hospitality research agendas.Design/methodology/approachThe current study adopted a systematic literature review approach to analyze and synthesize identity research in hospitality organizations. A total of 55 articles published since 2000 are included in this review.FindingsStemming from general management conceptualizations, identity research in hospitality organizations are categorized into four overarching themes. This review also points to research gaps in epistemological conceptualizations, definitional frameworks and methodology.Originality/valueThe study reviews identity research in hospitality organizations, builds an integrative thematic framework of identity research in hospitality and proposes directions for future research.

Using the extended parallel process model (EPPM) to explore US consumers' dining behaviors during COVID-19

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to examine consumers' dining behaviors and explore their decision-making process when dining out during the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachBased on the extended parallel process model (EPPM) and the related literature, a conceptual model was developed and tested. This study conducted an online survey with 351 responses. In addition, a series of statistical analyses, including descriptive analyses and path analyses, were conducted to analyze the associations among key constructs in the proposed model.FindingsThe findings of this study confirmed the pragmatic utility of applying EPPM in a hospitality management context. The findings of this study also outline the different nature between the participants' enactment of self-protective measures and dining out activities. Lastly, while consumers are hesitant about dining out, the results showed that consumers' dining behaviors are directly related to their personality trait of sensation-seeking.Research limitations/implicationsThis study was delimited to a cross-sectional design and self-reported data. Such information may provide insights into individuals' decision-making and behaviors related to dining in a COVID-19 context. In addition, this study only includes US samples, while future studies can extend this study by including samples from different countries and cultural backgrounds.Originality/valueThis study adopts an interdisciplinary approach, which derives from tourism and hospitality management and public health. As a result, the findings of this study not only identify the major influencers affecting consumers' dining behavior but also help contextualize a public health model and contribute to the tourism and hospitality management literature.

Fostering green service innovation perceptions through green entrepreneurial orientation: the roles of employee green creativity and customer involvement

PurposeDeveloping new green services is critical to a hospitality organization’s achievement of sustainable goals as well as competitive advantage. This study aims to unravel the mechanisms through which organizations with green entrepreneurial orientation (green EO) can foster green service innovation.Design/methodology/approachThe data set for testing these mechanisms was garnered from employees and managers who worked in hotels based in an Asia-Pacific market. A multilevel analysis was conducted on this data set.FindingsThe results revealed the positive nexus between organizational green EO and green service innovation perceptions. The results of the study further lent credence to employee green creativity as a mediation path for such a relationship. Furthermore, customer involvement was found to fortify the linkage of green EO with employee green creativity and the linkage of employee green creativity with green service innovation perceptions.Practical implicationsThe results suggest to hotel organizations how to optimally translate their green entrepreneurial strategy into new green services that meet customer preferences and societal expectations.Originality/valueThis inquiry extends the hospitality management literature by linking green EO to green service innovation of hospitality organizations as well as identifying the mediation and moderation mechanisms underlying this link.

Big data analytics and hotel guest experience: a critical analysis of the literature

PurposeGuest experience and satisfaction have been central constructs in the hospitality management literature for decades. In recent years, the use of big data as an increasing trending practice in hospitality research has been characterised as a modern approach that offers valuable insights into understanding and enhancing guest experience and satisfaction. Recognising such potential, both researchers and practitioners need to better understand big data’s application and contribution in the hospitality landscape. The purpose of this paper is to critically review and synthesise the literature to shed light on trends and extant patterns in the application of big data in hospitality, particularly in research focusing on hotel guest experience and satisfaction.Design/methodology/approachThis research is based on a Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis literature review of academic journal articles in Google Scholar published up to the end of 2020.FindingsBy data types, user-generated content, especially online reviews and ratings, was at the centre of attention for hospitality-related big data research. By variables, the hospitality-related big data fell into two crucial factor categories: physical environment and guest-to-staff interactions.Originality/valueThis paper shows that big data research can create new insights into attributes that have been extensively researched in the hospitality field. It facilitates a thorough understanding of big data studies and provides valuable insights into future prospects for both researchers and practitioners.

