Hotels In Taiwan Research Articles

Hotel Employees’ Voice Behavior: The Role of Paternalistic Leadership and Organizational Identification

This study explores the effect of paternalistic leadership (moral leadership, benevolent leadership, and authoritarian leadership) on hotel employees’ voice behavior and the moderating role of organizational identification. This study samples employees of five-star hotels in northern, central, and southern Taiwan. Purposive sampling is used to distribute 450 questionnaires: 150 in northern Taiwan, 150 in central Taiwan, and 150 in southern Taiwan. The number of valid questionnaires was 359, and the effective questionnaire recovery rate was 79.78%. The analysis results indicate that (1) supervisors’ moral leadership negatively affects hotel employees’ voice behavior, (2) supervisors’ benevolent leadership positively affects hotel employees’ voice behavior, (3) supervisors’ authoritarian leadership negatively affects hotel employees’ voice behavior, (4) organizational identification moderates the relationship between moral leadership and voice behavior, (5) organizational identification moderates the relationship between benevolent leadership and voice behavior, and (6) organizational identification moderates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and voice behavior. This study also proposes managerial implications based on the analysis results. This research attempts to make contributions to the literatures of hospitality and tourism.

Forecasting Hotel Room Occupancy Using Long Short-Term Memory Networks with Sentiment Analysis and Scores of Customer Online Reviews

For hotel management, occupancy is a crucial indicator. Online reviews from customers have gradually become the main reference for customers to evaluate accommodation choices. Thus, this study employed online customer rating scores and review text provided by booking systems to forecast monthly hotel occupancy using long short-term memory networks (LSTMs). Online customer reviews of hotels in Taiwan in various languages were gathered, and Google’s natural language application programming interface was used to convert online customer reviews into sentiment scores. Five other forecasting models—back propagation neural networks (BPNN), general regression neural networks (GRNN), least square support vector regression (LSSVR), random forest (RF), and gaussian process regression (GPR)—were employed to predict hotel occupancy using the same datasets. The numerical data indicated that the long short-term memory network model outperformed the other five models in terms of forecasting accuracy. Integrating hotel online customer review sentiment scores and customer rating scores can lead to more accurate results than using unique scores individually. The novelty and applicability of this study is the application of deep learning techniques in forecasting room occupancy rates in multilingual comment scenarios with data gathered from review text and customers’ rating scores. This study reveals that using long short-term memory networks with sentiment analysis of review text and customers’ rating scores is a feasible and promising alternative in forecasting hotel room occupancy.

The incorporation of Mainland Chinese tourists' experiences into the Taiwan hotel branding process

PurposeThe purpose is to understand the importance of brand experience in the Taiwan hotel branding process; also, this study is to investigate the moderating effect of brand experience on the relationship between brand positioning and non-financial brand performance in Taiwan upscale hotels, focusing on mainland Chinese tourists.Design/methodology/approachThe structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis was used to conduct questionnaire analysis. This study examined data collected from Chinese tourists who stayed at Taiwan upscale hotels.FindingsThe brand experience of an upscale hotel brand can affect its brand image, product attributes, brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. By investigating the moderating effect of brand experience, the study revealed the brand image perceptions of hotel guests with a positive brand experience to significantly influence non-financial brand performance. The product attribute perceptions of hotel guests with a more positive brand experience were also found to have a more significant effect on nonfinancial brand performance.Originality/valueIn the highly competitive hotel industry, the application of brand experience to marketing practice has drawn much industry attention. There is a strong possibility that upscale hotel companies will eventually find value in adopting the measurement instruments and suggestions presented here to assess and guide their marketing practices.

