Hotel Infrastructure Research Articles

Hotel development through centralized to liberalized planning procedures: Prague lost in transition

ABSTRACTScholars argued for the need of better urban planning procedures in post-socialist Prague in the 1990s. But a society liberated from an oppressive political system where five-year plans defined every aspect of life did not believe in the beneficial power of regulations. Prague just started to profit from the large wave of foreign tourists arriving, and did not want to control the liberal market, trusted to upgrade the obsolete hotel infrastructure created by central planning. Literature documents well this era of transition, bringing into focus more and more the conflicts of tourism development in the historic city, often described as a tourist ghetto. This study demonstrates direct links between the extremities in tourism planning procedures and the criticized touristification process. Prague's hotel development patterns are compared with similar tourist-historic destinations: Budapest and Vienna. The building age and typology was included in the geographical analysis of hotels, revealing more of the extreme consequences of both the era of centralized planning procedures, and of the era of uncontrolled liberalization multiplied by the effects of in-kind restitution. Vienna has a totally balanced spatial distribution of hotels showing a linear development through the ages. Budapest faced the same communist period followed by a liberalization process, but the sensibility of the communist regime towards tourism demands and the avoided in-kind type of restitution during privatization in the new era kept the hotel development patterns and the tourist space system more balanced. The results of this study contribute to the general understanding of the needs and tools of tourism planning in urban tourism development.

Дифференциация экскурсионного продукта в рамках внутреннего туризма

The article examines the problems associated with the stagnation in the field of tourism in Russia. The author notes that our country has great potential, which is not almost realized. It is necessary to refocus on the development of new tourist destinations, create a worthy hotel infrastructure, find new ways to attract tourists.
 At the present stage there is wealth of experience in the implementation of tourism programs taking into account the interests and wishes of potential customers. Different types of excursion products will allow guiding by the interests of a specific tourist and will make it possible to attract any audience. The author invites to consider an effective international experience in this area and to adapt it to Russian conditions. The potential of Russian regions provides an opportunity to implement the ideas of different excursions.
 North Caucasus is unique, one-of-a-kind, object that has unlimited opportunities for tourism development. The mountain landscape is promising for the development of extreme tourism products, and the use of balneal resources of the region will attract amateurs of health tourism. Particular attention should be paid to the preparation of informative, historical and archeological tours. National specifics of the North Caucasian republics allow to create ethnographic excursions. The North Caucasus and the whole Southern Federal District have a huge potential for tourism development, which allows to count on attracting domestic and, in the future, foreign tourists.
 The author suggests that the tourism development should be based on the expansion of the tourism range, and notes that the different types of tourism can be successfully realized in Russia. The article analyzes the experience of foreign countries and provides statistics confirming the hypothesis. 

Airport performance in a tourism receiving country: Evidence from Greece

The aim of this study is to estimate the performance of 38 Greek airports. The analysis is performed in two stages. Firstly, efficiency scores for each airport are estimated using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) original and bootstrap techniques. Secondly, statistical assessments (Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis tests) and a censored Tobit regression model are employed to identify which factors significantly explain variations in the airport efficiency. The results indicated the scope for substantial efficiency improvements. In addition, island location, connectivity, and hotel infrastructure in the area were found to be significant factors affecting airport efficiency.

The Influence of Trust on Repeat Tourism: The Mauritian Case Study

The present article attempts to shed light on the importance of trust as a major contributor to repeat tourism, more specifically on the promulgation of trust as a composite of political and socioeconomic elements and the perceived sense of security prevalent in the country under consideration. Using a probit model, the results show that trust is a statistically significant predictor of the probability of repeat and recommended tourism; such a result confirms the theoretical links between trust and tourism. Furthermore, other explanatory variables—which include the level of development of the destination, hotel infrastructure, tourism attractions, promotion of the destinations, and availability of infrastructure—were also found to be significantly correlated with the expected signs in relation to the independent variable. However, cost of living and exchange rate were found not to be significant predictors of repeat or recommended tourism.

Spatial effects in regional tourism growth

This study examines two types of spatial effects in regional tourism growth: spatial spill-over and spatial heterogeneity. A spatial growth regression framework is used to model the growth in regional tourism and identify the economic and spatial factors that explain the variability in tourism growth across 342 prefectural-level cities in China from 2002 to 2010. The analysis identifies several important factors, including local economic growth, localization economies, tourism resource endowments, and hotel infrastructure, as well as spatial spill-over effects and cross-city competition effects associated with tourism resource endowments and hotel infrastructure. A geographically weighted spatial Durbin model is then used to account for spatial heterogeneity in tourism growth patterns, and localized patterns of tourism growth are identified.

