Tourism Industry Professionals Research Articles

Проблеми та перспективи розвитку туризму та підготовки туристичних кадрів в Українському Придунав’ї

This article includes problems and prospects of tourisms development and training of tourisms personnel of Ukrainian Pridunavia Also this article identifies priority areas for tourisms development in the region. Tourism personnel training in management of tourism expedience in State Humanities Institute of Ismail. Key words tourisms, Ukrainian Pridunavia, potential, tourism industry professionals, management of tourism.

Exploratory Space–time Analysis of Inbound Tourism Flows to China Cities

ABSTRACTThe integration of space and time generates much closer interactions between geography and other social sciences in general while providing new perspectives for the role of geography in tourism flow studies. This paper aims to apply exploratory space–time analysis to provide insights into inbound tourism flow patterns in China's cities over the period of 2000–2009 using city‐level Geographical Information System datasets. First, this paper ascertains that there exists geographic neighborhood effect at city level by testifying significantly positive spatial autocorrelation. The hot spots and temporal stability are identified. The hot spots are locally concentrated in metropolitan areas. Local Markov matrix has also shown significant transitions with negative or positive influence of geographic neighbors upon a city. Specifically, three‐dimensional surface is created to visualize tourism flows. The spatial inequalities have the pattern of ‘the east more dense than the west, the south more dense than the north’. There simultaneously exist spatial agglomeration and spatial dispersion. The intensity of spatial agglomeration has become stronger. At the same time, smaller peaks of tourism flow centers developed around the main cities and spread toward surrounding cities. These potential tourism flow centers have gradually emerged and grown larger. Furthermore, the space–time covariance matrix uncovers correlation, which shows strong regional integration over years. Eight hundred and ninety links are identified and visualized. Two hundred and sixty nine links forming 10 spatial clusters represent strong positive correlation. One hundred and thirty‐four links are negative correlation, which is about 15.06 per cent of all links. In conclusion, our comprehensive evidences offer deeper insights and have important policy implications. These enable the tourism‐oriented governmental agencies, as well as the tourism industry professionals, to better understand the changes of inbound tourism flows in China's cities and relevant tourism partners/competitors for cities. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Quantified Triple Bottom Line for Tourism

The tradition of tourism businesses and regional tourism industries is to measure their value to the host community by jobs, wages, and tax revenues even though every member of that community is affected on a daily basis through a broad variety of impacts. This article demonstrates a conceptual approach for measuring the relative importance of the major dimensions of community quality of life that can be influenced by the tourism industry in order to calculate an indication of overall impact on the well-being of community residents. Furthermore, we have formulated an example conjoint model that values this overall performance in monetary units. This model is successfully implemented using samples of college students and tourism industry professionals in the United States and Cyprus. A monetary version of triple bottom line impacts is calculated for the impacts of changes to a specific hypothetical tourism business. Recommendations are made for the extension and application of this approach to implementing sustainable tourism.

Destination Branding and Images: Perceptions and Practices from Tourism Industry Professionals

The intensified competition among convention cities has created an increasing interest for cities to better understand how to market themselves as a convention destination. A city's image is one of the highest indicators of its success as a convention location. It becomes imperative for each city to specifically analyze its strengths and weaknesses. Because there is a lack of literature regarding medium-sized convention cities, this study compares Knoxville, Tennessee to other similarly populated cities in the southeastern United States. The perceived importance of city attributes and the tourism professional's perception of the strengths and weaknesses of the particular city as a convention destination are based on the years of experience of the tourism professional in the industry and participants' demographic characteristics. The sample of the study was industry professionals that attended the Tennessee Governor's Conference on Tourism held in Knoxville in September 2006. Implications from this study may be used to improve the competitive position of Knoxville as a convention destination.

Applying Importance–Performance Analysis for Japanese Senior Travelers to Hawaii

Seniors are a growing segment among Japanese outbound travelers. Given that Hawaii is one of the most visited destinations by Japanese travelers, it is expected that the proportion of seniors will continue to grow in accordance with social trends of aging adults in Japan. The purpose of this article is to examine the satisfaction of Japanese senior travelers based on their expectations of important destination attributes of the Hawaiian Islands in relation to the travelers' performance judgment of these attributes. This study employs an Importance–Performance Analysis (IPA) to determine critical attributes of this destination. A focus group with tourism industry professionals resulted in 15 distinct attributes of Hawaii as a tourist destination. Respondents rated the importance level of each attribute on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = not important to 6 = extremely important. In addition, respondents evaluated Hawaii's performance of these same destination attributes on another 6-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 = very poor to 6 = excellent. Questions also focused on the travelers' trip-related characteristics and demographics. Respondents were selected from Japanese travelers who were 20 years or older, and had visited Hawaii for pleasure travel. Of the 211 questionnaires collected, 73 of the surveys were completed by Japanese travelers over the age of 50. Of this group, senior travelers were mostly satisfied with the destination attributes of Hawaii, specifically those factors that were related to Hawaii's natural resources as well as the characteristics related to a comfortable trip. Interestingly, the features related to physical activities such as golfing, water sports, and outdoor activities were not viewed as important travel destination attributes for Hawaii for both seniors and the younger Japanese travelers. On the other hand, improvement in local transportation and accommodations were destination attributes that travelers felt needed attention. These results provide some useful insights for developing effective marketing strategies to attract Japanese senior travelers to Hawaii, as well as the usefulness of using the IPA methodology.

