Examination of Regional Transit Service Under Contracting: A Case Study in the Greater New Orleans Region, Research Report 10-09

Many local governments and transit agencies in the United States face financial difficulties in providing adequate public transit service in individual systems, and in providing sufficient regional coordination to accommodate transit trips involving at least one transfer between systems. These difficulties can be attributed to the recent economic downturn, continuing withdrawal of the state and federal funds that help support local transit service, a decline in local funding for transit service in inner cities due to ongoing suburbanization, and a distribution of resources that responds to geographic equity without addressing service needs. This study examines two main research questions: (1) the effect of a “delegated management” contract on efficiency and effectiveness within a single transit system, and (2) the effects of a single private firm—contracted separately by more than one agency in the same region—on regional coordination, exploring the case in Greater New Orleans. The current situation in New Orleans exhibits two unique transit service conditions. First, New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) executed a “delegated management” contract with a multinational private firm, outsourcing more functions (e.g., management, planning, funding) to the contractor than has been typical in the U.S. Second, as the same contractor has also been contracted by another transit agency in an adjacent jurisdiction—Jefferson Transit (JeT), this firm may potentially have economic incentives to improve regional coordination, in order to increase the productivity and effectiveness of its own transit service provision. Although the limited amount of available operation and financial data has prevented us from drawing more definitive conclusions, the findings of this multifaceted study should provide valuable information on a transit service contracting approach new to the U.S.: delegated management. This study also identified a coherent set of indices with which to evaluate the regional coordination of transit service, the present status of coordination among U.S. transit agencies, and barriers that need to be resolved for regional transit coordination to be successful

Visitors to the city of Évora: Who are they?

Nowadays, driven by multiple factors, tourist demand presents patterned behaviour which is subdivided into several typologies according to destination, product consumed and visitor profile features. In the case of cultural tourism, a good example is that of historic cities, which have their own cultural identity and heritage, and compete to make themselves different from one another through many marketing strategies. This study presents the profile of visitors to the World Heritage City of Évora, including their travel motivations and level of satisfaction with the attributes. Subsequently, the main purpose of this study is to determine the cultural profile of visitors to the World Heritage City of Évora. The data collection technique applied was a visitor survey. The process adopted for the sample definition was a probabilistic sampling, namely the adoption of a stratified sampling plan, by place of residence. Further analysis shows that the most important motivations for visitors in selecting Évora are leisure, heritage/monuments and having a new cultural experience. However they indicate the fact that Évora is considered World Heritage City by UNESCO did influence the decision to visit this destination. Several findings provide the opportunity to establish adequate managerial and marketing strategies to suit the needs of the visitors

Toward the future of global corporate travel management

This study aims to develop the global corporate travel management. In details, it reflected the current challenges in travel programme of buyers, discovered future scenarios of business travel and recommended strategic short and long-term actions. The study used qualitative approach to recognize challenges in corporate travel management. Interviews with sourcing and travel managers/assistants from three same size corporate buyers were conducted in October, 2017. Additionally, scenarios were built based on conventional intuitive logics method. Therein, 88 macro-economic and industrial trends were identified through secondary research. Discussions were organized with experts to rank the trends. Main findings from empirical research are a list of challenges in corporate travel management. Additionally, four scenarios “Demand More”, “Brand New”, “More Opportunities” and “No Surprise” were created based on two driven factors: The distribution of airlines standard network in the market share and intensity of tailored made travel services. In each scenario, proposed main travel solutions providers are travel agencies, direct booking aggregators and travel agencies, the internet, and GDS operators respectively. At the end, short and long-term strategic actions such as rewarding travellers when savings and driving toward traveller-centricity were recommended. The study contributed new aspects to the academic world. It built four future scenarios of business travel from corporate buyer’s perspective. After that, it presented scenarios implications and strategic actions for stakeholders. Such approach was not commonly used in previous studies. Besides, the study identified new participant - NDC aggregators – and new roles of GDS operators and metasearch engine in business travel distribution channels. In practice, the study tackled real business issue. It recognized the challenges and gave solutions to improve corporate travel management through short-term actions. Four scenarios and their implications mitigate the consequences of changes and clarify the managers concern. Lastly, long-term strategy navigates the global corporate travel management, at the same time, gradually changes the mindset of manager in suppliers’ negotiation and travel management