КУЛЬТУРНА СПАДЩИНА ЧЕРКАЩИНИ ЯК ТУРИСТИЧНИЙ РЕСУРС

КУЛЬТУРНА СПАДЩИНА ЧЕРКАЩИНИ ЯК ТУРИСТИЧНИЙ РЕСУРС

Історико-географічні особливості становлення та розвитку готельної сфери Львова

The historic preconditions of the lodging sites development are analyzed. The historic periods in the hotel sphere development are described. The main factors that lead to the formation and development of the hotel establishments are singled out. The development of services, quality of service, features of hotels architectural planning is characterized. The historic references on the first hotels in Lviv are submitted. The development of accommodation facilities in different time periods is traced. The influence of the historical background on the development of hotel infrastructure is analyzed. The recommendations on the future development of hotel infrastructure in Lviv are worked out. Key words: lodging, accommodation, lodging services.

Frontline leisure: Securitizing tourism in the War on Terror

This article argues that the terrorist bombings of hotels, pubs and nightclubs in Bali in October 2002, and in Mombasa one month later, were inaugural moments in the post-9/11 securitization of the tourism industry. Although practices of tourism and terrorism seem antithetical – one devoted to travel and leisure, the other to political violence – this article argues that their entanglement is revealed most clearly in the counter-terrorism responses that brought the everyday lives of tourists and tourism workers, as well as the material infrastructure of the tourism industry, within the orbit of a global security apparatus waging a ‘war on terror’. Drawing on critical work in international relations and geography, this article understands the securitization of tourism as part of a much wider logic in which the liberal order enacts pernicious modes of governance by producing a terrorist threat that is exceptional. It explores how this logic is reproduced through a cosmopolitan community symbolized by global travellers, and examines the measures taken by the tourism industry to secure this community (e.g. the physical transformations of hotel infrastructure and the provision of counter-terrorism training).

Zmiany sieci hotelowej w aglomeracji krakowskiej po II wojnie światowej

Hotel infrastructure belongs to the most important components of leading agglomerations economic base. It enables evolution of different types of tourist features, including business tourism. Cracow belongs to leading national centres and is treated as the cultural capital of the country. As seen this way, all its functions should be continuously developed for strengthening its position in European and world scale. An important premise in the realization of the above objectives is hotel base quality, its organization, management and price competitiveness.Changes of the economic system in Poland have created conditions for development of individual business, including tourism business. Progress of demonopolization and ownership transformations conditioned creation of private enterprises sector and privatization of state enterprises. Access to capital for private investors and its optimal utilization brought about emergence of independently operated hotel enterprises. Poland’s openness and integration with the EU structures evoked foreign investor interest. International brands appeared on the market, hotels in their structures used capital, know-how and modern tools brought by hotel business leaders.The present shape of Cracow agglomeration hotel network is the effect of many changes, equally of political, social, cultural and economic nature. The process, which has lasted for over 60 years, consisted of the post-war stagnation period, revival in the period of centrally planned economy (1970s and 80s), and dynamic development over the last two decades. The presented analysis shows that the most attractive location for hotel infrastructure is the old city centre, with concentration of 58 objects, representing nearly 50% of agglomeration and suburban area hotels. It shows the importance of development strategy for this type of infrastructure, which may influence the economic base of the city, individual districts, areas and households.

Equinodermos (Echinodermata) del occidente del Archipiélago Sabana-Camagüey, Cuba

Echinoderms (Echinodermata) from western Archipelago Sabana-Camaguey, Cuba. The Sabana-Camaguey Archipelago, central north region of Cuba, has been submitted to a significant tourist development, with the corresponding increase of hotel infrastructure and highways. We sampled 20 stations considering biotope variation in the macrolagoon and the external areas. The samplings were carried out in March - April and October - November, 2001 (20 days per sampling). Towards the external area - where there is a minor human impact, a better development of the marine grasslands and more saline stability, there were more species, moderate population densities and a lower proportion of species that feed on suspended material, while towards the interior of the macrolagoon we found the opposite pattern. Rev. Biol. Trop. 56 (Suppl. 3): 19-35. Epub 2009 January 05.

A unified framework for site selection and business forecasting using ANP

This paper reports an on-going application of the Analytic Network Process (ANP) in the context of a non-profit organization: The Latin American Studies Association (LASA). This institution organizes a large international conference every eighteen months and needs to estimate conference attendance in advance (for logistic purposes) as well as selecting a host city where the combination of hotel infrastructure, conference costs, and so on, makes it a sound financial choice. In this paper, ANP will be used to: first, create a model to predict the relative number of attendees to the forthcoming 2009 LASA conference; and second, to create a Benefit-Cost-Risk (BCR) model to select the most suitable Latin American city as the conference site. This paper shows how the combination of these two ANP models, one for prediction and one for selection, can be used together for effective decision-making.