Challenges faced by micro, small, and medium lodgings in Kelantan, Malaysia

The primary objective of this study is to identify the unique business characteristics of micro, small and medium (MSM) enterprises as well as to address issues and challenges faced by these enterprises in the hospitality and tourism business. This exploratory study employed semistructure face-to-face indepth interview methods for data collection. A total of 11 enterprises in Kelantan, Malaysia participated in the study. Nvivo was employed as a tool to analyse the data. The findings imply that MSM enterprises suffer from several obstacles such as financial constraint, high taxes, lack of state government support, the successor replacement and others. The study provides discussions on how hospitality and tourism enterprises can address the challenges faced by their business

For the Benefit of All: Strategic Recommendations to Enhance the State's Role in the Integration of Immigrants in Illinois (Report of the New Americans Policy Council, Year One)

On November 19, 2005, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich signed the New Americans Executive Order, a first-in-the-nation attempt to adopt a coherent, strategic, and proactive state government approach to integrate the rapidly growing immigrant population of Illinois. For this purpose, the Executive Order created a New Americans Policy Council comprised of 24 prominent Illinois business, faith, labor, community, philanthropic, and governmental leaders with experience in this field. While Illinois has undertaken several efforts to advance immigrant integration, neither it nor any other state has developed a comprehensive and strategic integration policy. Given the rapidly evolving demographics; the fast paced changes of an increasingly global economy; and the growing demand for both high-skilled and low-skilled workers; immigrant integration is one of the most overlooked issues of governance. The Policy Council's strategic approach emphasizes strategies that allow immigrants to be empowered to participate to the fullest extent possible in our economic and civic life, while fostering social cohesion with their new neighbors.This is the report of the New Americans Policy Council for the first year of the New Americans Executive Order project, published in 2006

Challenges faced by micro, small, and medium lodgings in Kelantan, Malaysia

The primary objective of this study is to identify the unique business characteristics of micro, small and medium (MSM) enterprises as well as to address issues and challenges faced by these enterprises in the hospitality and tourism business. This exploratory study employed semistructure face-to-face indepth interview methods for data collection. A total of 11 enterprises in Kelantan, Malaysia participated in the study. Nvivo was employed as a tool to analyse the data. The findings imply that MSM enterprises suffer from several obstacles such as financial constraint, high taxes, lack of state government support, the successor replacement and others. The study provides discussions on how hospitality and tourism enterprises can address the challenges faced by their business

Fostering energy awareness in residential homes using mobile devices

There is considerable global effort being made towards identifying ways of reducing energy consumption to cope with growing demands. Although there is potential for energy saving in many sectors, our focus is on reducing energy consumption in residential homes. We have developed a system which combines home automation and energy usage monitoring technologies. The system offers a range of tools designed for mobile devices to assist users with monitoring their energy usage and provides mechanisms for setting up and controlling home appliances to conserve energy. In this paper we describe our system and a user study we have conducted to evaluate its effectiveness. The findings of the study show the potential benefits of this type of mobile technology

Hierarchical Attention Network for Visually-aware Food Recommendation

Food recommender systems play an important role in assisting users to identify the desired food to eat. Deciding what food to eat is a complex and multi-faceted process, which is influenced by many factors such as the ingredients, appearance of the recipe, the user's personal preference on food, and various contexts like what had been eaten in the past meals. In this work, we formulate the food recommendation problem as predicting user preference on recipes based on three key factors that determine a user's choice on food, namely, 1) the user's (and other users') history; 2) the ingredients of a recipe; and 3) the descriptive image of a recipe. To address this challenging problem, we develop a dedicated neural network based solution Hierarchical Attention based Food Recommendation (HAFR) which is capable of: 1) capturing the collaborative filtering effect like what similar users tend to eat; 2) inferring a user's preference at the ingredient level; and 3) learning user preference from the recipe's visual images. To evaluate our proposed method, we construct a large-scale dataset consisting of millions of ratings from AllRecipes.com. Extensive experiments show that our method outperforms several competing recommender solutions like Factorization Machine and Visual Bayesian Personalized Ranking with an average improvement of 12%, offering promising results in predicting user preference for food. Codes and dataset will be released upon acceptance

Worcester Food Hub Commercial Kitchen Profitability

The project determined the profitability of the commercial kitchen at the Worcester Regional Food Hub using market and financial analyses. The market analysis was developed using the results from research, stakeholder interviews, and a public interest survey in Worcester. This analysis revealed there was a high demand for trained culinary professionals, certifications, business classes, and value-added product services in Worcester County. The financial analysis, derived from the estimated costs and revenue of the kitchen, illustrated that the profitability of a commercial kitchen depends on the number of tenants and frequency of use. Other products of this research include recommended pricing schemes, kitchen requirements, culinary programs, marketing, and expansion strategies

