Hospitality in a theatre: The role of physical warmth

Insight into psychological mechanisms offers service organisations the opportunity to increase their hospitality performance. The present research shows that physical warmth positively contributes to people’s experience of hospitality. In a field experiment among 127 visitors to a theatre, the effects of cold versus hot drinks and furniture on the experience of hospitality were examined using the Experience of Hospitality Scale (EH scale), measuring the three experiential factors of hospitality: inviting, care and comfort. In line with embodiment theory, hot drinks positively influenced the experience of the care factor of hospitality in the theatre foyer by triggering the abstract metaphor of mental warmth. However, warm furniture showed no effect, which supports the assumption that the effects of short- and long-term exposure to physical warmth are different. This study is the first to show a relationship between physically warm objects and the experience of hospitality in a service-oriented environment

The role of warmth in the experience of hospitality:An exploratory study

To create positive customer experiences, the service industry is increasingly paying attention to hospitality. However, service organisations are in need of tools to improve the experience of hospitality of their customers. What service attributes result in an experience of hospitality? Research on hospitality has thus far focussed on service staff behaviour (Ariffin & Maghzi, 2012; Blain & Lashley, 2014; Tasci & Semrad, 2016). However, there is a lack of knowledge on the role of environmental attributes in the experience of hospitality. Besides Brotherton (2005), who showed that modern, clean, comfortable and bright are aspects people associate with hospitality, little is known about how the perception of attributes of the physical service environment contribute to our experience of hospitality. Research has shown that the experience of hospitality in service environments is represented by three factors: inviting, care and comfort (Pijls, Groen, Galetzka & Pruyn, 2017). These factors are expected to be triggered by mental concepts grounded in bodily sensations. According to embodied cognition theory, attributes we perceive with our senses result in bodily sensation, such as warmth, weight or distance, which in turn affect our mental state. Embodied cognition is the idea that emotions and thoughts not only originate in the brain, but that we also think and feel with our body (Lobel, 2014). We expect that embodied cognition is one of the mechanisms underlying the experience of hospitality, linking the experience of hospitality to the impact of the physical environment. As far as we know the theory of embodied cognition has not yet been studied in the context of hospitality. Mental warmth is one of the abstract metaphors grounded in a concrete experience, in this case in the sensation of physical warmth (Williams & Bargh, 2008; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999). This experiment explores the effect of the perceived physical warmth on the experience of mental warmth among customers of a theatre by examining the effect of cold versus warm furniture material and by examining the effect of cold versus hot drinks. Based on the studies performed by Williams and Bargh (2008) and IJzerman & Semin (2009) on the effect of holding cold versus hot drinks, it is expected that: H1 Touching and drinking a hot drink will lead to the experience of hospitality H2 Touching and drinking a hot drink will lead to the experience of physical warmth, and subsequently mental warmth, which will result an increased experience of hospitality, compared to touching and drinking a cold drink. H3 Sitting on furniture made of warm material will lead to the experience of hospitality H4 Sitting on furniture made of warm material will lead to the experience of physical warmth, and subsequently mental warmth, which will result an increased experience of hospitality, compared to touching and drinking a cold drink. The experience of hospitality will be measured in a theatre foyer. A 3 (warm versus neutral versus cold furniture material) x 2 (warm versus cold drink) between-subjects factorial design will be employed. Visitors to the theatre will be asked to fill in the survey, while holding and drinking either a warm or a cold drink, and while sitting either on warm, neutral or cold furniture. The experience of hospitality will be measured with the 13-item Experience of Hospitality Scale. Mental warmth will be measured by 5 questions, such as ‘the foyer has an intimate atmosphere’, ‘I’m warmly treated in this theatre’, ‘this theatre is a warm organisation’. Results are forthcoming

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Make it Work! How To Facilitate Knowledge Work in Universities

 Knowledge workers share two basic needs: their productivity requires isolation (internalization of knowledge) and interaction (externalization of knowledge), supported by different spatial concepts. None of the work environments involved in the study adequately support all of the phases in the knowledge development process adequately. Collective productivity is primarily determined by the physical dimension of the workplace; whereas the social dimension is crucial for personal productivity. Social interaction has a stronger effect than distraction; and the layout has a stronger effect than comfort

