Customer Perceptions of Service Quality in Luxury Hotels in Petra and Aqaba, Jordan: An Exploratory Study

The aim of the study is to assess customers perception of service quality in luxury hotels, in both, Petra (The iconic tourist attraction), and Aqaba (The commercial capital) on the Red Sea in Jordan and to help the hotel management identify how guest perceive the services and compare their performance against clients expectation. The study used a survey and interviews to accumulate information using SPSS version 20.0 for data analysis. The study sample consists of 271 participants of hotel guests at four- and five-star hotels in Petra and Aqaba. Findings results show that for responses relating to front office, room service, and in-house cafe/restaurant, the importance score is statistically significant to and higher than the performance rating. Overall, the results indicate a significant difference in guest expectations and actual experiences, thus highlighting managerial implications. The current study cannot claim to be wholly conclusive as it is limited to a small sample size from only two cities of Jordan. From a practitioner’s perspective, the study provides an opportunity to recognize, in ranking order, features that are considered important by the guests staying in luxury hotels of Petra and Aqaba, as well as to identify the areas of disparity in service quality. It is observed that this is a significant study regards to its contribution to the literature and hotel managers who plan to improve their performance and competitiveness through guest satisfaction

Medical tourism’s impact for health systems: A study from three Asian countries

Medical tourism is a growing phenomenon with policy implications for health systems, particularly of destination countries. Private actors and governments in Southeast Asia are promoting the medical tourist industry, but the potential impact on health systems, particularly in terms of equity in access and availability for local consumers, is unclear. This article presents a conceptual framework that outlines the policy implications of medical tourism’s growth for health systems, illustration on the cases of Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia, three provincial centres for medical tourism, via an extensive review of academic and grey literature. Variables for further analysis of the potential impact of medical tourism on health systems are also identified. The framework can provide a basis for empirical, in country studies weighing the benefits and disadvantages of medical tourism for health systems. The policy implications described are of particular relevance for policymakers and industry practitioners in other Southeast Asian countries with similar health systems where governments have expressed interest in facilitating the growing of the medical tourist industry

Postmodern narrative in Kurt Vonneguts Slaughterhouse-Five

This article explores Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) as a postmodern critique of modern literary modes. As a novel recapitulating within itself a postmodern relative perspective of reality, it elucidates one aspect of postmodernism, that of literary experimentation. Vonnegut experiments with the narrator,setting and characters of the novel to provide a fictional critique of the literary exhaustion prevailing in modern literary modes. Experimentation is thus remedial replenishment for such exhaustion through authorial metafictional intrusion into the text. Accordingly, the article uses Patricia Waugh, Gérard Genette and Mikhail Bakhtin’s narrative theory to examine the experimental technique in the novel. What makes the majority of metafictional style unique is not only its presence in the novel, but also its conflated depiction of the American individual’s suffering after the Second World War.For this later style, the self-justifying manner in the novel extrapolates textual dialogic relations to accentuate the author’s critical voice. Such voice originates in the main narrative point of view in the text and is known as focalization

Id1 Restrains p21 Expression to Control Endothelial Progenitor Cell Formation

Loss of Id1 in the bone marrow (BM) severely impairs tumor angiogenesis resulting in significant inhibition of tumor growth. This phenotype has been associated with the absence of circulating endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) in the peripheral blood of Id1 mutant mice. However, the manner in which Id1 loss in the BM controls EPC generation or mobilization is largely unknown. Using genetically modified mouse models we demonstrate here that the generation of EPCs in the BM depends on the ability of Id1 to restrain the expression of its target gene p21. Through a series of cellular and functional studies we show that the increased myeloid commitment of BM stem cells and the absence of EPCs in Id1 knockout mice are associated with elevated p21 expression. Genetic ablation of p21 rescues the EPC population in the Id1 null animals, re-establishing functional BM-derived angiogenesis and restoring normal tumor growth. These results demonstrate that the restraint of p21 expression by Id1 is one key element of its activity in facilitating the generation of EPCs in the BM and highlight the critical role these cells play in tumor angiogenesis

Performance management of a service unit in hotel theoretical review

This paper aims to review the existing literature on performance management in the F&B department of hotels, its processes, and its effective management system framework. This paper discusses food and beverage systems and explains a system model framework of performance management in the area of F&B and its application to the hotel industry. The conceptual paper suggests an application of the system model in the F&B department and encourages hotels to improve its management to better serve their guests

Effect of chlorpromazine on intact and irradiated aliquot ctdsDNA samples

Bagkground:Chlorpromazine is widely used in human medicine in the therapy of schizophrenia, organic psychosis and the manic phase of manic depressive illness. It expressed a selective cytotoxicity and the results of genotoxicity were positive. Objectives: This study is designed to explore the effect of chlorpromazine on irradiated and non irradiated calf thymus double strands DNA (ctdsDNA) molecule. Methods: Aliquots of irradiated (subjected to UVB light) and non-radiated ctdsDNA samples were incubatyed with different concentrations of chlorpromazine. Further series of experiments studied the simultaneous effects of chlorpromazine and UVB light on aliquots of ctdsDNA, The changes in optic densities of ctdsDNA aliquots were mointered and recorded bu UVspectrophotometer at 260 nm. Results: Chlorpromazine exerts dual effects on non-radiated ctdsDNA aliquots represented by hyperchromasia and hypochromasia in regard to its concentration. It potentiates the effect of UVB radiation on ctdsDNA molecules. Its effect is differed in respect to the radiation status. Conclusion: chlorpromazine exerts several effects on aliquot ctdsDNA samples which are related to the nature of DNA molecule as well as to the concentration of chlorpromazine.Also chlorpromazine potentiates the hyperchromasic effect of UVB radiation on aliquot ctdsDNA samples but it produces completely damage of DNA molecule when the aliquot ctdsDNA samples irradiated in presence of chlorpromazine

Dynamics of cerebrospinal fluid levels of matrix metalloproteinases in human traumatic brain injury

Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are extracellular enzymes involved in the degradation of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins. Increased expression of MMPs have been described in traumatic brain injury (TBI) and may contribute to additional tissue injury and blood–brain barrier damage. The objectives of this study were to determine longitudinal changes in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) concentrations of MMPs after acute TBI and in relation to clinical outcomes, with patients with idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH) serving as a contrast group. The study included 33 TBI patients with ventricular CSF serially sampled, and 38 iNPH patients in the contrast group. Magnetic bead-based immunoassays were utilized to measure the concentrations of eight MMPs in ventricular human CSF. CSF concentrations of MMP-1, MMP-3 and MMP-10 were increased in TBI patients (at baseline) compared with the iNPH group (p < 0.001), while MMP-2, MMP-9 and MMP-12 did not differ between the groups. MMP-1, MMP-3 and MMP-10 concentrations decreased with time after trauma (p = 0.001–0.04). Increased concentrations of MMP-2 and MMP-10 in CSF at baseline were associated with an unfavourable TBI outcome (p = 0.002–0.02). Observed variable pattern of changes in MMP concentrations indicates that specific MMPs serve different roles in the pathophysiology following TBI, and are in turn associated with clinical outcomes