Residential Self-Selection and Travel:

Most Western national governments aim to influence individual travel patterns – at least to some degree – through the spatial planning of residential areas. Nevertheless, the extent to which the characteristics of the built environment influence travel behaviour remains the subject of debate among travel behaviour researchers. This work addresses the role of residential-self-selection, an important issue within this debate. Households may not only adjust their travel behaviour to the built environment where they live, but they may also choose a residential location that corresponds to their travel-related attitudes. The empirical analysis in this work is based on data collected through an internet survey and a GPS-based survey, both of which were conducted among homeowners in three centrally located municipalities in the Netherlands. The study showed that residential self-selection has some limited effect on the relationship between distances to activity locations and travel mode use and daily kilometres travelled. The results also indicate that the inclusion of attitudes can help to detecting residential self-selection, provided that studies comply with several preconditions, such as the inclusion of the ‘reversed’ influence of behaviour on attitudes

From post-consumption experience evaluation to online generated content and intensification

En el contexto de los museos, el presente trabajo analiza hasta qué punto la evaluación de la experiencia in situ (satisfacción y valor percibido) que realizan los visitantes refuerza sus comportamientos online a corto plazo (consultar y generar contenido online). Sobre la base de la teoría del equilibrio y de la teoría del nivel óptimo de estimulación, proponemos la existencia de un efecto de la evaluación de la experiencia que adoptará forma de U invertida sobre la intensificación y forma de U sobre la intención de generar contenido online después de la visita. Los resultados indican que la satisfacción fomenta la intención de consumir más contenido, mientras que la percepción de haber alcanzado el máximo valor lo limita (efecto U invertida). Por otro lado, si bien la satisfacción y la percepción de una visita rentable motivan a los visitantes a publicar comentarios, las malas experiencias en los museos no tienen ningún impacto en la generación de contenido online.In the context of museums, this paper analyses to what extent visitor evaluation of the in situ experience (satisfaction and perceived value) drives their short-term online behaviours (visiting online content and generating content in online sites). On the basis of the balance theory and on the optimal stimulation level theory, it proposes that the evaluation of the experience has an inverted U-effect on visit intensification while a U-effect on the intention to generate content after the visit. Findings indicate that satisfaction fosters the intention to consume further content, while the perception of having gained the maximum value limits it (inverted U-effect). On the other hand, while satisfaction and the perception of a profitable visit motivate visitors to post online comments, poor experiences in museums have no impact on the generation of online content