Make it work!: How to facilitate knowledge work in universities

  Purpose: This paper aims to define the influence of the physical and social dimensions of the work environment on knowledge productivity of academics in Dutch Universities of Applied Sciences. Design/methodology/approach: Literature review; a multiple case study based on literature review (6 cases); a survey (n=188). Findings: Knowledge workers share two basic needs: their productivity requires isolation (internalization of knowledge) and interaction (externalization of knowledge), supported by different spatial concepts. None of the work environments involved in the study adequately support all of the phases in the knowledge development process adequately. Collective productivity is primarily determined by the physical dimension of the workplace; whereas the social dimension is crucial for personal productivity. Social interaction has a stronger effect than distraction; and the layout has a stronger effect than comfort. Conclusions - A high performance workplace supports both externalization and internalization of knowledge, allowing group members to collaborate and communicate according to need. More traditional work environments support internalization; innovative workplace designs (the office as meeting place) are more suited to support interaction and collaboration. Discover why freedom of choice is the key. Recommendations - Academics should be allowed to choose as to how, where and when they work and involved during the development of new concepts. Paper type: Research pape

Blockchain in the Hospitality and Tourism Industry

This chapter will provide information on what Blockchain is and why it is used. It describes the basic concepts underlying Blockchain technology, such as distributed ledgers, consensus mechanisms, mining, smart contracts, P2P, and the classification of existing Blockchain systems. Next, it explores Blockchain applications in general, in businesses and society. Blockchain maybe used e.g., for fundraising, in education, and for provenance and authenticity registration. The last part of the chapter is devoted to application of Blockchain in general to applications in the hospitality and tourism industry. It considers how Blockchain makes it possible to create new types of platforms where transactions take place and the delivery of 'digital assets ', such as a hotel room booking, is not dependent on an intermediary. Other topics covered are tokenization, and the use of Blockchain in tracking baggage, loyalty programs, rating and reviews, payments, and digital identity.   Barkel, C., Kurgun, H., & Groen, B. (2021). Blockchain in the Hospitality and Tourism Industry. In C. Cobanoglu, S. Dogan, K. Berezina, & G. Collins (Eds.), Hospitality & Tourism Information Technology (pp. 1–26). USF M3 Publishing. https://www.doi.org/10.5038/978173212759

Hospitality in a theatre: The role of physical warmth

Insight into psychological mechanisms offers service organisations the opportunity to increase their hospitality performance. The present research shows that physical warmth positively contributes to people’s experience of hospitality. In a field experiment among 127 visitors to a theatre, the effects of cold versus hot drinks and furniture on the experience of hospitality were examined using the Experience of Hospitality Scale (EH scale), measuring the three experiential factors of hospitality: inviting, care and comfort. In line with embodiment theory, hot drinks positively influenced the experience of the care factor of hospitality in the theatre foyer by triggering the abstract metaphor of mental warmth. However, warm furniture showed no effect, which supports the assumption that the effects of short- and long-term exposure to physical warmth are different. This study is the first to show a relationship between physically warm objects and the experience of hospitality in a service-oriented environment

Blockchain in the Hospitality and Tourism Industry

This chapter will provide information on what Blockchain is and why it is used. It describes the basic concepts underlying Blockchain technology, such as distributed ledgers, consensus mechanisms, mining, smart contracts, P2P, and the classification of existing Blockchain systems. Next, it explores Blockchain applications in general, in businesses and society. Blockchain maybe used e.g., for fundraising, in education, and for provenance and authenticity registration. The last part of the chapter is devoted to application of Blockchain in general to applications in the hospitality and tourism industry. It considers how Blockchain makes it possible to create new types of platforms where transactions take place and the delivery of 'digital assets ', such as a hotel room booking, is not dependent on an intermediary. Other topics covered are tokenization, and the use of Blockchain in tracking baggage, loyalty programs, rating and reviews, payments, and digital identity.DOIhttps://www.doi.org/10.5038/978173212759