An examination of online ratings on hotel performance indicators: An analysis of the Boston hotel market

This research study is designed to examine the impact that a posted online review rating has on the financial performance of a hotel room in the lodging industry. The popularity ratings of hotels in the Boston, Massachusetts market, as posted on the popular online travel review website TripAdvisor, will be examined against the hotel performance metrics of average daily rate (ADR), occupancy, and Revenue per Available Room (RevPar). This study examines the literature to better understand the previous research behind the impact that word-of-mouth communication, both in traditional and electronic forms, has on customer satisfaction. The emergence of social technologies has created an environment in which businesses can be rated and reviewed in an open market for potential future customers to read, and the development of user-generated content has become a more trusted and credible source of product and service information. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of these online ratings on hotel performance, specifically that of TripAdvisor rating attributes on the financial performance of a hotel. The study found that the various attributes had varying levels of significant impact on Average Daily Rate (ADR), Occupancy, and Revenue per Available Room (RevPar). Based on the natures of the lodging properties in Boston, Value was found to be statistically significant across all categories analyzed. Ultimately, the contribution of this research is both academic and practical, as this study will be among the first to examine and test the various TripAdvisor rating attributes on each hotel financial performance metric. In addition, this study will expand upon the current body of knowledge in the areas of user-generated content, online reviews, ratings of TripAdvisor, and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM)

An Exploratory Study of Patient Falls

Debate continues between the contribution of education level and clinical expertise in the nursing practice environment. Research suggests a link between Baccalaureate of Science in Nursing (BSN) nurses and positive patient outcomes such as lower mortality, decreased falls, and fewer medication errors. Purpose: To examine if there a negative correlation between patient falls and the level of nurse education at an urban hospital located in Midwest Illinois during the years 2010-2014? Methods: A retrospective crosssectional cohort analysis was conducted using data from the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) from the years 2010-2014. Sample: Inpatients aged ≥ 18 years who experienced a unintentional sudden descent, with or without injury that resulted in the patient striking the floor or object and occurred on inpatient nursing units. Results: The regression model was constructed with annual patient falls as the dependent variable and formal education and a log transformed variable for percentage of certified nurses as the independent variables. The model overall is a good fit, F (2,22) = 9.014, p = .001, adj. R2 = .40. Conclusion: Annual patient falls will decrease by increasing the number of nurses with baccalaureate degrees and/or certifications from a professional nursing board-governing body

Collecting relevant images context information

Digital photographing has become more and more popular as cameras and mobile phones get more advanced and have newer technology embedded. Manually searching in these growing image collections is problematic because of missing context information related to the image itself. If related context information could be added as an automated process, it could help the user view and locate images and information about the image. In this thesis I purpose a system that tries to collect relevant context information connected to an image using time and date, gps location and a user given image category taken with a Nokia N95 using mobile image capturing software like described in [1]

Exploring the Impacts, Setbacks and Potentials of Gamification in Promoting Brand Value Co-Creation

Business-to-consumer platforms are increasingly employing gamification – which refers to the use of game design elements in non-game context – to motivate their online users’ involvement in brand development. However, little is known so far about the process through which gamification promotes brand value co-creation. This PhD project is set to unravel this process, alongside addressing its major setbacks and potentials via three consecutive studies. First, a systematic literature review study is conducted, leading to the development of an advanced framework labelled Mechanics - Dynamics - Psychological Triggers - Motivational Effects, which outlines the key stages of the designated process. Second, a content analysis study of selected social threads in the online gamified community of the British mobile network operator Giffgaff is pursued. The study investigates the impact of gamification on promoting an underexamined type of brand value co-creation, associated with online users’ contribution to social activities. Correspondingly, a new theoretical model titled Motivational Drivers in Gamified Social Programs is developed, unveiling a range of social values that are demonstrably found driving online users’ engagement in this overlooked type of brand value co-creation in a gamified environment. Third, a sequential mixed-method study is carried out to address gamification’s failure in persuading a large segment of online users – so-called lurkers – to engage in brand value co-creation. The study comprises a series of focus group discussions, followed by a cross-sectional survey with lurkers of the global gamified travel review platform TripAdvisor. An original theoretical framework entitled Lurkers’ Rational in Gamified CoCreative Platforms is thereby generated, demonstrating the reasons of lurkers’ stance. Additionally, a cluster of potential measures designated to practically address their disengagement is constructively developed. This thesis offers a compound of theoretical contributions to the areas of gamification and brand value co-creation, and provides evidence-informed recommendations to practitioners, in addition to unveiling a set of promising future research directions