Happiness, job stress, job dedication and perceived organizational support: a mediating model

PurposeBased on The Conservation of Resources Theory (COR), Spillover Theory and Social Exchange Theory (SET), this study investigates the mediating role of job dedication in the relationships between job stress, happiness and perceived organizational support (POS).Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 5-star resort hotel employees in Turkey. 362 valid questionnaires were collected. The research hypotheses were tested using Covariance-Based Structural Equation Modeling (CB-SEM).FindingsThe analysis results show that POS is positively related to employee happiness and job dedication. Job stress is negatively related to employee happiness but positively related to job dedication. Job dedication partially mediates the relationships between job stress and happiness, and POS and happiness.Research limitations/implicationsThe study's findings could be used by hotel managers to improve employees' job dedication, which will lead to increased employee happiness. Together with qualitative and quantitative research methods, future research could be conducted on the predecessors of job dedication and comparatively on employee happiness for different country samples.Practical implicationsIn order to increase employee happiness, Turkish hotel managers may want to increase POS and decrease perceived job stress of their employees. Although it was found out in this study that job stress increases job dedication, it is also accepted that this unexpected situation arises due to special conditions. Therefore, by reducing job stress, hotel managers may prefer to increase the job dedication of their employees and their happiness indirectly.Originality/valueThe current study contributes to the hospitality management literature by investigating the organizational factors behind employee happiness. In addition, it also explored in depth the mediating effect of job dedication on the relationships between POS, job stress and happiness.

Nurturing service innovation through developmental culture: A multilevel model

Hospitality organisations rely on service innovation simultaneously at the team and individual levels to improve service quality. Nevertheless, mechanisms underlying this dual-level service innovation have rarely been investigated. This study aims to develop a multilevel model of the mediating and moderating mechanisms behind the relationship between developmental culture and service innovation at both the team and individual levels. Dyadic data were collected from 58 team leaders and their 442 employees from 31 hospitality organisations in Zhengzhou, China. Multilevel structural equation modelling (MSEM) was utilised to validate the model. Results showed that developmental culture enhanced both team service innovation and service innovative behaviour. Creative self-efficacy and creative role identity partially mediated the relationship between developmental culture and service innovative behaviour. Team-focused transformational leadership (TFL) strengthened the effectiveness of developmental culture on team service innovation under higher but not lower levels of team-focused TFL. Based on the research findings, this study advances the culture-innovation research stream in the hospitality management literature by identifying the direct relationship between developmental culture and service innovation at the team and individual levels and revealing the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying this culture-innovation link. This study also provides practitioners with practical insights into how to enhance team and employee service innovative endeavours through building developmental culture and adopting team-focused TFL behaviours in hospitality organisations.

Reducing unethical pro-organizational behavior in the hospitality sector through socially responsible human resource practices and responsible leadership

This study aims to unravel the role of socially responsible human resource practices (SRHR practices) in reducing unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) among hospitality employees as well as mechanisms behind this relationship. The data were collected at the three survey waves from 726 employees and 108 direct managers from hotels in Vietnam. The data analysis was conducted through multilevel structural equation modeling. The results gave support for the negative indirect relationship between SRHR practices and employee UPB via corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement as a partial mediator. Furthermore, responsible leadership served as a moderator to attenuate the positive relationship between SRHR practices and employee CSR engagement as well as the indirect negative relationship between SRHR practices and employee UPB via employee CSR engagement. This study advances the hospitality management literature by gaining insights into how to reduce UPB among hospitality employees. A crucial contribution to existing knowledge has been made by examining the relationships that exist between SRHR practices, responsible leadership, CSR engagement, and UPB.