Customer mistreatment and employee customer-focused voice: the bright and dark sides of felt trust

PurposeThis study aims to assess a moderated-mediation model to account for the relationship between customer mistreatment and frontline hotel employees’ customer-focused voice, where their organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) served as a mediator and their felt trust (reliance and disclosure) by supervisors served as a moderator.Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected through paper-based questionnaires in a cross-sectional survey, consisting of 319 valid supervisor-employee-paired responses from 33 international tourist hotels in Taiwan. Regression analyses were used for hypothesis testing.FindingsOBSE mediates the negative effect of customer mistreatment on customer-focused voice. Employee felt reliance intensifies the negative impact of customer mistreatment on OBSE, and this interaction effect, in turn, reduces customer-focused voice through OBSE. The employee felt disclosure marginally significantly buffers the effect of customer mistreatment on OBSE.Practical implicationsGiven the adverse effect of customer mistreatment on customer-focused voice through OBSE, hotels should strengthen employees’ service mindset and value their suggestions. The double-edged effects of felt trust suggest that managers should form a trusting relationship with their subordinates and reassure them that isolated incidents of customer mistreatment will not jeopardize their reputation.Originality/valueThis study integrated sociometer and self-consistency theories to examine OBSE as a psychological mechanism to explain the mistreatment-voice process. Besides assessing felt trust’s two-dimensional effects, this research is possibly the first attempt to examine felt trust as an enabling force or a threat to OBSE in the context of customer mistreatment.

The Effects of Asymmetrical Guanxi Perception on Job Burnout: Task Conflict, Relationship Conflict, and Process Conflict as Mediators.

In Chinese organizations, individuals benefit in many ways from having good guanxi. For employees, however, guanxi also comes with well-documented negative effects. Until recently, the guanxi investigated in these studies was always of a substantial nature. The negative effects of non-substantial guanxi (in effect, the absence of real guanxi), such as the guanxi of misunderstandings for those who lack good guanxi, have not been examined. This study investigates how the existence of asymmetrical guanxi perception for an employee (i.e., when other people believe that good guanxi exists between a manager and an employee, but the employee disagrees with the belief that he/she has good guanxi with his/her supervisors) contributes to job burnout for that employee due to task conflict, relationship conflict, and process conflict. A cross-sectional data sample was collected from 363 employees of 10 hotels in Taiwan. Structural equation modeling results suggest that relationship conflict is the most powerful mediator affecting the relationship between asymmetrical guanxi perception and job burnout. The results provide insights for researchers interested in the mechanism of how asymmetrical guanxi perception induces employee job burnout while generating useful implications for managers charged with reducing such burnout.

Hospitality services in the post COVID-19 era: Are we ready for high-tech and no touch service delivery in smart hotels?

ABSTRACT Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, some hotels have introduced a new service model called contactless service. This paper unpacks this new hospitality landscape through a random sample of 510 valid responses collected at a smart hotel in Taiwan in June 2020 and discusses the emergent insights through Multiple Linear Regression (MLR). The findings revealed that (1) Sense experience (SE), feel experience (FE), and relate experience (RE) were all positively impacting information sharing (IS); (2) Sense experience (SE) and feel experience (FE) positively affected satisfaction (CS). The positive adjustment of the relationship between the sense experience (SE) and the related experience (RE) for information sharing (IS) is regulated by the outbreak event disruption (ED). Intelligence operation (IO) is a significant mediating effect among five-sense experiences, customer satisfaction, and information sharing. This paper analyzes empirical data and provides insights that illuminate the nuances of customer experiences with contactless hospitality service.

Understanding the perceived satisfaction and revisiting intentions of lodgers in a restricted service scenario: evidence from the hotel industry in quarantine

The strict contactless management measures that have been implemented to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic have severely limited the ability of hotel staff to provide guest services in a quarantine scenario. This study examines the effect of lodgers’ perceptions of the services provided in hotels under quarantine on their satisfaction and intentions to revisit. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 250 interviewees who had experienced lodging in quarantined hotel in Mainland China and Taiwan. A structural equation modeling technique was used to study the relationship between the model and the developed hypotheses. The study findings revealed that service perception dimensions are significantly related to customer satisfaction, and there is a positive correlation between customer satisfaction and their intentions to revisit. Moreover, the quality of hotel staff members’ reliability and responsiveness was shown to be the most significant dimension of lodgers’ perceptions of the services received in a quarantined hotel. Therefore, hoteliers who manage hotels that are under quarantine should carefully consider their service provisions in order to encourage lodgers to revisit.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11628-021-00445-w.

