Tea Tourism: Examining University Faculty Members’ Expectations

Tea tourism is emerging worldwide as a new type of sustainable cultural tourism; a market to which little academic attention has been paid. This study surveyed a total of 246 university faculty members in United States, China, and Taiwan with regard to their perceptions of tea tourism, including their levels of interest in various tea tourism activities and importance of tour components. The findings of this study revealed that demographic factors, cultural backgrounds, and self-reported expertise with regard to tea culture were significantly associated with respondents’ expectations towards tea tourism. Practical recommendations in tea tourism marketing were provided

Simulation Modeling of Occupational Health of Tourism and Hospitality Workers

Tourism and hospitality research has utilized mostly traditional approaches to understand and explain observed phenomena. Complexity science offers great potential for studying the complex dynamical system of tourism and hospitality with greater effectiveness. The accelerating pace of technological advances, destabilization of societies, and increasing levels of uncertainty have fueled the emergence of chaos and complexity perspectives. Social scientists are increasingly viewing the conceptual and statistical assumptions underlying the linear paradigm as being seriously flawed and limiting our ability to explain social phenomena. Innovative complex-systems approaches grounded in complex adaptive systems (CAS) theoretical, methodological, and analytical perspectives have potential to lead to greater understanding of various phenomena. The foregoing methods and tools will be discussed in the context of occupational health of Hispanic immigrant hospitality sector workers

What Pedagogical Methods Impact Students' Entrepreneurial Propensity?

There is a dearth of research that investigates the effectiveness of different pedagogical methods for teaching entrepreneurship. This paper focuses on three learning design choices: experiential learning, use of teamwork, and focus on quantitative methods. The paper examines pedagogical variables that could contribute to raising student scores on constructs of change, risk taking, goal setting, feedback, and achievement as measured by our customized entrepreneurial propensity survey. Results offer moderate evidence to confirm effects of experiential learning designs for goal-setting and weak evidence for feedback. Additional findings suggest the need for rethinking the role of teamwork in entrepreneurship courses

Predictors of Repeat Winery Visitation in North Carolina

Wine tourism is a relatively fledging industry with a range of important economic development issues. One issue is the identification of key drivers of repeat business, in this case, intention to pay a return visit to a winery or wine region. The purpose of this study is to identify specific factors that may influence wine tourists’ intentions to revisit a winery or wine region in North Carolina. Exhaustive CHAID decision tree analysis was used to identify statistically significant visitor characteristics influencing respondents’ intentions to revisit a winery or wine region in North Carolina. Customer service and the importance it has to the visitors was found to be the best predictor of their intention to revisit

Wage differentials in the lodging industry: A case study.

Salary compensation programs are widely used as a tool to attract, retain, and motivate employees in the hotel industry. The development of a sound compensation plan is a critical component of any successful business. This study investigated the pay differential from different perspectives by using the data collected by the California Hotel and Lodging Association (CHLA), the largest state level hotel association in the United States. The results indicated that full service hotels offer higher base pay in positions such as General Manager, Resident Manager, and Executive Housekeeper as compared with limited service hotels. When accounting for hotel size only, hotels with more than 300 rooms offered higher base pay than their counterparts in several but not all managerial positions. The findings serve as a reference for human resources administrators in the state of California to develop their pay system. Pay differential rates were calculated to see the wage gap between different managerial positions. The results also provide a base salary reference to those looking for a job in the lodging industry

Assessment of admission criteria for predicting hotel management students' academic performance.

With the growth in the number of Hospitality and Tourism programs, admission committees have become increasingly attentive to the most efficient means of selecting students with the best potential for academic and professional success. Many higher education institutions in Asia employ a standard entrance exam system to select potential students. This study used the National Kao-Hsiung Hospitality College as a case study to examine whether entrance exams, when used as the sole admission criterion, were able to predict students' academic, professional, and overall performance. The results indicated that entrance exams were limited in predicting student performance. An admission portfolio approach including entrance exams, high school ranking, leadership abilities, work experience, and references was recommended instead of exams alone

Bed and Breakfast Innkeeper’s Work and Personal Life Balance: A Cross-cultural Comparison.

Bed and Breakfasts (B&B) represent a unique sector in the tourism industry. This study expands on previous hospitality work and life balance studies by investigating the cultural influences on B&B operators’ work and personal lives. The results indicated that Taiwanese B&B operators, who are in the collective culture, perceive less difficulty in their balancing work and personal lives, and they receive more family and social support compared to their American counterparts, who are within an individualistic culture. Both groups experienced equally satisfactory levels of successful balance. The implications and limitations of this study are discussed, and future studies are proposed

The effects of music on room attendants' work performance.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influences of music on the work performance of hotel room attendants. Most of the hotels' guest rooms are equipped with radios. However, many room attendants are told not to turn on the music while cleaning the guest rooms. Is this policy effective? Can music enhance room attendants' work performance? An experiment was conducted in a business hotel in Taiwan. Music was found to have no significant impact on room attendants' work performance. Nevertheless, the majority of the participants did indicate that they liked to have music playing in the guestrooms while cleaning

Hotel Companies’ Environmental Awareness and Commitment: A content analysis of their web pages.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the environmental management policies and practices of the top 50 hotel companies as disclosed on their corporate web sites. Design/methodology/approach – This study employed content analysis to review the web sites of the top 50 hotel companies as defined herein. Findings – Only 46 per cent of the selected hotel companies used web pages to post information related to environmental issues on their public web sites. The web pages of Wyndham, IHG, Accor, Whitbread, Hyatt, Rezidor, Sol Melia, TUI, and Scandic featured more revealing environmental information than that posted by other companies, which indicated their environmental commitment and engagement. The results of content analysis identified 12 major environmental focus areas in which the sample hotel companies engaged. Research limitations/implications – The findings on environmental policies and practices are limited to the environmental information featured on the web sites of the top 50 hotel companies. Some of these companies may have established environmental policies or initiated environmental programs not disseminated on their web sites. In addition, web page information can be changed at any time, and the findings of this study are based upon a snapshot of the web sites as of March 2010. Practical implications – This study establishes a benchmark of the dissemination of environmental information on the internet by leading hotels, and provides a preliminary picture of environmental initiatives and engagement among these top hotel companies. The information generated from this study can serve as a guide for hotels that would like to engage in an environmental management program. This study also provides a source of information for hotels that would like to develop environmental web sites to demonstrate their environmental commitment to their stakeholders. Originality/value – Information concerning the content of environmental information disseminated on the web sites of large hotel companies is sparse. Consequently, this study aims to provide a snapshot of where the hotel industry is with regard to on-line environmental disclosure and related environmental policies and practices

The moderating effects of job and personal life involvement on the relationship between work/personal life conflict and intention to quit.

This study expands research on work–personal life conflict and intention to quit by exploring the moderating effects of job involvement and personal life involvement on the relationship between work–personal life conflict and an employee's intention to quit. The sample consisted of 295 hotel managers. Personal life involvement was found to have a moderating effect on the relationship between work interference with personal life and intention to quit. The relationship between work interference with personal life and intention to quit was strongest among respondents with the highest levels of personal life involvement. However, employees' job involvement did not moderate the relationship between work–personal life conflict and intention to quit. Recommendations are offered to monitor impacts of work on personal life and to address the retention challenges facing the industry