The Elusive Search for Talent: Skill Gaps in the Canadian Luxury Hotel Sector

The luxury segment of the hospitality sector has been growing worldwide. Luxury hospitality is about providing a unique experience for guests, and this type of experience requires having employees who understand the luxury culture and are trained at the highest level. Luxury hotels compete for the best talents, but the current pool of candidates for customer-facing and managerial positions within these establishments is limited. The purpose of this study was to identify skill gaps in Canada’s luxury hotels. Primary data were collected from in-depth semi-structured interviews with twenty luxury hotel managers and analyzed with NVivo 12. Respondents agreed about the skills required for brands to succeed in the luxury market, but they lamented the lack of qualified talents and the difficulty of training and retaining qualified collaborators. The results of the study point to the need to address the luxury skill gap in the hospitality sector, particularly in Canada. Recommendations to address this problem are proposed.

The evaluation of Disaster Resilient Village Program to support National Security matters

Disaster Resilient Village is a village with capability to independently adapt and deal with disaster threat, and quickly recover from the adverse effect of disaster. This research employed Context, Input, Process, and Product (CIPP) evaluation model to evaluate the Disaster Resilient Village program in Tanjung Benoa Village. As the result, the Context aspect of the Disaster Resilient Village program in Tanjung Benoa Village is appropriate in accordance with the Regulation of the Head of the National Disaster Management Agency of the Republic of Indonesia Number 1 of 2012. On the Input aspect, Tanjung Benoa village has established a Disaster Risk Reduction Forum that consists of the local community representatives. On the Process aspect, the village has developed Disaster-Safe School and Communities that routinely conduct simulations on monthly basis and collaborate with the hospitality sector to develop evacuation sites in the event of a tsunami disaster. On Product aspect, namely community capacity building and community participation, the program resulted in the increasing trust among domestic and foreign tourists and the improvement of Tanjung Benoa people’s welfare. In conclusion, Disaster Resilient Village program in Tanjung Benoa Village has been going well.

Wellbeing and Resilience in Tourism: A Systematic Literature Review During COVID-19

The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UWTO) has acknowledged 2020 as the worst year in tourism history due to the worldwide pandemic COVID-19. Destinations, tourists, local communities, stakeholders, and residents, and their daily activities were affected. Thus, wellbeing and resilience are two crucial variables to help the industry and the people recover. This research aims to analyze early positive approaches and attitudes to respond to the negative impact of COVID-19 in tourism everyday activities that have at its core wellbeing and resilience, the two main variables of the Positive Psychology field of studies. A systematic literature review was conducted, following PRISMA guidelines to achieve this aim. The research was done using the Online Knowledge Library (B-on) and all the available databases. The research led to 32 articles that were screened using the inclusion and exclusion criteria. A total of 18 scientific articles met all criteria. Overall, results show that a positive and resilient approach to deal with the adverse outcomes of the pandemic is a concern for stakeholders and the future of the organizations in the tourism and hospitality sector, as is tourists’ wellbeing. However, less research has been done on wellbeing and a clear lack of research regarding residents’ wellbeing and resilience is evident. A deeper study of wellbeing and resilience in tourism is needed, and actual practices and interventions to ensure that all tourism actors have the resources to overcome the pandemic and restart the industry’s daily lives feeling well and safe.

Digitalisation in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry

This chapter aims to review the evolution of digitalisation and its effects on the tourism and hospitality industry. A holistic perspective is adopted providing a review and analysis of digitalisation in the tourism and hospitality sector comprising both supply and demand sides for the originality of the content. The supply side, as well as the demand side, is analysed through a literature review of academic resources, policy documents published by international organisations and related websites. The existing literature and the industrial practices are reviewed to find out and classify the state of proposal and implementation of innovative technologies and the trends followed by suppliers and the demand side to use them. Furthermore, the effects of digitalisation on managerial processes on the supply side (actors, entrepreneurs, businesses, destinations) and decisional and behavioural processes on the demand side (consumer, tourists) are taken into consideration to provide a holistic perspective of digitalisation and its effects on the given sector.

The Impact of Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) on Internal Stakeholders' Satisfaction in Hungarian Upscale Hotels

Digital transformation and artificial intelligence are considered among the most vital trending topics in the process of hospitality sector evolution. Many scholars found that digital transformation and artificial intelligence cause a massive shift in all aspects of the hospitality sector and digital technology application that impact the whole facet of internal and external stakeholders' lives. However, the adoption of digitalization and artificial intelligence is considered a strength. Corporate digital responsibility (CDR) is a strategy that enhances trust between the companies adopting digitalization and their primary stakeholders. Internal and external stakeholders' satisfaction develop contemporary social responsibility (CSR) challenges in the decision-making process in acquiring, analysing, implementing, and assessing for adopting digitalization in the hospitality sector. This chapter aims to give a literature review focusing on CDR and its relation analyses to hotel industry's internal stakeholders' satisfaction trough a Hungarian case study.