Artificial Intelligence based multi-agent control system

Le metodologie di Intelligenza Artificiale (AI) si occupano della possibilità di rendere le macchine in grado di compiere azioni intelligenti con lo scopo di aiutare l’essere umano; quindi è possibile affermare che l’Intelligenza Artificiale consente di portare all’interno delle macchine, caratteristiche tipiche considerate come caratteristiche umane. Nello spazio dell’Intelligenza Artificiale ci sono molti compiti che potrebbero essere richiesti alla macchina come la percezione dell’ambiente, la percezione visiva, decisioni complesse. La recente evoluzione in questo campo ha prodotto notevoli scoperte, princi- palmente in sistemi ingegneristici come sistemi multi-agente, sistemi in rete, impianti, sistemi veicolari, sistemi sanitari; infatti una parte dei suddetti sistemi di ingegneria è presente in questa tesi di dottorato. Lo scopo principale di questo lavoro è presentare le mie recenti attività di ricerca nel campo di sistemi complessi che portano le metodologie di intelligenza artifi- ciale ad essere applicati in diversi ambienti, come nelle reti di telecomunicazione, nei sistemi di trasporto e nei sistemi sanitari per la Medicina Personalizzata. Gli approcci progettati e sviluppati nel campo delle reti di telecomunicazione sono presentati nel Capitolo 2, dove un algoritmo di Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning è stato progettato per implementare un approccio model-free al fine di controllare e aumentare il livello di soddisfazione degli utenti; le attività di ricerca nel campo dei sistemi di trasporto sono presentate alla fine del capitolo 2 e nel capitolo 3, in cui i due approcci riguardanti un algoritmo di Reinforcement Learning e un algoritmo di Deep Learning sono stati progettati e sviluppati per far fronte a soluzioni di viaggio personalizzate e all’identificazione automatica dei mezzi trasporto; le ricerche svolte nel campo della Medicina Personalizzata sono state presentate nel Capitolo 4 dove è stato presentato un approccio basato sul controllo Deep Learning e Model Predictive Control per affrontare il problema del controllo dei fattori biologici nei pazienti diabetici.Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a science that deals with the problem of having machines perform intelligent, complex, actions with the aim of helping the human being. It is then possible to assert that Artificial Intelligence permits to bring into machines, typical characteristics and abilities that were once limited to human intervention. In the field of AI there are several tasks that ideally could be delegated to machines, such as environment aware perception, visual perception and complex decisions in the various field. The recent research trends in this field have produced remarkable upgrades mainly on complex engineering systems such as multi-agent systems, networked systems, manufacturing, vehicular and transportation systems, health care; in fact, a portion of the mentioned engineering system is discussed in this PhD thesis, as most of them are typical field of application for traditional control systems. The main purpose if this work is to present my recent research activities in the field of complex systems, bringing artificial intelligent methodologies in different environments such as in telecommunication networks, transportation systems and health care for Personalized Medicine. The designed and developed approaches in the field of telecommunication net- works is presented in Chapter 2, where a multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm was designed to implement a model-free control approach in order to regulate and improve the level of satisfaction of the users, while the research activities in the field of transportation systems are presented at the end of Chapter 2 and in Chapter 3, where two approaches regarding a Reinforcement Learning algorithm and a Deep Learning algorithm were designed and developed to cope with tailored travels and automatic identification of transportation moralities. Finally, the research activities performed in the field of Personalized Medicine have been presented in Chapter 4 where a Deep Learning and Model Predictive control based approach are presented to address the problem of controlling biological factors in diabetic patients

Assessment of tourism marketing strategy in tourism destination: A case study in Bale Mountain National Park-Bale Zone

Marketing strategies are among the factors which slow up Ethiopian tourism in general and BMNP in particular from rewarding its tourism potential. So far, various studies attempted to study on “impact of tourism on the economic growth”, “Tourism as Tools for Promoting Sustainability” and “Tourism Development” has been done in Ethiopia, and no study is conducted on assessment of marketing strategies for tourism promotion in Ethiopia particularly in BMNPto the best ofthe researcher’s knowledge. Thus this study was envisaged with the objective of examining strategic marketing, marketing mixes elements devised for strategic marketing and challenges to implement marketing strategy of BMNP Bale Zone, East Ethiopia. In order to achieve the objective of the study, both qualitative and quantitative research method were being used and the most important data were sourced by primary and secondary data.Primary data were collected from 24 employees of the park which were selected purposely from tourism department and 157 foreign and domestic tourists by using convenience sampling. The quantitative data was analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation when appropriate while qualitative data was used to substantiate the study. On the basis of the analysis of the data which was collected during the interview and surveys, the study revealed that Bale Mountain National Park has abundance of opportunities of ecotourism attraction. But its effective practice and implementation of marketing strategies is not promising due to Current international perceptions of Ethiopia, lack of manpower, Standard accommodations, financial problems and support of government body. Differentiation strategy is adopted to promote tourism attraction and the park is recognized as Premium Park with “one park many worlds” slogan by considering abundances of tourism attraction as a competitive advantage over other park within and out of the country. However the selected strategy is not effective due to lack of the organization marketing ability like promotion and distribution. As a result the park fails to communicate its tourism potential to the target market. Finally it is not enough that the country possesses a potential for becoming a covetable tourist destination. To turn that possibility into reality, marketing is a pre-condition