Assessing New Methods for Psittacine Conservation at the Captive-Wild Interface

This dissertation overviews novel methods related to breed and release of parrots for conservation. Broadly, the document discusses research about the maintenance of captive breeding parrots, and the preparation of their offspring for release into the wild. A conclusion chapter identifies conflicts common to this type of conservation work and discusses ways to create research projects that avoid them. The maintenance chapter focuses on reducing the fear and chronic stress in captivity through the development and use of novel automated, computer tablet-based technology. The release preparation chapter overviews a method of training parrots to fly safely in wild areas that is derived from the parrot free-flight hobby community, using systematic exposure to outdoor environments. The conclusion is a reflection of lessons learned and relevant literature. Appendix material address the systems that protect released birds and validation of automated software. The interdisciplinary nature of this work, bridging captivity, wild, and human dimension

Semi-Supervised Learning For Identifying Opinions In Web Content

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Information Science, 2011Opinions published on the World Wide Web (Web) offer opportunities for detecting personal attitudes regarding topics, products, and services. The opinion detection literature indicates that both a large body of opinions and a wide variety of opinion features are essential for capturing subtle opinion information. Although a large amount of opinion-labeled data is preferable for opinion detection systems, opinion-labeled data is often limited, especially at sub-document levels, and manual annotation is tedious, expensive and error-prone. This shortage of opinion-labeled data is less challenging in some domains (e.g., movie reviews) than in others (e.g., blog posts). While a simple method for improving accuracy in challenging domains is to borrow opinion-labeled data from a non-target data domain, this approach often fails because of the domain transfer problem: Opinion detection strategies designed for one data domain generally do not perform well in another domain. However, while it is difficult to obtain opinion-labeled data, unlabeled user-generated opinion data are readily available. Semi-supervised learning (SSL) requires only limited labeled data to automatically label unlabeled data and has achieved promising results in various natural language processing (NLP) tasks, including traditional topic classification; but SSL has been applied in only a few opinion detection studies. This study investigates application of four different SSL algorithms in three types of Web content: edited news articles, semi-structured movie reviews, and the informal and unstructured content of the blogosphere. SSL algorithms are also evaluated for their effectiveness in sparse data situations and domain adaptation. Research findings suggest that, when there is limited labeled data, SSL is a promising approach for opinion detection in Web content. Although the contributions of SSL varied across data domains, significant improvement was demonstrated for the most challenging data domain--the blogosphere--when a domain transfer-based SSL strategy was implemented

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Paradoxical Permaculture?

Permaculture purportedly offers a range of solutions to the negative externalities that arise from the dominant processes of monoculture crop cultivation and industrialised food production. This thesis identifies the discursive practices used by Swedish permaculturists to communicate and promote the advantages of permaculture over the incumbent industrial food production regime. The study also assesses the identified discursive practices in Swedish permaculturists’ online presence in their bid to mainstream permaculture as a social movement and as an alternative form of food production. This assessment is achieved through a multi-modal discourse analysis. The analysis finds a lack of strategic planning and management of the permaculture movement within the niche-regime interaction with one notable exception. This thesis study looks to raise further questions concerning the socio-technological landscapes that the dominant food production regime currently resides in. This study has identified a pattern materialising where permaculture practitioners are (knowingly or unknowingly) bypassing the incumbent food production regime and directly interacting with the socio-technical landscape. This approach is haphazard and piecemeal in contrast to the specific techniques mentioned in the literature on Transition Management and Strategic Niche Management

The development of a quality function deployment (QFD) model for the implementation of a mobile augmented reality (AR) tourism application in the context of urban heritage tourism