Hotel frontline service employees’ creativity and customer-oriented boundary-spanning behaviors: The effects of role stress and proactive personality

The current study examined the relationships among role stress, proactive personality, employee creativity, and customer-oriented boundary spanning behaviors (COBSBs) for frontline service employees (FSEs). This study collected data from 382 FSEs in international hotels in Taiwan to test the research model. The empirical results revealed that employee creativity was positively affected by proactive personality but negatively affected by role conflict and role ambiguity. FSEs' creativity positively affects COBSBs, including external representation, internal influence, and service delivery. Internal influence also positively affects service delivery and mediates the relationship between FSEs’ creativity and service delivery.

Exploring hotel employees’ regulatory foci and voice behavior: the moderating role of leader-member exchange

PurposeDrawing on leader-member exchange theory and regulatory focus theory, the purpose of this study is to explore the effects of hotel employees’ regulatory foci on their voice behavior and the moderating role of leader-member exchange.Design/methodology/approachThe questionnaire includes demographics, regulatory foci, leader-member exchange and voice behavior sections. The data was collected via a survey of 10 international tourist hotels in Taiwan and 479 valid questionnaires were completed. Confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis were used to test the composite reliability, discriminant validity and convergent validity. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe outcome of this study indicates that both promotion focus and prevention focus can benefit employees’ voice behavior; however, prevention-focused employees have more positive voice behavior than promotion-focused employees. In addition, the leader-member exchange can moderate the relationship between regulatory foci and voice behavior.Originality/valueThis is an empirical study in the hotel field to examine the moderating effects of leader-member exchange on the relationships between regulatory foci and voice behavior. This research is contributed toward human resource management literature in the hospitality and tourism domain. Practices for managers and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The influence of aesthetic labor burden on work engagement in the hospitality industry: The moderating roles of employee attributes

Front-line employees in the hospitality industry are required to perform aesthetic labor which might lead to stress and make employees feel burdened. This study investigates the moderating role of employee attributes on the effect of aesthetic labor burden on work engagement. Using a sample of front-line employees from international tourist hotels in Taiwan, the results show that aesthetic labor burden has a negative influence on work engagement, and the employee attributes of physical attractiveness, displayed positive emotion, and helpfulness have positive influences on work engagement. In addition, physical attractiveness only plays a moderating role. Implications and suggestions are then discussed.

Factors of Social Exchange Relationships for TQM Involvement of Employees in Hotels

This study examines how the quality of social exchange relationships at work with a leader (leader-member exchange; LMX) and team members (team-member exchange; TMX) can predict employee TQM involvement in the context of hospitality. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), various hypotheses are tested using data gathered from 811 frontline employees of international tourist hotels in Taiwan. The results reveal that both LMX and TMX have direct positive effects on employee TQM involvement. Further, mediated path analyses show that both LMX and TMX have indirect positive effects on employee TQM involvement via self-efficacy and job satisfaction, and these results provide a clear understanding of the causal chain mechanism about employee TQM involvement behavior operating in such social relationships. The implications of these findings in hospitality are also discussed.

The impact of experience on brand loyalty: Mediating effect of images of Taiwan hotels

ABSTRACT In today’s increasingly competitive market, hotels are exploring more innovative branding strategies to develop their competitive advantages. The application of brand experience to marketing practice has drawn much attention in the hotel industry recently. Marketing management recognizes that understanding brand experience is critical for developing service products. Studies have examined the relationship between brand experience and brand loyalty, but it remains unclear how the brand image of hotel guests affects this relationship. In addition, according to the data, mainland Chinese tourists comprise the biggest inbound source market in Taiwan’s tourism industry. This study aims to fill this research gap by identifying the composition and structure of brand experience in upscale hotels, with a focus on mainland Chinese tourists and examining the mediating effect of brand image on brand experience and brand loyalty. The findings of this study broaden and deepen the current knowledge of the role of brand experience in the hotel industry, and provides managerial suggestions for hotel brands to consider in improving their brand loyalty by taking into consideration of their guests’ brand experience.