Modelação da escolha de destinos turísticos : uma análise de posicionamento

Doutoramento em TurismoOs elevados impactes económicos do turismo têm sido crescentemente reconhecidos em todo o mundo. Os responsáveis pelo desenvolvimento e promoção do turismo investem esforço e recursos consideráveis para levar as pessoas a visitarem determinados destinos. Nas últimas décadas, foi feito algum progresso ao nível da compreensão do modo como os potenciais turistas seleccionam um destino turístico. No entanto, pouco se sabe sobre o modo como os visitantes comparam os destinos que consideram visitar e sobre a razão porque escolhem visitar um determinado destino em vez de outros que também consideraram visitar. O objectivo desta tese é contribuir para um melhor conhecimento dos critérios utilizados para comparar os destinos que as pessoas consideram visitar. Procede-se a uma revisão de literatura pertinente sobre o posicionamento de destinos turísticos e modelos de escolha de destinos. No sentido de expandir os contributos fornecidos por outros autores, um novo modelo de escolha de destinos é proposto e parcialmente testado. O objectivo é fornecer um modelo que incorpore alguns aspectos relacionados com o posicionamento que foram negligenciados em anteriores modelos de selecção de destinos. O novo modelo incorpora explicitamente uma análise de posicionamento num modelo do processo de selecção dos destinos. Este modelo expande as contribuições de modelos anteriores por integrar determinantes do posicionamento de destinos que não foram considerados em outros modelos, bem como por testar empiricamente relações entre determinantes do posicionamento que foram negligenciadas anteriormente. O modelo revisto também sugere que a influência dos determinantes do posicionamento pode mudar ao longo do processo de selecção dos destinos.The extensive economic impacts of tourism have been increasingly recognised worldwide. People engaged in tourism development and tourism promotion invest considerable effort and resources into attracting people to visit destinations. In recent decades, progress has been made into better understanding how potential tourists select a destination. However, little is known about how visitors compare destinations they consider visiting, and why they choose to visit one destination rather than others they have considered. The aim of this thesis is to improve understanding about the criteria used to compare the destinations people consider visiting. Literature pertinent to the positioning of tourism destinations and destination choice models is reviewed. To extend the contribution provided by others, a new model of destination choice is proposed and partially tested. The objective is to provide a model that incorporates some features relating to positioning which have been neglected in previous destination selection models. The new model explicitly incorporates positioning analysis into a model of how destinations are selected. This model extends the contributions of previous models by integrating determinants of the positioning of destinations disregarded in other models, as well as by empirically testing proposed interrelationships between determinants that have been previously neglected. The revised model also suggests that the influence of determinants of positioning may change across the process of selecting destinations

Tourism experience co-creation: a service-dominant logic-driven model.

