This pioneering book will familiarize you with benchmarking techniques that can be used to gauge and improve the performance of hospitality and tourism businesses anywhere! With compelling case studies drawn from hotel management, environmental systems, and destination practices, it examines important aspects of benchmarking, including satisfaction barometers, indicator development, and finding/networking with benchmarking partners.
offers methodological framework for answering key benchmarking questionsonly substantial work covering this topicworld-wide coverage and usageBenchmarking is a buzzword of the last decade that describes a method for comparing different companies, by measuring various data, performance and goals. This book focuses on the methodological aspects of the right selection of benchmarking partners.
Develops a specific benchmarking methodology relevant to international tourism destinations. This book evaluates different approaches to benchmarking, and their application within tourism destinations. The book considers organization benchmarking - performance evaluation of a particular organization and its departments - and destination benchmarking, which involves all elements such as transport services, airport services, accommodation, leisure and sport, hospitality and local attitudes.
Benchmarking is defined as "an improvement process in which a company measures its performance against that of best-in-class companies, determines how those companies achieved their performance levels, and uses the information to improve its own performance." (Bemowski, 1992, p. 20). Under the best of circumstances, benchmarking can be difficult, time-consuming, and costly. Service benchmarking is made more difficult than benchmarking in manufacturing because it appears that those things which are important to the customer may differ significantly from one service industry to another (Sower, et al., 2001). Because of the question about the universality of the definition of quality in the service industry and the impact on benchmarking activities, the editors obtained as broad a cross-section of papers for this special issue as possible. The industries represented by the nine papers in this issue cover a broad spectrum of service industries from sports to banking; from laboratory services to hospitality and tourism.
Improve your hospitality and tourism research abilities with this impressive collection of research methods! The Practice of Graduate Research in Hospitality and Tourism assists you in gaining insight into different facets of research design, conceptual development, research methods, and conclusions drawn from research in hospitality and tourism. As a professional, researcher, or graduate student in the hospitality and tourism field, you will benefit from this collection of chapters that represent examples of research trials conducted by graduate students in hospitality and tourism and are selected on the basis of the originality of the students’concepts, research methods, and interest of the work to graduate students. This informative volume will provide you and your students with up-to-date and effective ideas for researching topics within the field of hospitality. The Practice of Graduate Research in Hospitality and Tourism is an excellent supplemental textbook for research methods classes in graduate hospitality and tourism programs. The wide variety of chapters will stimulate discussions on research in hospitality and tourism from conceptual, secondary data, and primary data approaches. Some of the research articles you will explore in The Practice of Graduate Research in Hospitality and Tourism are based on different statistical techniques, research designs, and trends of subjects. Topics include: selecting service-oriented employees based on person-organization fit measuring the effectiveness of advertising on the Internet examining factors that affect food expenditures of U.S. tourists when they are away from home explaining the competitive structure of Japanese travelers’overseas destination plans determining the motivational needs of managers in the on-site foodservice segment providing adequate education on HIV and AIDS in the workplace for hospitality managers identifying influential variables of employee turnover in the food and beverage industry The Practice of Graduate Research in Hospitality and Tourism serves as an important forum for initiating research and new ideas internationally. The carefully selected chapters of this essential text will provide you and your students with suggestions that will improve research competency as well as hospitality services to patrons.
As research in tourism and hospitality reaches maturity, a growing number of methodological approaches are being utilized and, in addition, this knowledge is dispersed across a wide range of journals. Consequently there is a broad and multidisciplinary community of tourism and hospitality researchers whom, at present, need to look widely for support on methods. In this volume, researchers fulfil a pressing need by clearly presenting methodological issues within tourism and hospitality research alongside particular methods and share their experiences of what works, what does not work and where challenges and innovations lie.
This book examines comparative performance and best practice in National Tourism Organisations/ Administrations from extensive research carried out in 2003 and 2004. It compares qualitative and quantitative data in order to ascertain best performance. Analysis is contained in detail for eight National Tourism Organisations based in four Continents, comprising: Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, The Netherlands, South Africa and Spain. Each country is examined and analysed in the following key areas: Travel and Tourism Performance, Organisation of Tourism, The National Tourism Organisation, structure, Role, Staffing and Offices, Resources and Funding as well as providing case studies of good practice. The book includes methodology of the research and provides discussion and comment of the main roles and success formula in comparable National Tourism Organisations. • Useful, practical guide to government's involvement in tourism over the past decade or more • Brings insight from both the academic and practitioner markets • International Case Studies
Performance management is key to the ongoing success of any organisation, allowing it to meet its strategic objectives by designing and implementing management control systems. This book goes beyond the usual discussion of performance management in accounting and finance, to consider strategic management, human behaviour and performance management in different countries and contexts. With a global mix of world-renowned researchers, this book systematically covers the what, the who, the where and the why of performance management and control (PMC) systems. A comprehensive, state-of-the-art collection edited by a leading expert in the field, this book is a vital resource for all scholars, students and researchers with an interest in business, management and accounting.
The International Encyclopedia of Hospitality Management is the definitive reference work for any individual studying or working in the hospitality industry. There are 185 Hospitality Management degrees in the UK alone. This new edition updates and significantly revises twenty five per cent of the entries and has an additional twenty new entries. New online material makes it the most up-to-date and accessible hospitality management encyclopedia on the market. It covers all of the relevant issues in the field of hospitality management from a sectoral level (lodging, restaurants/food service, time-share, clubs and events) as well as a functional one (accounting and finance, marketing, strategic management, human resources, information technology and facilities management). Its unique, user-friendly structure enables readers to find exactly the information they require at a glance – whether they require broad detail that takes a more cross-sectional view across each subject field or more focused information that looks closely at specific topics and issues within the hospitality industry today.