Factors Affecting Tourist Satisfaction with Theatrical Performances: A Case Study of 'The Romance of the Song Dynasty' in Hangzhou, China

This study, for the first time, attempts to explore the factors affecting tourist satisfaction with a theatrical performance, The Romance of the Song Dynasty in Hangzhou, China. Four factors are identified to have affected tourist satisfaction: “Performance,” “Venue Environment,” “Service,” and “Stage Facilities”. These theatrical performance factors are examined to assess the relative influence on tourist overall satisfaction. Tourists have the highest satisfaction with “Stage Facilities” among all factors, however, “Service” is the most influential predictor of tourist overall satisfaction. Tourist demographic and travel characteristics towards these four theatrical performance factors reveal several significant differences. Discussions and implications are provided to theatre operators to improve tourist satisfaction with theatrical performance not only in Hangzhou, but also in the whole China

Relocating empowerment as a management concept for Asia

Management theories, especially those in the area of human resource management, are predominantly Western-centric in origin and in the empirical testing that underpins them. The purpose of this paper is to explore perceptions of one such theory, employee empowerment, in an Asian context. Information gathered from an open ended questionnaire and focus groups provide an in-depth examination of hotel managers' perceptions and practice of empowerment in the workplace. This study provides tentative indicators of significant culturally-driven differences in the understanding and application of employee empowerment (in terms of both research and practice) between Western and Asian contexts. The results of this study indicate that empowerment in Asian cultures relates much more to the individual and his/her merits, in contrast to organizationally-driven empowerment in Western countries. The findings also indicate that empowerment by hotel managers is related to the level of personal trust the manager has in an employee

Prospects of the Hong Kong Tourism Industry

Suggestions for future planning are offered to Hong Kong tourism practitioners and policy makers on the basis of estimated tourism demand, 1998 to 2007. The authors give an overview of the historical background of the Hong Kong tourism industry and use formal tourism forecasting techniques to estimate this demand

Cost Evaluation in Design for End-of-Life of Automotive Components

The European Union implemented the End-of-Life Vehicle directive to deal with an estimated 6 million end-of-life vehicles each year. Existing literature describe the processes to deal with the waste at end-of-life of different products but there is a lack of information on the costing of these options. These costs remain a concern to automotive manufacturers. This paper therefore reports the end-of-life costs of vehicle components and also demonstrates how these costs can be predicted at the design stage. The proposed approach should help to decide whether the automotive parts are viable for remanufacture, refurbishment, recycling, or disposal from an economic perspective. Two different automotive parts have been selected as case studies to validate the approach. Assumptions were made during the development of the technique and based on the results, the proposed approach could potentially provide vehicle manufacturers a method of estimating the cost of end-of-life recovery processes of vehicle components

The classification of heritage tourists: a case of Hue City, Vietnam

Heritage, especially with World Heritage status, is increasingly becoming the main attraction of many tourist destinations. Heritage tourism is also the major tourism product in Hue city, Vietnam. Hitherto, there are almost no official statistics and research pertaining to heritage tourism as well as heritage tourists in Hue. This study aims at providing a preliminary profile of heritage tourists to Hue city and identifying different categories of heritage tourists, with a special focus on package tourists. The international heritage tourists’ profile seems to be similar to official statistics of international arrivals, indicating almost no difference in socio-demographic profile between heritage tourists and general tourists in the context of Hue. Various significant differences were found between international and domestic tourists in terms of tourist characteristics, trip profile and the perception of Hue. Adopting McKercher’s [(2002) Towards a classification of cultural tourists. International Journal of Tourism Research, 4, 29–38] cultural tourist classification, five categories of heritage tourists were identified, including purposeful heritage tourists, sightseeing heritage tourists, casual heritage tourists, incidental heritage tourists and serendipitous heritage tourists. Among these, sightseeing heritage tourists and purposeful heritage tourists were dominant

Microbial lysate upregulates host oxytocin

Neuropeptide hormone oxytocin has roles in social bonding, energy metabolism, and wound healing contributing to good physical, mental and social health. It was previously shown that feeding of a human commensal microbe Lactobacillus reuteri (L. reuteri) is sufficient to up-regulate endogenous oxytocin levels and improve wound healing capacity in mice. Here we show that oral L. reuteri-induced skin wound repair benefits extend to human subjects. Further, dietary supplementation with a sterile lysate of this microbe alone is sufficient to boost systemic oxytocin levels and improve wound repair capacity. Oxytocin-producing cells were found to be increased in the caudal paraventricular nucleus [PVN] of the hypothalamus after feeding of a sterile lysed preparation of L. reuteri, coincident with lowered blood levels of stress hormone corticosterone and more rapid epidermal closure, in mouse models. We conclude that microbe viability is not essential for regulating host oxytocin levels. The results suggest that a peptide or metabolite produced by bacteria may modulate host oxytocin secretion for potential public or personalized health goals.Published versio

Structural properties of methoxy derivatives of benzyl bromide, determined from powder X-ray diffraction data

Structure determination of 3,5-dimethoxybenzyl bromide and 3,4,5-trimethoxybenzyl bromide has been carried out from laboratory powder X-ray diffraction data using the direct-space Genetic Algorithm technique for structure solution followed by Rietveld refinement. These two compounds are of interest for their potential use as building blocks for the synthesis of dendritic materials. Although the two molecules differ only in the presence/absence of the methoxy group at the 4-position of the aromatic ring, the structural properties of the two materials are significantly differen

Sustainability and the tourism and hospitality workforce : a thematic analysis

This paper is about the position of workforce and employment considerations within the sustainable tourism narrative. It addresses the relative neglect of this area within discussion of sustainable tourism and highlights reference to it within the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Discussion follows of the merging field of sustainable HRM and the contribution that this can make to meeting both the sustainable development goals and to enhancing recognition of workforce and employment issues within related debate in tourism. The body of the paper consists of examples of how key dimensions of work and employment in tourism where sustainability is of increasing consequence and significance. The paper concludes by drawing together the implications of these 'mini-cases' and locating them within key principles of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development