Advances in Hospitality and Leisure: Volume 15

Tourism development is often seen as a tool to empower rural and peripheral communities. Problems can arise if there is an imbalance in the power relationship between local communities and external actors promoting development, including investors and Non Government Organisations (NGOs). This chapter examines the issues of leadership and power related to a hotel project operated by a private company in a small rural town in Timor-Leste. While there was initially substantial support for the project, the private company leading the project failed to adequately engage with community leaders creating feeling of loss of authority. Moreover, the members of the community who were not directly associated with the project felt that there was a gap between promises made to the community and the actual outcomes.

This study examines influence and motivational tactics for effectively managing entitled employees, a potential connection between generations and levels of entitlement, managerial challenges, and sources and characteristics of entitled employees. The study uses qualitative methods and data from hospitality leaders. Increased legislature and use of technology, the structure of the educational system, and changes in social norms are promoting entitlement in the workplace. Generation Y hospitality employees hold a higher sense of entitlement than past generations and possess that sense of entitlement even before entering the workforce. The most favorable reactions of entitled employees were attributed to the use of exchange and coalition tactics where entitled employees find pride in their employment and management promotes teamwork and accountability.

This study attempts to demonstrate how a tourism attraction (i.e., museum) could establish its brand equity. It involves a case study on one of the most famous museums in Taiwan which involves an in-depth interview. The results show that the museum under investigation has established a clear brand identification and its brand communications but has a limited interpretation of its brand assets. Recommendations include strengthening its experiential propaganda, organizing large-scale intercity festivals, coordinating with other vendors to sell cultural products, increasing the number of professional exhibitions, and establishing a self-evaluation mechanism.

This study investigates the role of grit in a work setting as well as interrelationships among work-related constructs among frontline employees of hotels. Based on the framework of grit and work-related constructs, this study proposes and tests a model that attempts to understand the dynamic relationship among the two dimensions of grit, customer orientation, job satisfaction, and job performance, with an emphasis on the moderating role of organizational tenure. The results indicate that consistency of interest significantly influences customer orientation, whereas perseverance of effort significantly affects job satisfaction. Job performance is significantly influenced by customer orientation and job satisfaction. The paths from perseverance of effort to customer orientation, from perseverance of effort to job satisfaction, and from consistency of interest to job satisfaction are significantly moderated by organizational tenure.

Using the modified theory of planned behavior, this study aims to understand residents’ supporting or rejecting mindsets toward legalizing gambling in Kinmen, Taiwan, where exists a complex and somewhat contradictory relationships between economic growth and the preservation of the natural environment in the context of tourism specifically to small island destinations. This study develops a convenience sampling procedure in which 365 questionnaires are collected. A series of hypotheses tests are conducted via structural equation modeling. This study notices that perceived behavioral control is the most important attribute affecting behavioral intention. However, behavioral intention does not necessarily lead to actual behavior. Attitude is considered as a more reliable predictor of actual action. Attitude relied heavily on positive perceived behavioral control. Further, the respondents are concerned more about how legalizing gambling affects their current lifestyle.

To augment the current literature on the memorable travel experience, this research attempts to elucidate the complex meaning of memorable travel experiences. It deploys a qualitative study to interview 17 participants in four study sites in the State of Indiana, US. From the personal interviews, this study discovers five thematic views entailing: (1) social interaction, (2) destination attractiveness, (3) excitement, (4) novelty, and (5) learning. Unlike most memorable travel experience studies in the existing literature which indicates knowledge as one of the components, this study finds that memorable travel experience involves in the learning process, not merely gaining knowledge. Relevance suggestions for future research are provided in the conclusion section.

This study attempts to examine the relationships between leisure involvement, social support, and happiness. Consequently, for data collection, this study utilizes a convenient sampling procedure, involving a questionnaire survey on scuba divers in Kenting, a southern resort town in Taiwan. In this study, 320 samples of useful samples were collected. Structural equation modeling is deployed to test the underlying relationships among the research variables. Concerning the leisure involvement of the scuba diving participants, social support is viewed as an essential antecedent. This study confirms leisure involvement is a mediator between social support and happiness in the case of scuba diving. This study further confirms that the mediation effect of leisure involvement positively affects happiness. Furthermore, social support positively leads to leisure engagement (e.g., scuba diving) and could also directly influence happiness with a positive relationship. Consequently, this study renders managerial implications for the service providers of scuba diving.

This study attempts to evaluate the antecedences of customer loyalty and the moderating effect of social media. Three antecedences are evaluated in this study, including service quality expectation, product innovation, and customer relationship management. It investigates their impact on the dependent variable, which is customer loyalty and also study their relationships in the presence of the mediating effect of customer satisfaction and moderating effects of social media. The present study was conducted in the hospitality sector of Pakistan, in which eight hotels and restaurants have been studied. The sample was collected from three major cities of Pakistan, namely, Multan, Faisalabad, and Lahore. This present study provides essential intuition for managers and market analysts on building strong customer relationship management through social media and to increase customer loyalty through different factors.

This research examines impacts from tourists’ destination knowledge and destination interest upon Generation Z’s recognition memory of advertisement for a new travel destination (Taiwan). The findings of this study indicated that participants with high destination knowledge are more likely to exhibit a lower level of new travel destination advertising recognition than participants with low destination knowledge, while the destination interest is low. Practical and theoretical implications of this outcome for destination marketers and tourism scholars are suggested to better understand and anticipate the processes of tourists’ learning and retaining of new travel destination information.

This paper identifies and models the effect of eight attributes that influence hotel room rents in India. These attributes are conceptually grouped into three factors: (1) site factors including the presence or absence of a “swimming pool,” “free breakfast,” and the “hotel capacity”; (2) situational factors including, “distance from the airport,” “weekend/weekday,” “city population,” “cost of living”; and (3) a reputation factor indicated by “star rating.” Our regression model uses secondary data collected from a hotel booking website for 570 hotels across 18 cities of India. The results indicate that six out of these eight variables namely, presence of swimming pool, free breakfast, hotel capacity, distance from the airport, city population, and hotel star rating have a significant impact on hotel room rents in India.

The purpose of this study is to introduce the concept of social tourism and to find existing social tourism practices in South Korea. Social tourism is generally supported by governments to provide tourism opportunities to those who are otherwise not able to trip. Social tourism helps both people who use the programs and the tourism industry. In South Korea, unlike many other countries, the practice of social tourism is based on businesses’ corporate social responsibility. Businesses offer various cultural and recreational opportunities to various groups of people in the community. This study outlines the context of various approaches to social tourism in South Korea and highlights some challenges and proposed initiatives for the future integration of the social tourism sector.