Open Innovation and Competitive Advantage on the Hospitality Sector: The Role of Organizational Strategy

This paper assesses the relationship between open innovation and competitive advantage and the mediating effect of organizational strategy. Using a quantitative methodological approach with survey data from 251 Portuguese hotel executive directors’ small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this research adopted a quantitative methodological approach, thereby conducting an exploratory and transversal study. Findings show that (1) open innovation influences organizational strategy and (2) organizational strategy enhances competitive advantage. Moreover, the results also highlight that (3) organizational strategy has a mediating effect between open innovation and competitive advantage. The paper provides relevant insights that will lead the firms’ top managers to design and implement strategies and define effective government policies, programs, and incentives to support the development of the firms’ open innovation model in the hospitality sector considering the new smart society and smart cities growing environment.

Indian diaspora in Ghana: cultural and family heritage of tourists' travel preference

PurposeThe literature has acknowledged the importance of diaspora studies because of the influx of funds into the local economy, including the tourism and hospitality sector. However, little empirical research appears to be known about the subject matter, principally within the developing country perspective. This study aims to respond to research calls by investigating the impact of diasporic cultural heritage, family heritage on travel preference of West African Indian migrant visitors to their homeland.Design/methodology/approachThis research is guided by the theory of acculturation. A quantitative data were gathered from a sample of 312 diasporas, and the regression analysis was used to analyze the data.FindingsThe study finds that cultural heritage and family heritage have positive and significant impact on travel preference of migrant visitors to their homeland. Further analysis of the independent sample t-test reveals a significant difference between Indian Ghanaians and Ghanaian Indians in their thought of cultural heritage. However, no significant differences were found in the Indian Ghanaian and Ghanaian Indian’s family heritage and travel preference to their homeland.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is destination-specific of Indian migrant visitors. The application of the study’s outcome to other diaspora would demand a larger sample size for generalization to be made. The study offers compelling insights on cultural heritage, family heritage and travel preference to marketing a diaspora tourism site.Originality/valueThe study expands the application of the theory of acculturation within the diaspora literature and establishes that integration and separation strategies of the theory explain the positive interests of the migrant visitors’ traveling preference to their homeland.

An Efficient QR Methodology for Authentication of Reviews in Hospitality Sector

Consumer-created reviews of services are a critical driver of everyday decision-making. A service that has a higher average review or rating usually gets picked against a similar service with less favourable reviews. Customer feedbacks are useful for restaurants in order for them to recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and therefore generate ideas to enhance their services. Social media applications already provide us with an option of sharing our reviews which helps a new visitor to know the place in advance, but it is really hard to get a holistic view of the restaurant mainly due to the fact that almost anyone can submit a review regardless of whether they have actually visited the restaurant or not. Some mischievous people deliberately put-up misleading reviews about a particular restaurant due to which other people get a bad image of that restaurant, thus bringing down the business. This paper aims to address all these concerns specifically. The objective was to build an interface that would prevent malicious users uploading deceptive reviews about a restaurant. Two techniques namely Bill Number Concept and QR Code Concept were proposed to build the required interface. Sentiment Analysis was then used to convert these reviews into ratings. The interface created using the mentioned techniques enabled only verified users to submit their reviews thereby successfully preventing malicious users from submitting a review. Keywords: feedback, reviews, bill number, QR code, sentiment analysis

Social influence bias in ratings: A field experiment in the hospitality sector

We investigate the empirical phenomenon of rating bubbles, that is, the presence of a disproportionate number of extremely positive ratings in user-generated content websites. We test whether customers are influenced by prior ratings when evaluating their stay at a hotel through a field experiment that exogenously manipulates information disclosure. Results show the presence of (asymmetric) social influence bias (SIB): access to information on prior ratings that are above the average positively influences the consumers’ rating of the hotel. In contrast, information on ratings that are below the average does not affect reviewers. Furthermore, customers who have never been to the hotel before the intervention are more susceptible to prior ratings than customers who have repeatedly been to the hotel before. Finally, customers who are not used to writing online reviews are more prone to SIB than customers who frequently write online reviews. Our findings suggest that online rating systems should be adjusted to mitigate this bias, especially as these platforms become more relevant and widespread in the hospitality sector.