THE IMPLICATIONS OF FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY AMONG LODGING FIRMS IN U.S.A

The purpose of this exploratory study is to analyze the nature and implications of financial constraint problems in the American lodging sector. For this purpose, the lodging firms’ financial performance measures, such as EBITDA, sales, sales growth, return on assets, and profit margin are examined to compare the extent to which financing, investment, dividend, and cash holding policies diverge between financially constrained and unconstrained lodging firms. The results show that financially constrained firms are smaller in size and value, have lower cash, make less investments, pay lower dividends, generate lower revenues, some of which contradict the findings in mainstream corporate finance literature, where higher cash holdings and better performance were reported for financially constrained firms. Although these firms have negative return on assets and profit margin, they have higher financial leverage and promising growth opportunities. Managerial implications are discussed within the realm of financing, dividend, investment, and cash management policies

FLEXICURITY AND OBSTACLES IN FRONT: A STUDY FOR THE TOURISM SECTOR IN TURKEY

The concept of flexicurity, which is a combination of flexibility and security words, involves the application of flexible working conditions providing security. There are various obstacles in the tourism sector of Turkey arising from the structural characteristics of the sector towards the applicability of the concept of flexicurity. In the study, the tourism sector was examined in terms of employment structure, working hours, wages, social protection, and representativeness, and evaluations were made on the dimensions of flexicurity. The statistics used in the study are compiled from TUIK (TURKSTAT), Eurostat and the Ministry of Labor and Social Security and evaluated as accommodation and catering sector data. This secondary analysis of existing data involves obtaining datasets from studies that have already been completed in national sources and the results in this study showed that the concept of flexicurity in the tourism sector can be maintained as unsecured due to the structure of the industry

Comparative analysis of carrying capacity indices for the central Aegean Islands

The tourist industry is one of the most important economic activities in Greece. The country receives over 14 million visitors per year. In an era where tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors of the developing countries the competition with existing tourism destinations, such as Greece, will intensify. Greece has enjoyed increasing numbers and revenues from tourism due to the unique environment both natural and man-made making it a high profile tourist destination. However, it is already clear, that the uncontrolled growth of the industry can bring serious environmental and social problems, leading to a decline in the quality of tourist product and services provided. Such negative effects can be controlled and reduced using environmental and tourism indices to estimate the impact of tourism and other businesses on the environment. The purpose of this paper is to apply the principles of coastal environmental management for the Islands in the central Aegean Sea islands via the carrying capacity assessment methodology in order to develop environmental performance indicators necessary for formulating a novel sustainable development policy proposal for Greek tourism.peer-reviewe