Internal Marketing in Tourism: The Case of Human Resource Empowerment on Greek Hotels

Modern marketing is customer-oriented and investigates how to contact and promote the sale of its products and what products are best suited to meet its needs. The quality of products and especially of services depends mainly on the way they are offered by employees. Deficiencies in the quality of products and services lose importance to customers when the willingness of employees to offer them is genuinely positive, while well-organized businesses receive plenty of complaints when employee behavior is cautious and bureaucratic. Internal marketing promotes products initially to employees, and when they are convinced of the value of products, they offer them to customers. Internal marketing is not only for front-line workers but for all company staff. For example, in a hotel the maid may not meet the client but must show personal interest in the cleanliness of the room and the excellent operation of his equipment. If the maid did not find a burned lamp reading lamp for the third day, the customer will feel that the hotel is not interested in the accommodation conditions. Τhe aim of this paper is to analyse the case of internal marketing practices and how it can be used so to leverage the quality of the services provided from a hotel. This is a literature review which relies on the most recent publications. The final outcome is that there is a need to pay more attention on the personnel of Greek hotels and to have some well-established policies on this issue. Furthermore, the paper makes a recommendation for future quantitative research so to examine the views of the employees on the internal marketing practices and policies. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Integrating Total Quality Management Philosophy in the Greek Tourism Sector

Tourism sector is currently facing challenges due to the fast paced environment, the changes that it needs to keep up with and the financial crisis as well. Within a highly demanding framework the needs for high standards and total quality management arises. Organizations that are related to tourism need to introduce a philosophy of sustainability by developing innovative practices that will enable them to reserve their competitive advantage. Therefore, total quality management can be a useful tool in improving their products and services by focusing in quality parameters. © 2017, Springer International Publishing AG

The Role of Organizational Culture in the Greek Higher Tourism Quality

Organizational culture is considered to be important, if not essential, in all industries and businesses nowadays. Every company has its own unique personality, just like people do. This unique personality of an organization refers to its culture. In order to become more effective, organizations have realized how important is the role of their culture and the critical effects it has especially within the tourism industry. The quality of the services and products is affected to a high extent. © 2017, Springer International Publishing AG

Effects of air pollution on <em>Pinus halepensis</em> (Mill.): Pollution levels in Attica, Greece.

Air quality in the Athens basin is well known to be poor, damaging building materials and human health, but there is no information available on concentrations or the impact of oxidants on ecosystems in rural areas outside the basin. A short-term monitoring campaign, coupled with a survey using the O3 bioindicator Bel-W3 tobacco demonstrated that phytotoxic concentrations of O3 occurred throughout Attica, within a 75 km radius of the city. There was relatively little injury produced in the industrial centre of the city and maximum injury was found about 40 km to the SE. Visible lesions identical to those of O3 injury were found on Aleppo pine at all sites in the cooler months. In the summer the needles were very chlorotic, possibly due to photo-oxidation of chlorophylls mediated by heat or drought. This chlorosis may mask oxidant symptoms in the summer. NO2 diffusion tube data and needle analysis suggested that the effects of sulphur and NO2 are probably confined to the Athens basin

Exploring Insurance Fraud and Tourists’ Misbehaviour

Fraud affects every type of insurance, whether it is life or non-life insurance. According to Insurance Europe publications, insurance fraud includes providing untruthful or incomplete information in applications for insurance compensation, submitting a claim for a loss based on misleading or untruthful circumstances, including exaggerating a genuine claim; and otherwise being misleading or untruthful in dealings with an insurer, with the intention of gaining a benefit under the insurance contract. Insurance fraud may be committed by the policyholder or by a third party claiming against an insurance policy. It can range from opportunistic claims, through claims for phantom passengers and fictitious injuries in road accidents, to highly organized crime rings. Fraudulent claims and the cost of investigating suspected frauds lead to higher premiums for honest customers. Investigating fraud also has an impact on insurers’ ability to deal with genuine claims quickly. Some resorts in Greece, such as Faliraki and Kavos, have developed a reputation as been places where tourists, mostly British, are often raped from drunken tourists or even from locals. Someone could claim that those are destinations where alcohol and violence can have very negative effects. However, there is also the case of insurance fraud. This research is going to take a deep look not only on the existing theory on insurance fraud, but also on cases which have been on media. Indeed, there is a series of cases where tourists have made claims for been rapped? However, the investigation made from the insurance firms has concluded that no rape has occurred; in most cases the tourists just aimed at the refund given from the insurance company for the case of a rape. Our literature review and secondary research, suggests that there are indeed many cases of this kind of fraud. However, during the past years the insurance firms are on alert and able to reveal many cases of insurance fraud; which has in turn also reduced the cases of persons asking claims from the insurance firms for rapes. Actually, the dramatic fall on the claims from tourists, who claim that they have been raped, is an indication that the increased level of inspections made from the insurance companies have been effective against fraudulent insurance claims. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Reputation Management in the Tourism Industry