336 p.For some time now, new marketing paradigms are trying to set aside traditional and product-focused views of management and marketing strategies. Technological challenges, volatile customer needs, and alternative marketing application subjects and fields have pushed the discipline of marketing towards more adapted and generalizable marketing perspectives, leaving behind the long-established four Ps of marketing (Product, Place, Promotion, Price) and similar. These new paradigms emphasize especially the active role of customers in value creation, the inherent service-for-service nature of exchanges, the relevance of multisided resources, the formation of both planned and unintentional institutionally handled networks, and the interest on `experiences'. Among the propositions found, value co-creation is one of the most appealing and recurring. However, the lack of specification has transformed co-creation into an overused interpretation, a jumble of many different ideas (e.g., co-production, interactions, citizenship behaviors), and a concept at risk of turning into an "all and nothing"-type useless expression. Therefore, we need first, a conceptual underlying support that would lead the definition and implications of co-creation, and second, a practical backing that would demonstrate its empirical and contextual convenience.The objective of this study is to provide an empirical and context-driven approach of value co-creation, based on the service-dominant logic (SDL). In the conceptual concern, we believe that though in a meta-theoretical level, SDL provides a well-founded baseline framework for value co-creation, supplying a complete narrative and a number of premises centered on a comprehensive view of value co-creation. In the empirical concern, we chose place marketing in general and tourism in particular to situate our co-creation framework. Specifically, the research is focused on the tourism experience co-creation, which is thought to match the investigation requirements due to the experiential character of vacations, the multiple actors involved along the whole travel-related process, the main position of tourists in value creation, and the need of a marketing cut off from the traditional and commercial views in the tourism field.The study carries out an extensive and systematic literature review about value co-creation, SDL and similar concepts in place marketing, including urban, hospitality and destination environments. The literature review is then used, together with the SDL assumptions, to build an extended conceptual model of tourism experience co-creation, including antecedents and outcomes, represented by tourist and destination resources, and by functional, emotional, and social value dimensions, respectively. Value co-creation is defined as service exchange and resource integration represented by a set of tourist-driven processes, including interactional, behavioral, attitudinal, and mental processes before, during, and after the travel experience. Results show that tourist's specific travel-related knowledge and skills facilitate value co-creation processes, especially those connected with self-arrangement behaviors. At the same time, tourist co-creation processes are found to affect predominantly the emotional and social value dimensions, even more than destination resources. On the contrary, the latter positively affect the functional value of the experience. Among the co-creation processes, interactional and behavioral processes influence the tourism experience value perceived by the consumer. Concretely, interaction with local people is found to be one of the most influential. Mental co-creation processes deserve especial attention. Memorability is found to significantly and positively affect value, as well as representing a moderator role between other co-creative processes and value. This means that recalling the lived experience helps increasing the tourist's perceived value. On the contrary, attitudinal processes related to customer citizenship behaviors do not present any relevance. Therefore, the study contributes mostly in four aspects. First, an exhaustive literature review of place marketing co-creation allows acknowledging the efforts made previously on the field, in terms of identifying the different co-creation approaches, and registering the scarce variables used to precisely measure value co-creation (proxies are prevailing). Second, a verified measurement tool of value co-creation set up on a conceptually-based definition and composed of nine variables contributes to unfold the black box of "service exchange and resource integration". Third, the proposition and testing of various study hypotheses build on an expertise co-creation processes value chain helps identifying the most relevant tourist co-creation processes that increase perceived value, thus assisting destination and hospitality managers. Fourth, the two-phase data collection methodology used in the empirical part of the study provides a more rigorous research method that encourages alternative information gathering processes

How many days? A comparison of the quality of time-use data from 2-day and 7-day diaries

Time budget studies differ in the number of diary days. The ‘Guidelines on Harmonized European Time-Use Surveys (HETUS)’ issued by EUROSTAT recommend a two-day diary with both one weekday and one weekend day. In this contribution we examine whether the number of diary days has an effect on the quality of timeuse indicators. A lot of time-use researchers plead for a longer period of observation; some of them even argue that one- or two-day diaries are not very valuable since the high demands of scientific research cannot be accomplished unless multi-day cycles are captured. Longer periods of observation offer better prospects for analyses, especially for the study of rhythms and activity patterns which typically follow cycles of multi-day duration, and which are part of daily life. Other authors however point out that longer periods of observation cause fatigue or diminished motivation and thus will lead to more inaccuracies. In this contribution we use the pooled Flemish time budget data from 1999 and 2004 to compare 7-day diaries with the 2-day diaries as recommended by the EUROSTAT-guidelines. The respondents of the Flemish time use surveys all filled in diaries for 7 consecutive days. To simulate the 2-day registration, we randomly selected one weekday and one weekend day for each respondent. The 2-day selection was compared with the original 7-day registration. The aim of this comparison is to inventory the advantages and disadvantages of the 2-day and 7-day registration method. To do that, we compare different indicators, such as the averages and the standard deviations of the duration of several activities. We further examine whether certain types of activities are more affected by the method of registration than others. Finally we examine whether a longer period of registration negatively affects the quality of the data (less detail and less accurate).Time-budget studies, time-use indicators, methodology