Tour operation and management

During last two decades remarkable changes have been taken place in developed as well as developing nations caused by the economic and technological advancements. These changes have posed several challenges for the transformation of the whole educational system, including educational curricula, learning materials, instructional practices and education stakeholders. Tourism and hospitality industry within the global economy has become a pivotal sector generating huge employment opportunities. The calibre human resources differentiate it from other industrial sectors. Thus, the tourism & hospitality education is focusing on building tomorrow's manpower for the industry. This paper originates in the context of growing recognition that the success of global tourism industry will ultimately depends of quality human resources. This paper will add to the extant literature on tourism& hospitality management education by addressing challenges and issues Indian hospitality industry facing.

Recently youth tourism has had great importance and intension by researchers. This due to its wide and different benefits especially in economic concern. Moreover, this type of tourism attracts different segments of youths all over the world. This study aims to identify the awareness of Jordanian and Egyptian stakeholders (public sector-private sector-experts) about the youth tourism and its dimensions; and evaluate the current situation of youth tourism in both Jordan and Egypt. The methodology of study includes Descriptive analytical method and case study technique, SPSS for data analysis and Sample and Questionnaire. Techniques of analysis are Frequencies, Mean, S. Deviation, S. Error of Mean, One-Way ANOVA Analysis to test Significance of Variance. This study has evaluated the current status of youth tourism in Jordan and Egypt through various dimensions. The most outstanding results are that both Jordan and Egypt are attractive tourism destinations for young people as the two countries contain the attractions for youth tourism. And the average cost per youth trip in both Jordan and Egypt is less than the international average of spend especially in Australia and European; and this is a good point in favor of the two countries to compete for the youth tourism international markets.

The paper explores the inherent aspects and imperatives of recycling in hotel industry. It aims to establish the relationship of such imperatives with business strategic and sustainable development of the industry. The research is empirical in nature where data is collected through local survey from Delhi-NCR region. It is duly supported by pertinent qualitative work and quantitative analysis. The findings so far suggest that frugal innovation and efforts at incremental level to address the recycling-of-wastage can bring-out tangible and sustainable results. This can also reap monetary benefits in terms of efficient processes and substantial profits. The paper highlights two main implications. The first option includes quick responsiveness with providing provision of Bio-digester which relatively small area for establishment and low cost generating considerable profit. The study enhances understanding the need to encourage developing a systemic approach of waste recycle along with frugal innovations in hotel industry pertaining to address the emerging issue of waste management.

Tourism is the act of travel for the purpose of recreation. It is an industry of moving, housing and entertaining people. It is one of the world's largest service industries and fastest growing economic sectors in terms of generating gross revenue as well as earning of foreign exchange. Nowadays the Internet and the developments in ICTs have revolutionized the entire tourism industry all over the world. It provides new tools and enables new distribution channels to create a new business environment. In order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of transactions, to reduce the cost of transactions and to provide the one stop services to the customers, tourism market needs a new ICT based business model to grow tourism industry in the states of Maharashtra and Goa. In this paper we propose a new ICT based tourism business model that includes the modern tools of ICT which affects the tourism business as a whole.

This work evaluated the influence of interior of decoration on customer perception of hotel in Uyo Akwa Ibom State. Specifically the study identified the various interior decoration used in hotel in the study area, determined the interior decoration used in hotels that appeal to the customer more, ascertained the influence of interior decoration on the level of patronage in the hotel in the study area and suggested ways of improving the interior decoration of hotels in the study area for sustainability. The study was guided by four research questions and two hypotheses. It adopted survey research design; structure questionnaire was used for data collection. The samples for the study were four hundred (400) staff and managers from the various hotels in the study area. Data generated were analyzed using mean and standard deviation analyses of variance (ANOVA) derived from regression analyses to test the hypotheses. The result of the finding showed that satisfactory interior decoration has positive influence on the sustainability of the hospitality establishments in Uyo. The hypothesis showed that there was a significant relationship between the gender perception on the influence of interior decoration in the hotel and significant relationship between the gender perceptions on the influence of interior decoration in the hotels. From the finding it was recommended that the hotels should design interior decorative service delivery system which has an impact on customer satisfaction in hospitality industry and practiced healthy decorative environment and increased customer satisfaction.

Booming travel and tourism trade cause a tremendous growth in hotel industry in Malaysia. This industry will continue to promote country and other businesses in a good way. Therefore, the evaluation of customers' perception, satisfaction and loyalty in hospitality industry has been major of attention in marketing strategies. This research aims to evaluate customer loyalty at in-house restaurant hotels in Malaysia. To achieve this goal, this research takes two steps to better understand the role and influence of each constructs; (1) Examines customer satisfaction by considering the effect of service quality antecedents on customer satisfaction. (2) Investigates the association between customer satisfaction and loyalty by identifying the moderating role of switching cost in satisfaction-loyalty relationship. The data is collected through self-administrated questionnaire from hotels in two states of Malaysia from 200 customers who have been served at in-house restaurant of those hotels since last three months. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is used to analyze the reliability and validity of data and the hypothesized relationships in the proposed research model.

The paper has twofold objectives-to assess the level of Guest Satisfaction in the 5 Star Deluxe Hotels located in Delhi and to explore the gaps between the hotel employees' and hotel guests' perception of quality and satisfaction with regard to service and product. The data have been collected from 5 Star Deluxe Hotel Guests and 5 Star Deluxe Hotel Employees based in Delhi by employing both Probability and Non-Probability sampling techniques. In this we have pooled 18 hotels but only 10 Five Star Deluxe hotels agreed to participate in this research. Thus, a sample size of 540 consisting of 390 hotel guests and 150 hotel employees has been taken up for the study. The questionnaires took about 15 minutes to answer and were collected immediately on completion, which resulted on 100 percent response rate. The data have been analysed by applying Paired sample t-test and two sample independent t-tests to test the hypotheses using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 20.0. The study reveals that there is difference between the guest expectations (importance) and guest satisfaction (performance) from Reception and Room Facilities, