Editorial

Citation

Okumus, F. (2012), "Editorial", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 24 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijchm.2012.04124daa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Volume 24, Issue 4

This issue includes nine full articles and two book reviews. The first article by Tony Tse and Yiu Tung Poon investigates the relationship between hotel room demand and room rates. This study highlights the problems that arise with the traditional method of applying calculus to revenue and profit optimization and proposes a new method to resolve it. The second article by Kalotina Chalkiti examines how knowledge sharing takes place in the dynamic labor environment of Darwin’s hospitality industry in the Northern Territory of Australia. Data was collected through 76 semi-structured interviews and validated through two focus groups over an eight-month period. The findings reveal that organizational and individual factors support knowledge sharing in the dynamic labor environment of Darwin’s hospitality industry.

In the third article, David Andrews and Simon Turner provide an overview of the factors contributing to the difficulties faced by the public house (pub) sector in the UK. The paper offers a number of practical recommendations that could be taken forward by the sector. The next article by Xander Lub and his colleagues explores generational differences in the psychological contract of hospitality employees and work outcomes such as commitment and turnover intention. The authors collected data from 359 employees in 20 hotels in The Netherlands. The findings suggest that opportunities for development and challenge, variation and responsibility are more important to younger generations of hospitality workers.

Nan Hua, Khaldoon Nusair and Arun Upneja provide empirical evidence that certain financial characteristics are critical for lodging firms to earn a higher profit. The paper employed Logit models, under the framework of comparative advantage theory, to explore the relationships between firm financial characteristics and outperformance from a financial perspective. From a practical standpoint, owners and managers should use industry medians to benchmark financial performance, focusing on factors such as leverage, book to market, asset turnover, and firm size to ensure financial performance leadership among lodging firms. In the next article Jinhoo Kim and SooCheong (Shawn) compare the risk-return characteristics and performance of REIT hotel companies (hotel REITs hereafter) with those of C-corporation hotel companies (hotel C-corps hereafter). Differences between the hotel REIT and C-corp estimations were tested using Wald test statistics. Little evidence was found that hotel REITs have significantly different risk-return characteristics and performance than hotel C-corps, which suggests that hotel REITs and C-corps are not significantly different in terms of market risk-return characteristics and performance.

Raymond Ferreira, Thomas Maier, and Misty Johanson examine the food and beverage revenue changes in private clubs in the US during the economic downturn from 2008 to 2010. Over 1,000 private club managers in the US were surveyed to determine the impacts of two economic downturns on their financial performance. Most clubs experienced a decrease in their overall net food and beverage revenues and consequently experienced significant losses in their overall food and beverage operations, especially affecting private party business.

In the next article Riadh Ladhari examines the reliability and validity of the Lodging Quality Index (LQI). Data were collected from 200 Canadian respondents who had stayed in a hotel in Canada within the preceding three months. Study results support the reliability and the validity of the LQI's structure of five dimensions. In terms of the importance of the five dimensions, the study finds that “tangibility” and “communication” are the most important dimensions.

Finally, Qi York Yan and Hanqin Zhang conceptualize the dimensionality of programing quality of festivals and empirically test it and its relationships with the satisfaction and behavioral intention levels of festival visitors. Structured interviews were conducted with 350 visitors to a cultural festival. They found six dimensions, namely diversity, stakeholder balance, incrementality, simultaneity, flexibility and linkage. The study findings offer valuable insights for festival planners and organizers to better design, operate and manage their festivals.

Two book reviews are included in this issue. Stanislav Ivanov reviews Tourism and Poverty by Regina Scheyvens. The second book review is provided by Aaron Tham on Strategic Hospitality Leadership. This text was edited by Russell Smith and Judy Siguaw.

We hope that our readers find all the articles published in this issue timely, relevant and useful.

Fevzi Okumus