North American Hotel Research Articles

Examining the impact of tourists’ hope, knowledge and perceived value on online hotel booking intentions

ABSTRACT Research has previously established that tourists assess “attributes’ to appraise the value a hotel may offer before booking online. However, this rational approach overlooks the role emotions may play in the decision-making process. This research examines the positive emotion of hope. Study 1 involved an experiment of 259 North American tourists, confirming the causal relationship between “hope” and “perceived value”. Study 2 involved an online survey of 418 North American hotel guests, demonstrating “brand knowledge” moderates the relationship between hope and guests’ perceived value, leading to booking intentions. These findings contribute new knowledge for tourism practitioners and researchers.

A Comprehensive Review of the North American Hotel Industry: An Application of the Value Chain Model

This study provides an update on the North American hotel industry. It adopts content analysis by analyzing retrieved articles according to the adjusted Porter's value chain model. Major findings showed that most of the previous studies merely investigated one or two topics within the value chain model, and the connections between different types of activities have been largely ignored. Findings on the methodology revealed that nearly 80% of the retrieved articles used primary sources, and more than 85% of these articles applied quantitative data analysis. Future studies should analyze the value chain in its entirety and investigate the relationships among different topics (i.e., interdisciplinary research). Hotel managers may consider the value chain in its entirety and not merely its separate components to facilitate overall strategic decision making.

Procedural corruption in the North American hotel industry

Procedural corruption is the intentional use of legal-rational authority based on formal rules for personal gain instead of organizational goals. The present study builds on the Opportunity-Motivation-Justification framework to examine the outcomes of procedural corruption in service organizations using the example of the hotel industry. Specifically, it uses a multiple case study strategy to investigate journalistic accounts and employee narratives on critical incidents of managerial authority abuse in four North American hotel properties. This study draws upon the cross-case synthesis technique to find subtle, collective, repeat, and multiple procedural offenses in the North American hotel industry. The investigation results lead to further proposition that effect, frequency, participation, and variety are the four dimensions of procedural service outcomes. These findings imply that service technology could represent an antecedent of procedural corruption.

Is there a Benefit from being Green? Assessing Benefits from Marketing Sustainability by North American Hotels

The purpose of this research study was to determine if green hotels actually benefited from undertaking environmental practices and integrating these practices into their marketing strategy. After looking at sustainable communications and marketing literature, a total of 2,248 structured surveys were administered to hotels across North America. Responses from 247 hotels (11% response rate) were analyzed using frequencies, t-tests, and regression analysis to examine significant differences. The results show that the extent to which hotels perceive they benefitted from marketing sustainability practices through guest visits, guest length of stay, guest satisfaction, revenue, profit, and average daily rate can be predicted by examining the extent to which a hotel believes that green marketing has been incorporated into a hotels green marketing strategy. Findings also show that hotels that are a part of the Green Key certification program have a higher perceived probability of attracting new customers and retaining old ones. This study provides support that there is a benefit to sustainability marketing and this study is the first to examine how perceived hotel sustainability management and marketing inform one another and could be beneficial to hotels in how they utilize this information to inform marketing decisions.

Pure diffusion? The great English hotel charges debate in The Times, 1853

This article explores the role of nineteenth century national newspapers and their readers in disseminating management innovations to the English hotel industry. In September 1853, many well-travelled, knowledgeable customers spontaneously wrote letters to The Times complaining about over-priced, uncomfortable English hotels compared to lower-priced, more comfortable European and North American hotels. The letters and editorials from The Times and other national newspapers campaigned for English hotels to adopt international hotel management innovations. The article suggests that this is an early example of pure diffusion in communicating innovations.

Social media usage in hotel human resources: recruitment, hiring and communication

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore the use and non-use of social media (SM) by North American hotels for human resource (HR) activities. Design/methodology/approach – This exploratory study used an online survey and a sampling frame of 1,711 North American hotels with 300 or more rooms, excluding economy properties. With a response rate of 17.1 per cent and a defined population, data were weighted to reflect the midscale, upscale and luxury market classes. Findings – Slightly more than half of North American hotels use SM for HR activities. Higher service level hotels are related to SM HR use generally; midscale properties report higher usage for internal communication. Use of SM in hotel HR is more focused on marketing versus recruitment activities. Research limitations/implications – The generalizability and, therefore, implications are limited to North American hotels, midscale or higher with 300 or more rooms. Future research should complement this broad-based study by delving more deeply into rationale for HR communication over hiring functions for SM and its overall adoption for HR in the hospitality industry. Practical implications – This study provides an understanding of how SM is being used and its perceived usefulness across a variety of HR activities. The findings will inform the application of SM for hotel HR purposes. Originality/value – This is the first empirical study about SM and HR practices in the North American hotel industry.

Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group Maximizes Revenue Through Improved Demand Management and Price Optimization

Under changing market conditions for the hospitality industry, the Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group (CRHG) collaborated with JDA Software Group to use operations research to drive higher revenue for its hoteliers and to stay ahead of the competition. This highly innovative revenue optimization project, Stay Night Automated Pricing (SNAP), started with enterprise demand forecasting across 600 US hotels in 2007. It was followed by a large-scale network optimization solution to dynamically optimize hotel room rates based on price elasticity of demand, competitor rates, availability of remaining inventory, demand forecasts, and business rules. All North American hotels were operational in SNAP by March 2011. Starting from the optimization prototyping results in 2008, CRHG consistently measured a 2–4 percent revenue improvement in compliant hotels over noncompliant ones. To date, compliant hotels have increased revenue by more than $16 million annually. After a successful deployment in the Americas, CRHG extended the partnership with JDA to globally roll out SNAP, with an initial focus on Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific region. CRHG anticipates that the worldwide incremental revenue from this solution will exceed $30 million annually.

Business guests satisfaction in the hotel industry: A case study of North American hotel chains

This paper considers the problem of satisfaction of business guests with hotel brands in North America. In analysis we used the guests responses (scores) given for 12 different elements of hotel product. In order to arrive at more accurate results, monitored hotel chains are grouped into price tiers. The aim of this paper is to indicate what facilities and services the North American business guests appreciate most. Industry trends and results may be beneficial to all hoteliers, especially in business tourism segment.

Strategies for the Implementation of Service Innovations

Implementation strategies are the ways in which information about a new service innovation are shared with those employees who must execute on the innovation. This article examines the relationship between innovation success and the frequency of use of various strategies for the implementation of two specific nationwide service innovations in the North American hotels of a global lodging chain. Cost and service quality–based innovations were found to rely on different implementation strategies, suggesting that the connection between an implementation strategy and success depends on the type of innovation. In the hotel chain studied, the most successful strategy for implementing quality innovations was individual counseling, while rewards and focus groups were most strongly associated with success when implementing cost-based innovations. A mix of execution strategies including implementation by persuasion, leader intervention, participation, and even edict were linked to service innovation success. Participative employee-centered implementation strategies emerged as the most critical in the diffusion of service innovations.

How “green” are North American hotels? An exploration of low-cost adoption practices

This study analyzed the so-called “green,” or environmentally friendly, practices of American hotels. As such, it examined how green hotels in the United States are regarding no-cost or low-cost practices. Respondents included 166 hotels, which were identified through a random sample of hotels from the American Hotel & Lodging Association and included chain and independent properties as well as properties of various sizes (based on the number of rooms). The study findings show that chain hotels were at the time of the study stronger adopters of green practices than independent hotels were, likely due to leveraging economies of scale through uniform corporate practices. In addition, hotels in the Midwest were found to be the most environmentally friendly in terms of their use of no-cost or low-cost green practices. Additional results indicated that size (classified by number of rooms) had little effect on the extent to which hotels were trying to manage energy consumption.

The diffusion of environmental sustainability innovations in North American hotels and ski resorts

This study examines the diffusion of environmental sustainability innovations in North American hotels and ski resorts. It seeks to understand what sustainability innovations are being adopted and the variables affecting the rate of adoption. An electronic survey was distributed to 49 medium/large hotels and ski resorts. Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory was utilized to hypothesize that a hotel/resort manager's perceptions of sustainability would correlate with the adoption of the innovations. Over 4000 published studies have used diffusion of innovations theory to examine the innovation in mass media, public health, sociology, communication and agriculture. Results from this study revealed that the perceived simplicity of sustainability innovations and high levels of opinion leadership of hotels/resorts were most strongly associated with the adoption of sustainability innovations. The perceived relative advantage of sustainability innovations and the general innovativeness of the hotels/resorts also correlated to some extent with the adoption of innovations leading to increased sustainability. Sustainability communication must emphasize simplicity and ease of adopting sustainability innovations to increase the rate of adoption. The findings provide useful theoretical knowledge and advice for change agents, opinion leaders and suppliers in the resort industry on how to further diffuse sustainability in the sector.

