Best Management Practices in Green Lodging Defined and Explained

Best management practices in green lodging are sustainable or “green” business strategies designed to enhance the lodging product from the perspective of owners, operators and guests. For guests, these practices should enhance their experience while for owners and operators, generate positive returns on investments. Best management practices in green lodging typically starts with a clear understanding of each lodging firm’s role in society, its impact on the environment and strategies developed to mitigate negative environmental externalities generated from the production of lodging goods and services. Negative externalities of hotel operations manifest themselves in energy and water usage, waste generation and air pollution. Hence, best management practices in green lodging are dynamic, cost effective, innovative, stakeholder driven and environmentally sound technical and behavioral solutions that attempt to ameliorate or eliminate the negative environmental externalities associated with lodging operations, while simultaneously generate positive returns on green investments. Thus, best management practices in green lodging should reduce lodging firms’ operating costs, increase guest satisfaction, reduce or eliminate the negative environmental impacts associated with hotel operations while simultaneously enhance business operations

Towards an Understanding of Lodging Asset Management and its Components

Lodging asset management has emerged as one of the most important areas of strategic hotel management. Increasingly, lodging companies are soliciting the services of asset management firms or developing internal asset management competencies. This article synthesizes and discusses the essential components of dynamic lodging asset management. The article provides a detail background on asset management and its importance and explains the role of lodging asset managers and their working relationships with ownership and operators. The article also discusses the competencies and skills of asset managers

The Lodging Franchise Relational Model: A Model of Trust, Commitment, and Resource Exchanges

Franchising is the most dominant mode of operation for U.S.-domiciled lodging companies. This mode of operation has grown significantly as a result of the benefits received by franchisors and franchisees. Using a foundation of trust and commitment theory, this research developed a model that illustrates and explains the components of the lodging franchise relationship. The model suggests that the lodging franchise relational model is a bi-directional, value driven, mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship of resource exchange and success is contingent on trust and commitment by both parties

Why Makik Can Do Math: Race and Status in Integrated Classrooms

This case study reports on the small group interactions and achievements of Malik, an African American sixth grader, who attended a Maryland elementary school in 1997. Student achievement was measured by the Maryland Functional Mathematics Test (MFMT-I), which was given on a pre/post basis. Students\u27 scores on the MFMT-I were analyzed using the ANOVA. The analysis revealed a significant difference (F = 3-330, p \u3c .05) between the scores of Caucasian (M = 342.12) and African American students (M = 323-56). However, Malik\u27s MFMT-I score rose from 293 to 353. A passing score is 340. This study examines Malik\u27s interactions to ascertain what factors influenced his achievement. The findings are that Malik had a positive attitude about mathematics and a strong command of mathematical and scientific language. Recommendations are that teachers become cultural brokers to help all children learn the language of mathematics and encourage all students to become self-advocates to overcome negative social dynamics in small groups

Effects of Fire on Grassland Soils and Water: A Review

Grasslands occur on all of the continents. They collectively constitute the largest ecosystem in the world, making up 40.5% of the terrestrial land area, excluding Greenland and Antarctica. Grasslands are not entirely natural because they have formed and developed under natural and anthropogenic pressures. Their importance now is to the variety of ecosystem services that they provide: livestock grazing areas, water catchments, biodiversity reserves, tourism sites, recreation areas, religious sites, wild food sources, and natural medicine sources. An important function of grasslands is their sequestration and storage of carbon (C). Mollisol soils of grasslands have deep organic matter horizons that make this vegetation type almost as important as forests for C fixation and storage. Fire has been and continues to be an important disturbance in grassland evolution and management. Natural wildfires have been a component of grasslands for over 300 million years and were important in creating and maintaining most of these ecosystems. Humans ignited fires over many millennia to improve habitat for animals and livestock. Prescribed fire practiced by humans is a component of modern grassland management. The incidence of wildfires in grasslands continues to grow as an issue as droughts persist in semi-arid regions. Knowledge of fire effects on grasslands has risen in importance to land managers because fire, as a disturbance process, is an integral part of the concept of ecosystem management and restoration ecology. Fire is an intrusive disturbance in both managed and wildland forests and grasslands. It initiates changes in ecosystems that affect the composition, structure, and patterns of vegetation on the landscape. It also affects the soil and water resources of ecosystems that are critical to overall ecosystem functions and processes

Physical Vulnerabilities from Wildfires: Flames, Floods, and Debris Flows

Humans live in or adjacent to wildland ecosystems that burn periodically and are part of nearly all ecosystems that are in the pyrosphere. There are many hazards posed by wildfire and certain consequences of living in these ecosystems. Most are associated with wildfire, but the increased use of prescribed fire is an issue because of associated risks with human attempts to manage ecological goals. The hazards posed by wildfire involve cultural and economic loss, social disruption, infrastructure damage, human injury and mortality, damage to natural resources, and deterioration in air quality. The economic and human health and safety costs are on the rise due to increasing wildland-urban interface problems and extreme wildfire behavior brought on by climate change. In the past, urban fires have been the greatest threat to human health and safety killing over 100,000 people. World ecosystems have been modified extensively by fire. We live on a “fire planet.” With larger human populations and a changing, drying climate, the impact of fire on humans and the hazards faced by our natural and developed world will continue to increase. The increase in wildfire hazards in the twenty-first century will require higher levels of training, increased investments in wildfire personnel and infrastructure, greater wildfire awareness, and improved planning to reduce fire impacts

The Climate of Opinion in Illinois 2008 - 2019: Gridlock Broken?

The current report is an extension of the longitudinal data report we provided in an earlier Simon Review based on the 2008 through 2016 polls (Jackson, Leonard, and Deitz, 2016). In major respects the current report is a revision and update to that original paper, continuing and revising our analysis of the political narrative and history in Illinois. That paper was subtitled: The Roots of Gridlock. The 2016 paper reflected the deep polarization and gridlock that had made Illinois a dysfunctional state at that point in its history. The current report extends the analysis by an additional three years, and posits a new and possibly more hopeful direction with the subtitle Gridlock Broken? We tentatively offer this conclusion as we trace the opportunities and peril facing Illinois at this crucial time in the state’s long, colorful, and sometimes checkered two hundred year history

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