A Racial Impact Analysis of HB 32: Minimum Wage Increase

The racial equity impact of HB 32 is important because minorities in Virginia disproportionately work in minimum wage positions. The purpose of this report is to provide a racial impact analysis of House Bill (HB) 32, legislation proposed in the 2014 Virginia General Assembly to increase the minimum wage from $7.25 to$8.50 an hour. According to 2013 data, 1.8 million workers in Virginia are paid hourly rates and 6.8 percent of these workers earn the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Examining fiscal years 2015 to 2020 for the Commonwealth, such an increase would cost$2,712,696. This impact includes the costs to cover additional staff for enforcement of the bill. Moreover, based on data provided by the Department of Human Resource Management, such an increase would also affect 264 salaried employees, costing an additional $296,252. In sum, this report examines the various and differing components surrounding HB 32 and minimum wage from a comprehensive perspective. This report examines why HB 32 failed, analyzes minimum wage versus living wage, and discusses what steps can be taken to promote racial income equality. In addition, this report charts a path forward toward policy that can be implemented legislatively with a positive effect on Virginia’s communities

Greater return on women's enterprise (GROWE) : final report and recommendations of the women's enterprise task force. SEEDA, women’s enterprise task force.

This Women’s Enterprise Task Force (WETF) report, Greater Return On Women’s Enterprise (GROWE), sets out the economic case for women’s enterprise and advises partners and stakeholders how to achieve a greater economic return from investment in women’s enterprise. The Task Force has framed its recommendations to maximise existing investment and resources. We are mindful of the Government’s Business Support Simplification Programme and the effect the recession will continue to have on public spending, and so suggest that relevant Government departments and private sector organisations work together to streamline support and make best use of existing investment. In providing thought leadership to increase the quantity, scalability and success of women’s enterprise in the UK, the WETF has informed the national agenda on women’s enterprise for the last three years, concentrating its efforts on five specific Pillars: 1. gender-disaggregated business data 2. female-friendly business support 3. access to finance and technology 4. supplier diversity and procurement 5. strategic influencing and awareness raising. WETF highlights of the past three years include paving the way for a Business Link national data disaggregation methodology whilst influencing and shaping the establishment, direction and implementation of Aspire, a £12.5m women’s co-investment fund to support high-growth women-owned businesses. Alongside this, the WETF has played an important role in raising awareness of the economic case for women’s enterprise and the potential of female entrepreneurs in aiding the UK’s economic recovery. Perhaps most importantly, the WETF met with the Prime Minister and saw important policy developments taken forward in the Government’s Enterprise Strategy of March 2008. In 2009 the WETF contributed to the enterprise knowledge bank by producing two research reports into women’s enterprise: Impact of the Recession on Women’s Enterprise and Myths and Realities of Women’s Access to Finance. The Task Force welcomes progress made by the Ethnic Minority Business Task Force (EMBTF) in the advocacy of complementary areas which include the need for access to finance, disaggregated data and supplier diversity. Much of the groundwork for the WETF’s work was laid out in the Government’s 2003 publication, A Strategic Framework for Women’s Enterprise. In 2003, it was estimated that women constituted around 27% of self-employed people in the UK, and that only 12-14% of businesses were majority-owned by women (compared to 28% in the USA). From the Strategic Framework for Women’s Enterprise, to the establishment of the WETF and the Enterprise Strategy, Government has shown the importance that it attaches to women in enterprise and its recognition of the increased economic benefits women can contribute to UK plc. This must be even more important in emerging from recession. Recently, Government has a produced a policy statement, Building Britain’s Future: New Industry, New Jobs (NINJ), which sets out Government’s vision for economic recovery and growth by targeted intervention aimed at hightech, high-growth firms. The WETF has several recommendations for how enterprising women can take advantage of these interventions. Enterprise has a significant role to help women remain economically active and increase the productivity and international competitiveness of the UK. Recent figures from 2009 show that women, who make up 46% of the workforce, now constitute nearly 29% of the self-employed in the UK (up 2 percentage points). 15% of the 4.8 million enterprises in the UK are now majority-led by women. The longer-term quantitative targets outlined in the Framework included women accounting for 40% of customers using Government sponsored business support services; and women-owned businesses accounting for 18-20% of the UK total. Government has gone some way towards achieving these targets. Today, women-owned businesses account for around one third of Business Link customers, a major increase on the 22.3% or nearly 150,000 women customers in Q1 of 2005/6. However, overall progress has been very slow and neither of the Framework targets set for completion by 2006 has yet been met. More work needs to be done to address this and the other issues facing women’s enterprise today. This report examines how to further increase the current £70 billion Gross Value Added (GVA) and £130 billion turnover annual contribution made by women’s enterprise to the UK economy. Recent figures suggest that 900,000 more businesses would be created if the UK achieved the same levels of female entrepreneurship as in the US, resulting in an additional £23 billion GVA to the UK economy, thus largely closing the productivity gap with the US.1 In Britain alone, 150,000 extra businesses would be created per annum if women started businesses at the same rate as men.2 This is especially pertinent in this time of recession. With effective, targeted support, increasing the number of women entrepreneurs will be an important factor in driving economic recovery