Assessing the value of good design in hotels

The relation between building design, user satisfaction, and property financial and marketing performance is explored in hotels to quantify the effect that good design has on performance and to inform business decision-making. The physical environment is a significant product for the hotel industry as it satisfies customer needs and generates valuable repeat business; employees also provide services that are utilitarian in nature but provide hedonic benefits to guests. The Design Quality Indicator (DQI) tool was adapted to measure design in 30 North American hotels constituting part of a well-known brand. Guest and employee assessments of design were obtained, and the relationships between design and hotel industry performance indicators such as a property's average daily rate (ADR), revenue per available room (RevPAR), and occupancy indices were analysed. The analysis quantifies the positive relationships between design quality, financial and market share performance, and satisfaction with the building. The links between design Impact perceptions and ADR and RevPAR are particularly notable. Based on this and continuing research, the aim is the development of a robust method for predicting the economic and market value of renovations, using a version of the DQI tailored to meet the needs of the lodging industry. L'auteur analyse les relations qui existent entre conception du bâtiment, satisfaction de l'utilisateur et performances financières et commerciales du bien en ce qui concerne des hôtels afin de quantifier l'effet d'une bonne conception sur les performances et d'informer les décisionnaires. L'environnement physique est un produit significatif pour l'industrie hôtelière car il répond aux besoins de la clientèle et contribue à sa fidélisation; le personnel fournit également des services de nature utilitaire mais qui apportent à la clientèle des avantages hédonistiques. L'indicateur de la qualité de la conception (DQI) est un outil qui a été adapté pour mesurer la conception de 30 hôtels d'Amérique du Nord appartenant à une enseigne connue. La clientèle et le personnel ont évalué la conception et on a analysé les relations entre les indicateurs de performance de la conception et de l'industrie hôtelière, comme le tarif quotidien moyen de l'établissement (ADR), le revenu par chambre disponible (RevPAR), ainsi que les indices d'occupation. Cette analyse quantifie les relations positives entre la qualité de la conception, les performances financières et la part de marché ainsi que la satisfaction donnée par le bâtiment. Les liens entre la perception de l'impact de la conception et l'ADR et le RevPAR sont particulièrement intéressants. Sur cette base et en poursuivant les recherches, l'objectif est d'élaborer une méthode de prévision de la valeur économique et commerciale des rénovations en utilisant une version du DQI adapté aux besoins de l'industrie hôtelière. Mots clés: qualité de la construction, conception des bâtiments, Indicateurs de la qualité de la conception (DQI), performances financières, industrie hôtelière, valeur de l'impact, décision d'investissement, satisfaction des utilisateurs, rénovation

Expectations of Working Relationships in International Buyer–Seller Relationships: Development of a Relationship Continuum Scale

This study is an attempt to develop a scale to measure expectations of buyer–seller working relationships on a cross-cultural basis in the hospitality industry. The focus is on North American and Asian hotel salespeople. The scale development drew from previous research in guanxi relationships, purchasing, and selling strategies. While the results did not support a reliable unidimensional scale that could distinguish between transactional and collaborative working relationships, the methodology did create a framework for further scale development.

The current balance of power in North American hotel management contracts

This paper discusses the current status of relations between branded hotel operators and owners of lodging assets. Although increasingly sophisticated hotel owners have gained greater input into the process of creating value for their hotel assets, there remains a fundamental misalignment of interest between operators driven to increase the number of rooms comprising the brand and the owner's objective of maximising returns from individual assets. This tension is explored by contrasting the views of the branded operator and the owner towards six management contract provisions critical to the operating flexibility and economic value of hotels: contract duration, fees and fee structures, operator financial contributions, performance clauses, termination provisions and budgetary and spending limitations. As the discussion of each provision suggests, the evolution of North American hotel management contracts over the last 30 plus years has yielded a degree of standardisation in how the provisions are structured, reducing some of the frustration felt by both parties to the agreement. The current balance of power, however, represents détente rather than a resolution of the underlying misalignment.

Determining the Corporate Meeting Planner's Role in the Convention and Meeting Site Decision

Abstract North American hotel companies that have expanded their presence into Asia have been ineffective in transferring their convention, conference, and meeting sales expertise through their existing sales training programs to their Asian sales force. The key to making the training efforts more global lies in recognizing the factors affecting the relationship between final decision makers and their corporate meeting planner. A conceptual model is presented that serves as the basis for developing additional sales training modules to more effectively assimilate the North American sales training program into Asia. The model incorporates (a) the company's degree of decentralization and formalization, (b) the executive level manager's stakeholding and participation in the decision process, and (c) the organizational culture of the company as affected by national culture.