MORE THAN FRIENDS: THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON WORD OF MOUTH, BRAND LOYALTY AND PURCHASE INTENTIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL HOTELS

Purpose of the study: Increases in global travel have led to the internationalization of the hospitality industry. Though a number of applications of social media have been examined in the hospitality industry, few of them integrate key dimensions of fan pages into a measurement model in the same time, including interactivity (INT), engagement (ENG), trust (TRT), friendship (FRP), word-of-mouth (WOM) and purchase intention (PI).
 Methodology: Based on 408 valid fans from Facebook fan pages of 24 International hotels in Taiwan, the empirical results show that ENG, FRP, TRT, and WOM all act as partial mediators in their impact on post-purchase behaviors. Based on Taiwanese International hotels, this study attempts to explore why these owners want more than just a friend.
 Main findings: The empirical results show that ENG, FRP, TRT, and WOM all act as partial mediators in their impact on post-purchase behaviors. The study demonstrates the mechanisms behind utilizing social media to build solid long term potentially profitable relationships with hotel clientele.
 Originality/value: We propose and empirically investigate an integrated theoretical framework to more fully capture and describe the consumer’s behavior in the brand community. Our model of the social media process is informed by an “S-O-R” view from consumer behavior, where INT and ENG help create the situation which acts as a stimulus for FRP and TRT which in turn influence BL, WOM, and further PIs. Here, we see the pull force (website INT) as an influence on the brand-consumer relationship (i.e., FRP) through a push force (fan’s ENG). Together and along with the brand content they combine to create the consumer stimulus.

Effect of hotel employees’ workplace friendship on workplace deviance behaviour: Moderating role of organisational identification

• Workplace friendship (WF) negatively affects the workplace deviance behaviour (WDB) of hotel employees. • Organisational identity (OI) moderates the relationship between WF and WDB of the hotel employees. • WF includes friendship opportunities and friendship prevalence. • WDB includes production deviance, political deviance, property deviance, and personal aggression. This study aims to explore the effect of friendships at workplaces (including friendship opportunities and friendship prevalence) on the workplace deviance behaviour (including production deviance, political deviance, property deviance, and personal aggression). This study included an examination of organisational identification for moderating relationships. The surveyees were employees and supervisors in five-star hotels in Taiwan who were willing to cooperate with the survey; each supervisor managed ten employees. A purposive sampling method, a non-probability sampling method, was employed. A total of 600 employee questionnaires were distributed, and the number of valid questionnaires was 357. The results reveal the following: (1) the friendship opportunities and friendship prevalence of hotel employees negatively influenced production deviance and (2) friendship prevalence of hotel employees negatively influenced political deviance, property deviance, and personal aggression. Moreover, organisational identification moderates the relationship between hotel employees’ workplace friendship and deviance behaviour. Management implications and follow-up suggestions are proposed based on the study results.

Price or Convenience: What Is More Important for Online and Offline Bookings? A Study of a Five-Star Resort Hotel in Taiwan

Low price or convenience? What is more important for online and offline bookings? For the sustainable development of the hospitality industry, it is necessary to know the opinions of customers about their online/offline hotel booking experiences. This study aimed to predict the customers’ online/offline booking behavior toward a resort hotel in Taiwan by adapting the marketing mix elements. We first designed and executed a detailed questionnaire involving approximately 300 respondents from a five-star hotel in Taiwan, used hypothesis testing to extract important factors from the data, and finally used logistic regression of these factors to predict the customer choices effectively. The study results show that the majority of the customers believe that booking hotel services online provides for a broader choice, offers more discounts and more privacy than available while booking offline, and is cheaper, faster, and more reliable and convenient. The outcomes of logistic regression confirm that “broad choice,” but not “low price” has the most significant impact on the customers booking a resort accommodation online or offline. Furthermore, the results of the analysis of variance (ANOVA) show that the younger customers (under the age of 45) and those with university degrees are significantly more likely to make the reservations online for a resort. The findings and the recommendations can provide valuable inputs to the resort industry practitioners in Taiwan for improving the online booking services.

Knowledge sharing, shared leadership and innovative behaviour: a cross-level analysis

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of knowledge sharing among team members on the development of shared leadership and innovative behaviour.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 64 management teams and 427 individuals working in 26 different hotels in the hospitality industry in Taiwan.FindingsThe results show that knowledge sharing has both direct and indirect effects on the development of shared leadership and individual innovative behaviour.Research limitations/implicationsResults suggest that knowledge sharing supports the occurrence of shared leadership, leading to an increase in innovative behaviour. The authors infer from the findings that encouraging a culture of knowledge sharing can have a positive impact on the creativity of teams.Originality/valueThis study advances knowledge of shared leadership as a mediator using a multilevel approach to test antecedents of innovative behaviour in the Taiwan hotel industry.

