Factors Affecting Tourist Satisfaction with Theatrical Performances: A Case Study of 'The Romance of the Song Dynasty' in Hangzhou, China

This study, for the first time, attempts to explore the factors affecting tourist satisfaction with a theatrical performance, The Romance of the Song Dynasty in Hangzhou, China. Four factors are identified to have affected tourist satisfaction: “Performance,” “Venue Environment,” “Service,” and “Stage Facilities”. These theatrical performance factors are examined to assess the relative influence on tourist overall satisfaction. Tourists have the highest satisfaction with “Stage Facilities” among all factors, however, “Service” is the most influential predictor of tourist overall satisfaction. Tourist demographic and travel characteristics towards these four theatrical performance factors reveal several significant differences. Discussions and implications are provided to theatre operators to improve tourist satisfaction with theatrical performance not only in Hangzhou, but also in the whole China

Relocating empowerment as a management concept for Asia

Management theories, especially those in the area of human resource management, are predominantly Western-centric in origin and in the empirical testing that underpins them. The purpose of this paper is to explore perceptions of one such theory, employee empowerment, in an Asian context. Information gathered from an open ended questionnaire and focus groups provide an in-depth examination of hotel managers' perceptions and practice of empowerment in the workplace. This study provides tentative indicators of significant culturally-driven differences in the understanding and application of employee empowerment (in terms of both research and practice) between Western and Asian contexts. The results of this study indicate that empowerment in Asian cultures relates much more to the individual and his/her merits, in contrast to organizationally-driven empowerment in Western countries. The findings also indicate that empowerment by hotel managers is related to the level of personal trust the manager has in an employee

Prospects of the Hong Kong Tourism Industry

Suggestions for future planning are offered to Hong Kong tourism practitioners and policy makers on the basis of estimated tourism demand, 1998 to 2007. The authors give an overview of the historical background of the Hong Kong tourism industry and use formal tourism forecasting techniques to estimate this demand

Cost Evaluation in Design for End-of-Life of Automotive Components

The European Union implemented the End-of-Life Vehicle directive to deal with an estimated 6 million end-of-life vehicles each year. Existing literature describe the processes to deal with the waste at end-of-life of different products but there is a lack of information on the costing of these options. These costs remain a concern to automotive manufacturers. This paper therefore reports the end-of-life costs of vehicle components and also demonstrates how these costs can be predicted at the design stage. The proposed approach should help to decide whether the automotive parts are viable for remanufacture, refurbishment, recycling, or disposal from an economic perspective. Two different automotive parts have been selected as case studies to validate the approach. Assumptions were made during the development of the technique and based on the results, the proposed approach could potentially provide vehicle manufacturers a method of estimating the cost of end-of-life recovery processes of vehicle components

The classification of heritage tourists: a case of Hue City, Vietnam

Heritage, especially with World Heritage status, is increasingly becoming the main attraction of many tourist destinations. Heritage tourism is also the major tourism product in Hue city, Vietnam. Hitherto, there are almost no official statistics and research pertaining to heritage tourism as well as heritage tourists in Hue. This study aims at providing a preliminary profile of heritage tourists to Hue city and identifying different categories of heritage tourists, with a special focus on package tourists. The international heritage tourists’ profile seems to be similar to official statistics of international arrivals, indicating almost no difference in socio-demographic profile between heritage tourists and general tourists in the context of Hue. Various significant differences were found between international and domestic tourists in terms of tourist characteristics, trip profile and the perception of Hue. Adopting McKercher’s [(2002) Towards a classification of cultural tourists. International Journal of Tourism Research, 4, 29–38] cultural tourist classification, five categories of heritage tourists were identified, including purposeful heritage tourists, sightseeing heritage tourists, casual heritage tourists, incidental heritage tourists and serendipitous heritage tourists. Among these, sightseeing heritage tourists and purposeful heritage tourists were dominant

Does the listener matter? How a listener affects the storyteller’s memory of a tourism experience

Despite the breadth of literature on tourists’ narratives, the influence of the listener during storytelling on individuals’ travel memories has received little attention in tourism research. Interpersonal sharing with a listener could elicit a process called capitalization whereby the storyteller (re)constructs an experience to make it more memorable to the self. In light of this research gap, this study investigates how a listener could affect a storyteller’s memory of his/her travel experiences. Experiment 1 demonstrates that interpersonal sharing with a listener enhances tourists’ post-trip evaluation of positive experiences. Experiment 2 further examines how the nature of a listener’s responsiveness (i.e., specific or general responsiveness) could affect the storyteller’s memory and demonstrates that storytellers could also maximize details of negative experiences, thereby worsening their cognitive and affective images of the destination after interpersonal sharing. These findings have important managerial implications in service experiences and customer-relationship building in tourism and hospitality settings

How Does Employees\u27 Branding and Employees\u27 Behavior Influence Hotel Service Quality?

The primary aim of this research is to investigate whether organisational citizenship behaviors, in-role behaviors, employees’ empowerment and employees’ branding can influence customers’ perceived service quality. A model is proposed based on three interlinked literature strands that consider human resources management, brand management, and hospitality management. The survey instruments will be developed based on the results of the focus groups and the literature. A set of relationships among employees’ behaviors, employees’ branding and service quality will be examined by structural equation modeling. The findings would encourage hotels to allocate resources to improve those critical elements that can help to achieve the best results

Gender and emotion in tourism : do men and women tour leaders differ in their performance of emotional labour?

This study aims to explore the extent of gender differences among Chinese tour leaders’ roles and the relationship of such differences to emotional labour, perceived organisational support and perceived supervisor support. The findings revealed surface acting and deep acting to be the two major strategies of emotional labour. Gender difference is found in performing surface acting strategies. Further analysis of gender differences showed that women tour leaders perform better with more care from organisation and rewards. Men tour leaders perform better with more supervisors’ care, concern, recognition and appreciation; and job training and facilitation

Determinants of female career competencies: The role of familysupportive supervisor and career mobility

This study aims to explore the determinants of female career competencies. Two constructs—family-supportive supervisor and career mobility are developed as the determinants, while career satisfaction is developed as the outcome. The relationship between each constructs will be examined by structural equation modeling. The findings of this study will help hotel operators to practice strategic human resources management and encourage female hotel managers to improve their career competencies