From Service to Experience: Understanding and Defining the Hospitality Business

Failure adequately to define or understand hospitality as a commercial phenomenon has created a fragmented academic environment and a schizophrenia in the industry that has the potential to limit its development as a global industry. This article suggests that, by redefining hospitality as behaviour and experience, a new perspective emerges that has exciting implications for the management of hospitality businesses. A framework to describe hospitality in the commercial domain is proposed. This framework suggests a focus on the host–guest relationship, generosity, theatre and performance, ‘lots of little surprises’, and the security of strangers – a focus that provides guests with experiences that are personal, memorable and add value to their lives

Modalities of Healthcare Payment and their Consequences – A Qualitative Study on Kenyan Doctors

Introduction: The Kenyan government has put a spirited reform to ensure all Kenyans get universal healthcare. This has led to restructuring of several entities among them the health insurance industry. This is geared at alleviating the burden of catastrophic expenditure on health from the poor Kenyans. However, insurance uptake remains at less than a quarter of the population with many Kenyans still paying for healthcare out-of-pocket. These out-of-pocket payers often don’t afford the ever-increasing cost of healthcare in Kenya. This study looked at how doctors deal with patients given their modality of payment. Methodology: This was an online based survey that was distributed to Kenyan doctors via email by Kenya Medical Association. The survey sought information from the respondents on how they dealt with patients given their modality of payment. In addition, respondents were asked to provide an example of a case they had dealt with that touched on each payment modality. Results: Respondents gave their experiences where insurance had influenced their clinical decisions. Codes developed from the prose were; “inability to pay”, “harmful to the patient”, “changed the prescription” among others Health insurance played a crucial role whenever respondents made decisions. Top on the list of things that the majority indicated would be considered is insurance status and/or their ability of patients to pay for the services. Conclusion: Respondents are stuck in a limbo; striving to give the best care to patients but limited by the patients’ inability to pay. In explaining their experiences, respondents explain a situation where they intend to offer the best, but patients cannot afford. This especially so for those without health insurance who end up either not getting services or at the very best, get inferior service

Spectral Properties From Lyman-alpha to H-alpha For An Essentially Complete Sample of Quasars I: Data

We have obtained quasi-simultaneous ultraviolet-optical spectra for 22 out of 23 quasars in the complete PG-X-ray sample with redshift, z<0.4, and M_B<-23. The spectra cover rest-frame wavelengths from at least Lyman-alpha to H-alpha. Here we provide a detailed description of the data, including careful spectrophotometry and redshift determination. We also present direct measurements of the continua, strong emission lines and features, including Lyman-alpha, SiIV+OIV], CIV, CIII], SiIII], MgII, H-beta, [OIII], He5876+NaI5890,5896, H-alpha, and blended iron emission in the UV and optical. The widths, asymmetries and velocity shifts of profiles of strong emission lines show that CIV and Lyman-alpha are very different from H-beta and H-alpha. This suggests that the motion of the broad line region is related to the ionization structure, but the data appears not agree with the radially stratified ionization structure supported by reverberation mapping studies, and therefore suggest that outflows contribute additional velocity components to the broad emission line profiles.Comment: 42 pages, 10 figures, 13 tables. Accepted by AJ. Supplemental figures not included. Full version available at http://physics.uwyo.edu/~shang/pgxpaper/ShangPaper.pd

Do broad absorption line quasars live in different environments from ordinary quasars?

We select a sample of $\sim 4200$ traditionally defined broad absorption line quasars (BALQs) from the Fifth Data Release quasar catalog of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For a statistically homogeneous quasar sample with $1.7\le z\le 4.2$, the BAL quasar fraction is $\sim 14$ and is almost constant with redshift. We measure the auto-correlation of non-BAL quasars (nonBALQs) and the cross-correlation of BALQs with nonBALQs using this statistically homogeneous sample, both in redshift space and using the projected correlation function. We find no significant difference between the clustering strengths of BALQs and nonBALQs. Assuming a power-law model for the real space correlation function $\xi(r)=(r/r_0)^{-1.8}$, the correlation length for nonBALQs is $r_0=7.6\pm 0.8 h^{-1}{\rm Mpc}$; for BALQs, the cross-correlation length is $r_0=7.4\pm 1.1 h^{-1}{\rm Mpc}$. Our clustering results suggest that BALQs live in similar large-scale environments as do nonBALQs.Comment: accepted for publication in Ap

SDSS J075101.42+291419.1: A Super-Eddington Accreting Quasar with Extreme X-ray Variability

We report the discovery of extreme X-ray variability in a type 1 quasar: SDSS J$075101.42+291419.1$. It has a black hole mass of $1.6\times 10^7~\rm M_\odot$ measured from reverberation mapping (RM), and the black hole is accreting with a super-Eddington accretion rate. Its XMM-Newton observation in 2015 May reveals a flux drop by a factor of $\sim 22$ with respect to the Swift observation in 2013 May when it showed a typical level of X-ray emission relative to its UV/optical emission. The lack of correlated UV variability results in a steep X-ray-to-optical power-law slope ($\alpha_{\rm OX}$) of -1.97 in the low X-ray flux state, corresponding to an X-ray weakness factor of 36.2 at rest-frame 2 keV relative to its UV/optical luminosity. The mild UV/optical continuum and emission-line variability also suggest that the accretion rate did not change significantly. A single power-law model modified by Galactic absorption describes well the $0.3-10$ keV spectra of the X-ray observations in general. The spectral fitting reveals steep spectral shapes with $\Gamma\approx3$. We search for active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with such extreme X-ray variability in the literature and find that most of them are narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies and quasars with high accretion rates. The fraction of extremely X-ray variable objects among super-Eddington accreting AGNs is estimated to be $\approx 15-24\%$. We discuss two possible scenarios, disk reflection and partial covering absorption, to explain the extreme X-ray variability of SDSS J$075101.42+291419.1$. We propose a possible origin for the partial covering absorber, which is the thick inner accretion disk and its associated outflow in AGNs with high accretion rates.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Ap