Technology has been widely implemented in tourism to enhance the tourism product and tourist experience. However, it remains a challenge for many tourism businesses in urban heritage areas to identify technological solutions and successfully implement them into their business strategy. Particularly for urban heritage sites, it is often challenging to provide information within and around a heritage site without disturbing or destroying the heritage image. Augmented Reality (AR) was identified as a suitable technology to overcome this challenge. However, while AR is not considered a new technology in many industries, and mobile tourism applications with AR functions exist, it has provided limited benefits to tourists due to the lack of using AR functions meaningfully. In addition, the development of wearable devices is increasingly focused on the use of augmented and virtual reality to enhance the user experience. Therefore, there is a need to explore methods of meaningful implementation of such technologies for the tourism industry. This study will investigate current standards of AR technology and tourist requirements in order to examine how to develop meaningful mobile AR tourism applications. For the development of a beneficial product, Quality Function Deployment (QFD), as a tool within Total Quality Management (TQM) was identified as the suitable theoretical background for the purpose of this study. QFD was developed in the theory of quality management, in particular TQM. QFD has since been employed across many industries including the hospitality and tourism sector in a number of studies. However, it has not yet been implemented in the urban heritage tourism context, presenting a knowledge gap. As QFD is designed to incorporate the customers’ view into the product design stage, the aim is to design a meaningful product that is valuable for the visitor and benefit the destination. Therefore, this research aims to eliminate the gap by generating a QFD model for the development of mobile AR tourism applications in the context of urban heritage tourism. Dublin was selected as the research site due to its rich urban heritage. After Dublin’s re-branding strategy in 2013, it has marketed itself with the brand image of ‘Digital Dublin’ in order to encourage the implementation of technology for the purpose of promoting urban heritage tourism. Therefore, Dublin was considered as the suitable research site for the purpose of this study. To achieve the research aim, a mixed method approach was employed for the primary research including semi-structured interviews, focus groups and questionnaires. The study was divided into three research phases. Research phase 1 investigates requirements of tourists, mobile AR application developers and industry experts from Dublin’s tourism industry for the development and use of mobile AR tourism applications in urban heritage tourism. 26 in-depth interviews were conducted with international tourists visiting Dublin in addition to 9 interviews with mobile AR application developers and industry experts from Dublin. Findings were analysed using thematic analysis, providing the knowledge base for Research Phase 2 – focus groups. The second research phase was conducted with tourists as a post-experience study. It aimed to confirm identified tourist requirements from the literature and Research Phase 1, and examine additional findings to design the questionnaire for the quantitative Research Phase 3. Research Phase 3 was conducted with domestic and international tourists in Dublin and provided an importance rating of identified tourist requirements for the development of the final QFD model for mobile AR tourism applications in the urban heritage tourism context. The outcomes from the quantitative research were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to reduce tourist requirements for the final QFD model. By identifying tourist requirements and translating them into respective technical characteristics, this study provides a set of technological elements in hierarchical order for the design of meaningful mobile AR tourism applications in urban heritage tourism. The final 18 requirements are in close alignment with the outcomes of the qualitative research of this study highlighting the need of immediate access to information regardless of time and place, while being able to filter the available information to the tourists’ interest and needs. The final QFD model for the development of mobile AR tourism applications in urban heritage tourism was presented as the outcome of this research. The main contribution to theory is the extension in the identification process of customer requirements for the QFD model. While previous studies in QFD have mainly focused on product functions, such as software and hardware capabilities, the QFD model in this study aims to provide a balance between functional requirements and behavioural characteristics of tourists that are driven by psychological aspects. This study not only explored tourist requirements as in previous studies, but furthermore user resistance factors that would result in avoiding mobile AR tourism applications in urban heritage tourism. Including these criteria as customer attributes in the HOQ, the QFD model was extended to include behavioural and psychological attributes of customers, which is valuable for further implementation of QFD particularly in social studies. This research will furthermore contribute to professionals, Destination Marketing Organisations (DMO) as well as mobile AR application developers alike, by providing a model for the development of mobile AR applications in the context of urban heritage tourism that has incorporated tourist requirements as well as mobile AR application developer considerations. Furthermore, it needs to be acknowledged that the requirements are not limited to mobile AR applications, but are considered particularly valuable for further research in the area of mobile application development for tourism purposes and are expected to be partially transferable to other technology implementations for tourism products

Multimodal social media product reviews and ratings in e-commerce: an empirical approach

Since the booming of the internet and the “.com” (e-commerce) in the 1990’s, everything has changed. This improvement created different areas for researchers to investigate and examine, especially in the fields of human computer interaction and social media. This technological revolution has dramatically changed the way we interact with computers, buy, communicate and share information. This thesis investigates multimodal presentations of social media review and rating messages within an e-commerce interface. Multimodality refers to the communication pattern that goes beyond text to include images, audio and media. Multimodality provides a new way of communication, as images, for example, can deliver an additional information which might be difficult or impossible to communicate using text only. Social media can be defined as a two-way interaction using the internet as the communication medium.The overall hypothesis is that the use of multimodal metaphors (sound and avatars) to present social media product r views will improve the usability of the ecommerce interface and increase the user understanding, reduce the time needed to make a decision when compared to non-multimodal presentations. E-commerce usability refers to the presentation, accessibility and clarity of information. An experimental e-commerce platform was developed to investigate the particular interactive circumstances that multimodal metaphors may benefit the social media communication of reviews of products to users. The first experiment using three conditions (text with emoji’s, earcons and facially expressive avatars) measured the user comprehension, understanding information, user satisfaction with the way in which information was communicated and social media preference in e-commerce. The second experiment investigated the time taken by users to understand information, understanding information correctly, user satisfaction and user enjoyment using three conditions (emoji’s, facially expressive avatar and animation clips) in ecommerce platform. The results of the first set experiments of the showed that the text with emoji’s and the use of facially expressive avatar conditions had improved the users’ performance through understanding information effectively and making decisions quicker compared to the earcons condition. In the second experiment, the results showed that the users performed better (understanding information, understating information faster) using the emoji’s and the facially expressive avatar presentations compared to the use of the animation clip condition. A set of empirically derived guidelines to implement these metaphors to communicate social media product reviews in e-commerce interface have been presented