Emotional labour, emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction in the hospitality industry

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of emotional labour on frontline employees' emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction within the hotel industry.Design/methodology/approachThe quantitative research approach was employed by administering questionnaires to 205 frontline employees from 16 luxury hotels in the Accra Metropolis, out of which 194 questionnaires were retrieved and analysed.FindingsThe results showed that surface acting was positively associated with emotional exhaustion, while deep and genuine acting were negatively associated with emotional exhaustion. In addition, both deep and genuine acting related positively with job satisfaction, while surface acting was negatively associated with job satisfaction.Research limitations/implicationsA lackadaisical attitude from hotel management and employees towards data collection was encountered. Also, the study area had very few upscale hotels, making the sample for the study relatively small. Further, since this study was taken from the African perspective, readers should be mindful of generalisation of the results.Originality/valueThis paper is one of the pioneers to have assessed the relationships between emotional labour, job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion in the African hospitality context. The study contributes to hospitality management literature by explaining how the acting strategies of emotional labour affect frontline employees in the hotel industry. A better understanding of emotional labour will help both management and frontline employees to employ the appropriate acting strategy in any given situation they encounter in the course of their service delivery, to reduce the emotional drain they face in handling especially difficult customers and to increase frontline employees' job satisfaction.

Managing internal service quality in hotels: Determinants and implications

While internal service quality (ISQ) preconditions organizational service quality management, the tourism and hospitality management literature largely overlooks it. This study developed and tested a comprehensive model to understand the determinants and how they influence ISQ using an exploratory sequential mixed method. In study 1, we conducted 12 focus groups involving 86 hotel employees. ISQ is determined by three primary categories of organizational and personal practice: management systems (i.e., manage process, training and compensation), social systems (i.e., collaborative culture, interdepartmental communication and servant leadership), and personal characteristics (i.e., role stress, empathetic personality and collegial relationships). In study 2, we conducted 332 pairs of employee-supervisor questionnaires and confirmed the effects of these determinants on ISQ through employee's internal service orientation and efficacy. Distinct determinants interrelate to predict employees' internal service orientation and efficacy. This study thus provides hotels with targeted measures to improve their ISQ and competitive advantages. • This study identifies three categories of determinants on internal service quality (ISQ). • Employees' internal service orientation and efficacy mediate the determinants and ISQ. • The ISQ determinants interact to predict internal service orientation and efficacy.

Customer engagement research in hospitality and tourism: a systematic review

ABSTRACT Based on a systematic literature (SLR) and content analysis, this article offers a critical review of customer engagement (CE) research in English and Chinese hospitality and tourism management literature. This article discusses CE research by identifying temporal scope, country of origin distributions, theoretical perspectives and conceptualizations. Research streams of CE are also discussed from the perspective of context, mode and process, antecedents and consequences. The current study suggests that CE is an important research topic in the hospitality and tourism field. There has been a shift from “customer” to “tourist” and “visitor”. CE in hospitality and tourism has been explored both in the context of offline and online. This study provides specific theoretical implications and suggestions for future research.

Hindrance Stressors, Career Plateau, Work-Related Depression and Emotional Exhaustion among Flight Attendants

Purpose – The present study bears numbers of prospective contributions by pointing to neglected issues in hospitality management and service literature. Specifically, it applied job demands-resources model to test a conceptual model to check whether career plateau (CP) acts as a mediator in the relation between hindrance stressors (HSs), work-related depression (WRD) and emotional exhaustion (EE).Design/methodology/approach – Data was collected from flight attendants in public and private airlines in Iran via their direct supervisors through judgmental sampling technique. One-hundred ninety-two flight attendants participated in the study. Structural equation modelingwas applied for data analysis.Findings – The results confirm that HSs are significantly associated with CP and CP is directly related to WRD and EE. The results similarly proved that CP acts as a mediator in the aforementioned relationships.Discussion – This study connects HSs on WRD and EE through CP. Inspecting the mediation impacts of CP in this relation seems noteworthy since it is largely overlooked in the relevant service literature. The results showed that HSs enhance CP. Moreover, the existence of CP elevates strain. That is, plateaued employees feel ignored by their organizations, and this boosts their feeling of WRD and EE.Implications – Managers should help crew members in understanding their responsibilities through establishing a clear job description consisting of clear responsibilities, tasks and goals. Managers should take proactive approaches to decrease job demands and deal with plateaued employees. They should put enough effort into changing these employees’ perceptions and negative attitudes toward their job.