Defining training needs of five‐star hotel personnel: an application in the Antalya Region of Turkey

PurposeTo provide an useful way for tourism industry professionals regarding defining training needs of hotel personnel and noting the interests of hotel managers in the training subject.Design/methodology/approachQuestionnaire technique was used both for superiors and staff in a sampled five‐star hotel in Antalya. For statistical evaluation the SPSS program was used.FindingsAccording to the combination of the scoring table used in questionnaire, the training areas given before and in the sampled hotel, for superiors and staff most suggested are; organizational structure, management and organization, communication, motivation, accounting‐budgeting, foreign languages (German, English and French) and customer relations.Research limitations/implicationsIt is not possible to generalize the findings for all five‐star hotels in Antalya, but this study can be evaluated as a starting point in defining training needs of hotel personnel. In addition to this, much more researches must be done may be in other parts of Turkey in order to compare the results of this study.Practical implicationsUseful information in orienting tourism professionals to defining needs. Beside this study benefiting from managerial observations and forming of focus groups can be suggested.Originality/valueThe findings can be seen as a practical implications for tourism professionals and academicians as well.

Job satisfaction of managers in tourism

PurposeTo investigate job satisfaction of middle and upper level managers working in 5‐star hotels and first‐class holiday villages and to note interests of tourism professionals regarding the subject of job satisfaction.Design/methodology/approachQuestionnaire technique was used for the sample of 102 middle‐ and upper‐level managers. For data evaluation SPSS program was used. T‐tests, correlation, Anova and Scheffe tests were carried out.FindingsAccording to the findings it can be mentioned that there is a general satisfaction among middle‐ and upper‐level managers in the sample. This finding can be evaluated as being hopeful according to Turkey's working conditions. In Turkey, generally personnel have long working hours, poor physical working conditions, lack of support from their colleagues and by international standards, insufficient salaries. Therefore the research findings are surprising.Research limitations/implicationsThe results are limited within the sampled middle‐ and upper‐level managers in 5‐star hotels and first‐class holiday villages, so the results cannot be generalized.Practical implicationsThis study can be evaluated as useful information for tourism industry professionals regarding the subject of job satisfaction.

Individual learning and organization culture in learning organizations

PurposeTo investigate nine organizational dimensions that enable individual learning in hotel establishments and to note interests of tourism professionals to the learning of organizations subject.Design/methodology/approachQuestionnaire technique was used for the sample of 129 staff working in three different five‐star hotels in Antalya. For data evaluation, SPSS program was used.FindingsAccording to the findings, the highest pure value and variance explanation rated dimension was that of behavior of superiors. This result shows the importance and role of superiors in hotel establishments. In addition to this, the majority of the sampled staff engaged in teamworking and made dialogue with colleagues, but with some considerable occurrence; sampled staff rarely had training and rewards.Research limitations/implicationsThe results are limited within the sampled staff working in three different five‐star hotels, so the results cannot be generalized, but the scale in the study can be used in other researches.Originality/valueThis study can be evaluated as useful information and guidance for tourism industry professionals regarding learning of organizations.

The Effect of Length of Stay on Travelers' Perceived Satisfaction with Service Quality

SUMMARY Consumer satisfaction related to service quality during the vacation experience is of paramount importance to the travel and tourism industry. This study tests empirically the effects the number of nights spent on a vacation have on the levels of satisfaction recent travelers report for three service aspects of the travel destination: perceived satisfaction with tourism service providers; perceived “freedom from defects” of tourism services; and perceived reasonableness of the cost of tourism services. Differentiation in satisfaction scores between “short-term visitors” (i.e., those who stayed from one to six nights) and “long-term visitors” (i.e., those who stayed seven or more nights) were examined. Significant differences between the two groups of visitors were present for (1) perceived satisfaction with industry professionals delivering the service experience at the travel destination, (2) perceived satisfaction with “freedom from defects” of the actual services at the destination, and (3) perceived reasonableness of the cost of services at the travel destination. Suggestions for how tourism industry professionals can make use of this information are presented.

Critical Success Factors for Wine Tourism

Generic factors influencing the development and marketing of wine tourism, both in destinations and at wineries, are examined. Results of surveys of wine and tourism industry professionals in Australia and in Washington State, USA, are presented, enabling identification of critical success factors. These are grouped as quality (of wine, service and experiences), wine country appeal, winery appeal, and developmental and marketing factors. Agreement on certain critical success factors did emerge, with quality considered to be the most important success factor, but some significant differences existed between respondents from the two countries examined. Recommendations for ongoing research on wine tourism are made.