Visitor Center Staff Training: A U.S Assessment

As the first step toward developing benchmarks for travel counselor training, the authors identify the methods and characteristics of existing travel counselor-training programs in the U.S. Responses from 30 out of 50 state tourism agencies indicate that 12 different methods of training are emplyed; however, usage and satisfaction with these various training methods vary

Authentic Experiences Assessment Instrument: The Case of Millennial Students and Cultural Attractions in Central Florida

Three types of authenticity were chosen to analyze cultural attractions—they were: staged or real authenticity, sensory authenticity, and existential authenticity. A group of millennium students that visited Orlando’s cultural attractions from the University of Central Florida were part of this study. Results show that the term “culture” is unclear among students. Also gender might play a role in determining what is perceived as “authenticity.” In general the focus group discussion had a consensus that these three types of authenticity were the right ones to measured cultural attractions, people, and behaviors

Timeshare Owner Preferences - An Analysis of Program and Service Relationships during Recessionary Times

Since the 1970s various industry studies have indicated that the vacation ownership industry has enjoyed unprecedented growth in unit sales, resort growth, and the number of owners (American Resort Devleopment Association [ARDA], 2007; ARDA, 2009a; ARDA, 2009b). However, due to the recent economic downturn these growth metrics are no longer obtainable. This external impact has caused developers to retrench and therefore reflect upon their existing product and service offerings, financial metrics, and consumer markets (ARDA, 2010a; ARDA 2010b). The crux of these findings indicates that the industry has shifted to maintaining and enhancing product and service offerings as a reaction to changing economic conditions. The findings reported in the body of this manuscript represent product and service preferences as collected from a random data pull of their existing ownership base. The study also revealed current preferences of timeshare owners with relation to services provided and products/amenities offered. Management implications and limitations of the current study are discussed

Restaurant Industry Perspectives on Pro-social Rule Breaking: Intent versus Action

The resounding message extracted from the service literature is that employees serve pivotal functions in the overall guest experience. This is of course due to the simultaneous delivery of personalized service provision with resultant consumption of those services. This simultaneous delivery and consumption cycle is at times challenged by a perceived desire to accommodate guest request that may violate, to a greater or lesser degree, an organizational rule. This is important to note because increased interactions with customers enable frontline employees to have a better sense of what customers want from the company as well as from the company itself (Bitner, et al, 1994). With that platform established, then why are some employees willing to break organizational rules and risk disciplinary action to better service a customer? This study examines the employee personality, degree of autonomy, job meaning, and co-worker influence on an employee\u27s decision to break organizational rules. The results of this study indicate that co-worker influence exerted a minimal influence on employee decision to break rules while the presence of societal consciousness exerted a much stronger influence. Women reported that they were less likely to engage in rule divergence, and significant correlations were present when filtered by years in current position, and years in the industry

Millennial Students, Movies and Tourism

This study examines the degree to which the leisure activity of going to a movie film influences an individual\u27s image formation process, and therefore desire to visit the portrayed tourist destination. The results of this single case study are twofold. First, demographic differences occur between pretest and posttest measures of destination attributes as the result of exposure to a destination specific movie, and second, the desire to visit the film locations as expressed in the movie significantly vary by gender, age, and ethnicity

An Analysis of Event Managers\u27 Problem-Solving Propensity: Applying the Problem-Solving Inventory (PSI) to the Field of Event Management

The field of event management encompasses the conceptualization of a festival or event, a determination of the intended target market, coordination of systems, policies, and procedures needed to plan and support the event, and the eventual administration of a proposed event. This broad scope of functional duties surrounding event planning requires that an event manger have at his or her disposal a diverse repertoire of problem-solving abilities. Using Heppner\u27s Problem-Solving Inventory (PSI) the researchers determined that the sampled group of event professionals from the International Special Events Society (ISEP) exhibited high levels of problem-solving self-confidence, high approach behavior, and high levels of personal control in their role as event managers

The Role of Individual Variables, Organizational Variables and Moral Intensity Dimensions in Libyan Management Accountants’ Ethical Decision Making

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and (in Libya) Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world

Boosting the Bottom Line via Internet Sales-The Case of Conference Travel

There is no doubt that the Internet has become one of the main channels of distribution for a variety of hospitality and tourism-related companies. Because of cost efficiency and ease of access, such electronic distribution channels often serve as useful tools for hospitality and tourism firms to boost their bottom line. This paper presents a case study of the use of Internet registration for conference travel. Using the 1999 annual Civil Affairs conference as a medium, this study ascertained the acceptance and utility of using the Internet for registration and informational purposes for a group of civil affairs officers. Findings reveal that computer usage and Internet access consumer patterns for the sampled travelers are distinctly different from other reported consumer usage profiles. As such, the importance of such electronic distribution channels for meeting planners is better understood

Ethics in the hospitality industry: An applied model

Aims to profile the ethical decision-making foundations and referents which influence ethical decision making for small hotel operations in the USA. Reviews the precepts of egoism, benevolence and principle used as criteria in decision making and the main referent sources of individual, local and cosmopolitan used when applying these precepts. Research consisted of 1,500 operators in nine different regions and a response rate of 40 percent. The questionnaire consisted of the Ethical Climate Questionnaire plus demographic variables such as: gender, experience, education level, property type and position classification. Findings included: managers/owners mostly operate from an egoism perspective and an individual referent. Develops a model to explain these ethical precepts and referents. © 1998, MCB UP Limite