Making “Chinese Cuisine”: The Grand Hotel and Chuan-Yang Cuisine in Postwar Taiwan

ABSTRACT The Grand Hotel (Yuanshan Dafandian), built in 1952, was a landmark in the Republic of China (ROC). Through an analysis of menus and the style of the Grand Hotel in Taiwan from the 1950s to the 1970s, this article reveals how war and the migration of the government influenced the formation of a new type of hybrid Chinese regional cuisine, Chuan-Yang style, presented in state banquets. It first explores how “Chinese-ness” was presented and performed in state banquets, including the space and dishes that were characteristic of Chuan-Yang cuisine. By tracing the changing definitions of “China’s great regional culinary traditions,” it then investigates why Chuan-Yang cuisine was invented in the postwar period. After comparing different interpretations of “Chinese cuisine” found in state banquets in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), this article argues that “regional cuisines” could be defined in terms beyond the geographic, and demonstrates how they embody political and social transformations.

Sustainable Development of Hotel Food and Beverage Service Training: Learning Satisfaction with the Situated Cognitive Apprenticeship Approach

The main purpose of this study is to explore the impact of the cognitive apprenticeship teaching approach in food and beverage (F&B) service training courses on learning satisfaction. This study is a quasi-experimental research design conducted using pretest–post-test nonequivalent groups. Its research subjects are primarily new employees from the F&B departments of well-known five-star, high-end hotels in Taiwan who must undergo education and training. The new employees are divided into an experimental group and a control group for the eight-week teaching practicum. This study concludes that learning satisfaction achieved through the cognitive apprenticeship teaching approach during the F&B training course is superior to that achieved through the conventional teaching approach of lecturing. An innovative finding of the current research is that regardless of whether cognitive apprenticeship teaching is adopted, the master–apprentice relationship is the most important factor in the five-facet measurement of learning satisfaction. This point also explains why the cognitive apprenticeship approach is a suitable teaching and training strategy. The greatest contribution of this study is that it provides a direction for the application and sustainable development of hotel staff training and offers references for the improvement of future hotel training programs.

A multilevel study of brand-specific transformational leadership: employee and customer effects

In this study, we examine the effects of brand-specific transformational leadership (TFL) on the brand-related attitudes and behaviors of employees and customers. We test relationships between brand-specific TFL and employees’ brand commitment and brand citizenship behavior and then the resulting effects on customer citizenship behavior and customer-based brand equity. Data from 18 international tourist hotels in Taiwan, including 136 supervisors, 268 employees and 221 customers, were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling to investigate the multilevel relationships. Support is found for all hypotheses. The findings advance understanding of brand-specific TFL and the effects this leadership style can have on the brand-related attitudes and behaviors of both employees and customers.

Effective training methods for fostering exceptional service employees

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the essential abilities service employees need to deliver an exceptional service that delights customers and to identify effective methods to train exceptional service employees.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted in-depth interviews with seven senior butlers and three human resource managers from four of the most renowned five-star hotels in Taiwan. Interviews with the two groups of participants provided good triangulation and allowed us to gain different perspectives and to obtain a more holistic understanding of the research topic.FindingsThis study systematically organized the essential abilities required to deliver delightful service into three hierarchical levels: professionalism, the ability to respond to customers’ emotions and hidden needs and build bonds with them, and the ability to deliver one-stop service. The authors propose that the most effective training method is to develop a customer-oriented service climate. Such an environment will enable service employees to be naturally molded into exceptional service personnel. Several training methods are identified to build a customer-oriented service environment within a company.Research limitations/implicationsThis study focused on the staff of five-star hotels. The proposed service standards and abilities may only be applicable to high-end service providers. Furthermore, this study used only a qualitative research method (in-depth interviews) to develop a preliminary training model to foster outstanding service employees. This model can be further verified using a quantitative method and a larger number of participants in a future study.Originality/valueThis research provides contributions to the literature on delightful service and human resources management.