This article will discuss reputational risk, its implications for companies involved in the tourism industry, and how companies’ supervisors assess the management’s ability to measure and monitor this risk. Reputational risk is defined as the potential impacts of negative publicity related to an institution’s/company’s/country’s business practices, regardless true or not; those impacts can range from a decline in the customer base or revenue reductions to costly litigations. Also, destination reputation is the public’s general feeling, impression and cognition of it. A good reputation is an intangible asset for tourism destinations and a vital aspect of sustainable development. Reserving a good reputation revolves around effectively communicating and building solid relationships. Reputational risk is managed through strong corporate governance. How should reputational risk be managed internally in tourism industry companies? The following are just a few examples of key elements for managing reputational risk: Maintaining timely and efficient communications amongst government, customers, boards of directors of companies in tourism industry, and employeesEstablishing strong enterprise risk management policies and procedures throughout the organization, including an effective anti-fraud programReinforcing a risk management culture by creating awareness at all staff levelsInstilling ethics throughout the organisation by enforcing a code of conduct for the board, management, and staffDeveloping a comprehensive system of internal controls and practices, including those related to computer systems and transactional websitesComplying with current laws and regulations and enforcing existing policies and proceduresImplementing independent testing and transactional testing on a regular basisEstablishing a crisis management team in the event there is a significant action that may trigger a negative impact on the organization and the touristic destination as a whole.Although building a destination’s reputation may take years, it can certainly be damaged or even destroyed very quickly. Reputational risk depends on a combination of factors daily facing the tourism industry. Governments, local authorities and senior management are responsible for measuring and monitoring reputational risk and therefore must remain vigilant and active in providing the safeguards to prevent loss of reputation. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Ethical Tourism: The Theory Vs. The Hedonistic Reality in Popular Greek Tourism Resorts

Tourism has many uses and benefits for local societies, but in many cases a number of negative impacts too. The most important is the environmental impact that mass tourism may create. The tourists sometimes do not respect the cultural and the environmental profile of the country, creating a lot of problems. This is more frequent amongst young people that have not received sufficient education to recognise the importance of culture and traditions outside their own countries. Another serious problem that may arise is that only few people may benefit from tourism and money leaks outside the local community. Besides this, there is also a dark side of the lucrative business of mass tourism: violence by, and between, tourists and sex crimes such as rape. This is mainly attributed to large numbers of young tourists aiming at the consumption of large amounts of cheap alcohol. Drunken male tourists may end up fighting with each other or even harassing female tourists, or even raping them. The aim of this paper is to fill in this gap in the literature regarding this type of tourist behaviour in the Greek resorts: Faliraki and Kavos, by emphasizing actions taken as to prevent these kind of incidents and by focusing on the ethical issues surrounding them. This is a literature review which aims on initiating a discussion, which will lead the way for future research in the area. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Treatment of paediatric visceral leishmaniasis: amphotericin B or pentavalent antimony compounds?

Pentavalent antimony compounds and amphotericin B lipid formulations have been found highly active for the treatment of visceral leishmaniasis. This study focuses on which treatment is preferable in the best interests of the child. Records were reviewed of children in our hospital aged 0-14 years, diagnosed with visceral leishmaniasis, during the last 4 years. Twenty-nine children were identified. Ten were treated with meglumine antimonate (20 mg/kg/day for 21 days) and remained in hospital for 11-28 days (median 19 days), while 19 patients received liposomal amphotericin B at four different dosage schemes and were in hospital for 6-11 days (median 7 days). All of the patients were cured regardless of the treatment regime they followed. No relapses were noted. Liposomal amphotericin B would be preferable to meglumine antimonate if the reduction in hospital stay and hence the convenience of the patient balance the cost of medication. The optimal duration of treatment with liposomal amphotericin B remains to be determined. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. and the International Society of Chemotherapy. All rights reserved

The Unethical Practice of Hotel Review Ghost-Writers

Business ethics is a field of applied ethics that examines ethical issues that arise in a business environment. Business ethics includes five kinds of activities. The most dominant activity is the analysis of immorality incidents in business. The second type entails the empirical study of business practices while the third type consists of clarifying basic terms and revealing ethical business issues. The forth kind of activity concerns meta-ethical questions and a review of ethics theory. Finally, the fifth kind aims at the resolution of embedded problems. Ethics is a key issue for many industries, including the tourist industry. One of the key issues that has emerged during the past years, is ghost-writing in the tourism sector. Ghost-writer are those who are hired to author books, manuscripts, screenplays, speeches, articles, blog posts, stories, reports, whitepapers, or other texts, officially credited to another person. Celebrities, executives, participants in news stories, and political leaders, often hire ghost-writers to draft or edit autobiographies, memoirs, magazine articles, or other written material. In music, ghost-writers are often employed to write songs, lyrics and instrumental pieces. Screenplay authors can also use ghost-writers to either edit or rewrite their scripts and improve them. In tourism, ghost-writers employed by hotels for two reasons. The first one is to write a positive review for the hotel and post it on social media, mostly on tripadvisor and similar platform. The second, and arguably worse, case is to write a negative review for a competitor. Both cases are considered unethical, though the latter constitutes a very harmful misconduct. The emergence of ghost-writers has alarmed not only the sector but also social media platform providers. For this reason, some measures have been taken. For example, booking.com requires that reviewers have actually booked a room and that the booking process done through their website. There are having been many cases of ghost-writing, which have undermined the value of TripAdvisor and of other web sites. In some cases, the website has been forced to publicly apologise to their customer or the businesses affected from this kind of malpractice. Overall, this is practice which has not been extensively researched and merits further research. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Tourism and Destination Marketing the Case of Greece

Marketing has an important role today for every tourist business. However, it is important to focus not only on how the organizations are marketing themselves but also how the destination will market itself and remind that tourists first choose destination and then all the rest, including the hotels. From this literature review, it is obvious that destination branding has a number of advantages and that branding can have benefits in different forms of tourism, whether it is a single tourist unit or a destination. In the case of Greece, the variety of destinations that it has can be the ideal place for further research. Hence, it is proposed for future research to examine destination marketing in practice. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG