MARKETING RESEARCH REGARDING TOURISM BUSINESS READINESS FOR ECO-LABEL ACHIEVEMENT (CASE STUDY: NATURA 2000 CRIŞUL REPEDE GORGE-PĂDUREA CRAIULUI PASS SITE, ROMANIA)

Sustainable development is an approach that aims to preserve the environment and the culture of communities hosting tourists and at the same time to meet the needs of tourists and to maintain the growth of tourism industry. These objectives are more and more related to eco-labelling, which provides the certification based on a series of benchmarks developed and verified by a third party. The labelling of an organization as an ecotourism organization requires the compliance with certain criteria as those required by the European Ecotourism Labelling Standard. Natura 2000 Crişul Repede Gorge– Pădurea Craiului Pass site will have to prove that it is in compliance with the prerequisites to become an ecotourism destination. The objectives of this paper are: to identify the prerequisites that a destination must comply with in order to be labelled an ecotourism destination, focusing on the prerequisites related to the existence and behaviour of tourist reception structures; to identify the extent to which tour operators are open  and willing to support the labelling of the destination where they operate as being ecotourism. Work methodology is based on the interview as an investigation method and semi-structured survey as working instrument. The hypotheses drawn up were partially confirmed, by the increased availability of the operators to meet, under certain conditions, the eco-labelling criteria

Performance evaluation model of Romanian manufacturing listed companies by fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS

We are interested in the hierarchy of the main Romanian companies in the manufacturing industry by considering eight financial and seven non-financial indicators. Thirty three listed companies, that are non-financial institutions, were selected for the study and in order to control the reliability of the data we used the Bucharest Stock Exchange database, official data published by the Romanian Ministry of Public Finance, and the annual reports released by the companies on their websites, collecting information for the years 2011–2015. Because the human thinking is subjective and ambiguous we prefer linguistic variables, converted afterwards in triangular fuzzy numbers, to represent the importance of indicators. Our method involves the calculation of the weights of individual or categories of indicators based on Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process. Then, the level of performance for each company, separately for financial, non-financial and all indicators is obtained by TOPSIS method. We deduce an objective hierarchy of the companies on a rigorous basis, which is however dependent from the choice of indicators and the conversion scale of linguistic variables into triangular fuzzy numbers. Also, following the obtained results we concluded that the overall performance of companies for the analyzed period is significantly influenced by non-financial indicators. First published online 16 April 202

Evaluation of hotel quality attribute importance through fuzzy correlation coefficient

An indirect method of calculation of the importance of attributes as the fuzzy correlation between the performance of attributes and the overall satisfaction was proposed in a recent paper. We apply the method to the results of a survey with respect to the quality of hotel services in Oradea (Romania). Different representations of the answers as triangular fuzzy numbers, as well as distinct analyzes to compare the hierarchies of the attributes with respect to the experience with the hotel and the motivation of the travel are considered. First published online: 30 Mar 201

USING KANO TWO DIMENSIONAL SERVICE QUALITY CLASSIFICATION AND CHARACTERISTIC ANALYSIS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF HOTELS' CLIENTS OF ORADEA

Kano's two-dimensional quality model is one of the best known and most used direct methods, in service quality appreciation. The main purpose of this paper is to apply and testing a two-dimensional model proposed by Noriaki Kano, in a real situation of four hotels from Oradea. The first part of the paper presents, the stages needed to build the Kano model, in the context of researches regarding the degree of satisfaction of the consumer of touristic services and the advantages of using this method. The second part of the paper describes a market research, through questionnaire, among the 125 clients of four hotels with over 50 rooms and located in key areas for the urban tourism. The results obtained show the degree of global satisfaction of the clients surveyed and allow the framing of the quality attributes into the three main categories(plus one) suggested by Kano. Applying Kano`s model we have a position of consumers face tinting of the quality characteristics, this is impossible in classical quality assessment services

MARKETING RESEARCH REGARDING TOURISM BUSINESS READINESS FOR ECO-LABEL ACHIEVEMENT (CASE STUDY: NATURA 2000 CRIŞUL REPEDE GORGE-PĂDUREA CRAIULUI PASS SITE, ROMANIA)

Sustainable development is an approach that aims to preserve the environment and the culture of communities hosting tourists and at the same time to meet the needs of tourists and to maintain the growth of tourism industry. These objectives are more and more related to eco-labelling, which provides the certification based on a series of benchmarks developed and verified by a third party. The labelling of an organization as an ecotourism organization requires the compliance with certain criteria as those required by the European Ecotourism Labelling Standard. Natura 2000 Crişul Repede Gorge– Pădurea Craiului Pass site will have to prove that it is in compliance with the prerequisites to become an ecotourism destination. The objectives of this paper are: to identify the prerequisites that a destination must comply with in order to be labelled an ecotourism destination, focusing on the prerequisites related to the existence and behaviour of tourist reception structures; to identify the extent to which tour operators are open  and willing to support the labelling of the destination where they operate as being ecotourism.   </p

Roll the Dice—Let’s See If Differences Really Matter! Accounting Judgments and Sustainable Decisions in the Light of a Gender and Age Analysis

This research aims to investigate whether gender and age of Professional Accountants influence their opinion upon accounting judgments and sustainable decision-making. Through a questionnaire, accountants were interrogated about their education, professional profile, age, gender, personality traits, and their perception on accounting judgment and professional behavior. On one hand, results showed that women accountants are more inclined to comply with accounting regulations and more interested in following an ethical behavior. Moreover, women tend to be more interested in fulfilling managers&rsquo; expectations and more willing to collaborate. On the other hand, men accountants proved to be more independent in judgments and more skeptical. Furthermore, men have a greater propensity to make accurate, sustainable judgments, considering the evaluation of goodwill as more important than women. However, no correlations were found between age, gender and accountants&rsquo; perception on the theoretical framework of professional accounting judgment. As the age of accountants grows, the compliance degree to regulations increases. This study adds value to gender accounting literature by the way it examines accountants&rsquo; behavior and perception towards accounting judgments and sustainable decisions in correlation to gender diversity and age

An IPA Approach towards Including Citizens&rsquo; Perceptions into Strategic Decisions for Smart Cities in Romania

City administrators have begun to consider citizens&rsquo; perception as an essential enabler of smart and sustainable city development. In response to their need, our study mainly aimed to analyze the citizens&rsquo; perceptions related to the attributes of a smart city and to offer an evidence-based importance&ndash;performance analysis (IPA) technique, revised with triangular number fuzzy, to set priorities to develop it further successfully, taking Oradea, Romania, as an example. Specifically, we investigated varying the citizens&rsquo; perceptions regarding the attributes of a smart city across the thematic content analysis followed by an IPA approach to identify the attributes of a smart city that could be expected to advance its future development. The results show that most of our respondents appreciated the city administrators&rsquo; efforts and expressed relatively higher preferences for the fifteen smart city attributes of Oradea on which the local authorities should focus. The research brings valuable insight into the strategic decision making related to smart city development, which can serve academics and practitioners, complementing existing literature on the citizens&rsquo; perception of sustainable smart city development

An IPA Approach towards Including Citizens’ Perceptions into Strategic Decisions for Smart Cities in Romania

City administrators have begun to consider citizens’ perception as an essential enabler of smart and sustainable city development. In response to their need, our study mainly aimed to analyze the citizens’ perceptions related to the attributes of a smart city and to offer an evidence-based importance–performance analysis (IPA) technique, revised with triangular number fuzzy, to set priorities to develop it further successfully, taking Oradea, Romania, as an example. Specifically, we investigated varying the citizens’ perceptions regarding the attributes of a smart city across the thematic content analysis followed by an IPA approach to identify the attributes of a smart city that could be expected to advance its future development. The results show that most of our respondents appreciated the city administrators’ efforts and expressed relatively higher preferences for the fifteen smart city attributes of Oradea on which the local authorities should focus. The research brings valuable insight into the strategic decision making related to smart city development, which can serve academics and practitioners, complementing existing literature on the citizens’ perception of sustainable smart city development