Cornell Hospitality Quarterly

Much of the literature relating to managing marketing relationships focuses on limiting opportunistic activities by one or both partners in a relationship. Opportunistic behavior occurs when one partner seeks a short-term gain in a way that may damage the other partner or the relationship. In the case of a hotel belonging to a network or chain, such actions might include falsifying or suppressing monthly sales data. A study of over 400 individual hotels belonging to two hotel chains investigated the extent to which opportunism of individual hotels is limited by three governance mechanisms. Those mechanisms are (1) ownership by chain headquarters, (2) a hotel's investment in transaction-specific assets (e.g., reservation-system software), and (3) shared norms of relational exchange. Of the three, taken either singly or together, only the shared norms of relational exchange were at all effective in managing hotel opportunism. Hotel opportunism declined with higher degrees of relational exchange. Hotel opportunism was exacerbated, however, when ownership or investments in transaction-specific assets were emphasized as governance mechanisms.

Turkey's national policy of expanding the number of hotel rooms nationwide over the past two decades has been successful in increasing supply, but at a cost. The government offered strong incentives for entrepreneurs to open hotels on the nation's Mediterranean and Aegean coasts. Many of the hotels that opened as a result, particularly those in low-price tiers, offer repetitive concepts and are not professionally managed. As a consequence, Turkey's resort operators rely heavily on international packagetour operators to fill their rooms. What has turned into an oversupply of rooms gives the tour operators market power over the lodging operators, forcing the latter into price competition. To compensate for their lack of income, the lodging operators offer minimal services (or are unable to offer good service). A particular challenge to the hoteliers is the tour operators' practice of changing bookings at the last minute, which causes lodging operators with unused capacity to accept low rates for otherwise empty rooms. While Turkey's lodging entrepreneurs probably cannot change the external factors that force them to accept low prices, they could address their internal problems of lack of cooperation and poor management skills.

While the physical features of a given meeting or convention hotel are important, of greater interest are the practices or activities that a hotel uses to support the meeting. Using an innovative web-based survey, members of the Professional Convention Management Association indicated which practices and features are most important to them before, during, and after a meeting. Additionally, the PCMA members indicated how well the convention hotel (of three chains) to which they were most loyal functioned against those factors. The chains-Hilton, Hyatt, and Marriott-earned high marks from the planners, but each one, nevertheless, needed to address specific performance factors. For all properties, the planners rated two practices-prompt follow-up on calls and faxes and flexibility of the property to accommodate the specifics of the eventas most important prior to the event. Not surprisingly, the most important attribute during the event was a hotel's ability to deliver services as promised, as well as employees' effectiveness at resolving problems. Finally, accurate billing is a key factor after the meeting is concluded.

A steady flow of financing is essential to the continued expansion of the hospitality industry. Over the years, the industry has attracted the attention of different sources of financing, becoming "hot" for international financiers for a time and then attracting the attention of another source, such as life-insurance companies or Wall Street investors. Using the consensusbuilding Delphi method, the authors asked a panel of experts from the financial community and hospitality industry to determine where the sources of funding would most likely be for 11 different hospitality segments for the years 2000 and 2005. The financing prospects seemed strong for luxury and convention hotels and resorts, primarily from such sources as pension funds, life-insurance companies, investment banks, and money-center banks. On the other hand, big financing seemed unlikely for motels, budget-type properties, and extended-stay properties. While local sources, such as community banks, might finance select properties, the Delphi panel believed that a heavy supply overhang would discourage most lenders from investing in those segments.

This quantitative study may be the first one to compare travelers' reactions to weather-related emergencies (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes) with the responses of their professional hosts (e.g., hotel GMs, resort operators, campground managers). Telephone interviewers reached 603 people who had experienced such an emergency while traveling, 523 of whom also completed a follow-up questionnaire. Those responses were then compared to an existing data base of 185 managers' reactions to and preparations for public emergencies (including evacuation). For the most part, guests had a substantially different view of the managers' roles and responsibilities related to evacuations when compared to what steps and provisions the managers themselves felt obligated to provide. For example, one survey item asked about managers' disaster-evacuation planning. Almost two out of every three managers believed that preparations were adequate, while only half of the customers thought so. Another item addressed whether managers would call for an evacuation if not directly ordered to do so by local officials. Few customers (17 percent) believed that GMs would wait until forced to evacuate, yet more than a third of the managers agreed that that was their policy. Additional items show similar if less dramatic gaps between travelers' and managers' perceptions of what to do, and when, during an emergency. These include whether the hotel or resort is obligated to provide special services such as assistance for the disabled, road-evacuation directions, and food and water.

Transplanted from the north in 1853, Henry B. Plant became so enamored of Florida's Gulf Coast that he decided to develop it for other travelers. Thus was born the Plant System (rail and steamship line), which developed the Port of Tampa and several sun-coast hotels, including the remarkable 500-room, Moorish-style Tampa Bay Hotel, which opened in 1891. Plant is remembered today by the namesake Plant City, Florida, and by the University of Tampa, which uses part of the former Tampa Bay Hotel and maintains a Henry Plant Museum.

George Tilyou developed or perfected many of the managerial practices for amusement parks that are still in use today. In developing and operating Coney Island's Steeplechase Park, Tilyou had to solve the problems of attracting and holding people's attention, maintaining decorum and security, and keeping the crowd moving from attraction to attraction. While he did not invent the concept of an enclosed park, he used that concept to full advantage, for example, by offering a ticket that allowed customers to take each ride once (and thus keep them moving along) and by giving free tickets to off-duty policemen (thus effectively retaining a security force). A natural-born promoter, Tilyou knew the importance of constantly updating his park with ever-more-spectacular rides. Moreover, he implicitly understood such service-management concepts as giving tangible status to the intangible. For example, to set the tone of his park, he required his employees to wear uniforms, and he identified his park as an amusement park, rather than just a place for rides. Thus, people thought of it as a place to go for the day for fun, even if they weren't going on many rides.

Like many other nations, New Zealand wants to pursue the potential rewards resulting from event tourism, or attracting visitors with major events. Part of that strategy is dictated by New Zealand's location, at a distance from many of the tourist-generating countries. Even as they plunge forward, though, the nation's tourism officials should consider how to measure the effects of event tourism, the better to determine what works and what doesn't. The authors offer a framework for developing such a strategy. Gaps that now exist in the nation's event-tourism strategy include, for instance, the lack of coordination among most of the hotel organizations, restaurants, tour operators, and theme parks, and the lack of planning for event-tourism opportunities. Moreover, the government is unable to commit adequate resources to build up the system necessary for promoting event tourism due to uncertainty of desired return on investment. Rather than go event by event, New Zealand would be well advised to take a long view on its strategic approach for attracting international tourists and making event tourism profitable.

Executive education, or "management development," is not a new concept in Japan, although formal hospitality management-development programs there face a variety of challenges because Japan is a country where inhouse management training has been the norm. In fact, few Japanese universities offer executive-education programs of any kind. Executive education in Japan is for the most part limited to in-house efforts, private training and development companies, and consultants, and focuses heavily on the individual rather than on strategically influencing the organization. Still, Japanese corporations must find, hire, and develop people who are capable of leading their organizations through times of cultural changes, economic uncertainty, and technological advancements. Three forms of training in Japanese companies continue to dominate: on-the-job, off-the-job, and self-development. Among the three, on-the-job training has been the most prevalent. Among outsiders, private training firms have the competitive edge relative to consultants, while university-based resources are essentially nonexistent.