Group forecasting accuracy in hotels

Yield management helps hotels more profitably manage the capacity of their rooms. Hotels tend to have two types of business: transient and group. Yield management research and systems have been designed for transient business in which the group forecast is taken as a given. In this research, forecast data from approximately 90 hotels of a large North American hotel chain were used to determine the accuracy of group forecasts and to identify factors associated with accurate forecasts. Forecasts showed a positive bias and had a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 40% at two months before arrival; 30% at one month before arrival; and 10–15% on the day of arrival. Larger hotels, hotels with a higher dependence on group business, and hotels that updated their forecasts frequently during the month before arrival had more accurate forecasts.

What Motivates Hong Kong's Hotel Employees?

Asked to rank ten job-related factors that might motivate them in their jobs, a sample of 1,245 hotel employees in Hong Kong listed the following three factors as uppermost: (1) opportunities for advancement and development, (2) loyalty to employees (company treats them with respect and trust), and (3) good wages. While the specific rankings of the top motivating factors changed slightly from department to department, the top factors were remarkably consistent. Moreover, Hong Kong hotel employees had more in common with North American hotel workers than either group did with U.S. manufacturing workers.

Maternal Iconography and Nation Building in Alice Cary's "Mrs. Walden's Confidant"

In Walden Thoreau famously observes that men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have.[1] Five years later the well-known Ohio-born writer and poet Alice Cary published a short story whose title (no doubt unintentionally) echoes Thoreau's famous work but takes issue with many of its values. In Mrs. Walden's Confidant (1859) Cary concludes that women are spiritually impoverished when they don't think they must have a house like their neighbors': good citizenship and spiritual development require competitive housekeeping. Cary's parable of republican motherhood takes place on the Fourth of July for the same reason that Thoreau occupied his cabin on that date in 1845: like Walden it engages the relationships among independence, materialism, national growth, and personal fulfillment. proprietary ease with which Thoreau lets drop the date of his occupancy suggests intimacy with national mythology, a cozy relationship between writer and reader about the meaning of Independence Day. In Mrs. Walden's Confidant, however, this relationship is complicated by the main character's exclusion from the plot of ascending power that drives Independence Day orations, Walden, and classic narratives of the rise from small beginnings alike. When Ben Franklin describes his arrival in Philadelphia in the Autobiography, for example, he revels in his sorry condition because it permits the reader to compare such unlikely beginnings with the figure I have since made there. And he is careful to both include and contain his future wife's role by defining her as a witness rather than participant in this figure's construction: as he passes her house he notes that she, standing at the door, thought I made -- as I certainly did -- a most awkward, ridiculous appearance.[2] Miss Read is the perfect witness to Mr. Franklin's life narrative, but she has little else to do with it. In Mrs. Walden's Confidant, however, Cary explores how women can get beyond this impasse by becoming readers -- and writers their own stories, and how within certain limitations they can govern narratives of exclusion and even victimization. In so doing she offers instructive lesson about the perils and rewards of the antebellum woman's participation in nation building and a forceful I alternative to canonical narratives of auto-american-biography[3] and their fictional counterparts. Mrs. Walden's Confidant takes place in and near a small Ohio village whose rapid growth is presented as representative of both Western expansion and national prosperity: it is the nation's most flattering vision of itself in miniature. The soil was productive, and there was abundance of wood, water and stone; fine clay for making bricks; besides other advantages which made the farmers about naturally a little proud -- and this pride extended from their possessions to the property of their neighbors.[4] There is talk of a seminary and some half-dozen new dwellings and a third story is planned for the North American Hotel, for which the owner has commissioned a sign neatly summarizing the community's aspirations: an eagle soaring towards the sun, with the motto beneath, 'upward and onward' (p. 291). Thus the story's first few pages present the familiar typology of America as a rising country. Indeed, as the story opens, the village prepares for a general celebration of the Fourth of July to culminate in a procession lead by two of the of the oldest men in the neighborhood -- real Revolutionary soldiers (p. 291) bearing the American flag and flanked by little girls with baskets of flowers. nation is young enough to exhibit its still-living liberators, yet old enough to strike out on its own: youth and age are happy companions. Waldens are a notable exception to the generally celebratory air. Their farm is plainly in view, not only of the steeple and the liberty pole, but also of the people gathering in front of the hotel (pp. …

The North American hotel as publisher, bookseller and librarian

The North American hotel as publisher, bookseller and librarian

Irrational Behavior and Economic Theory

Irrational Behavior and Economic Theory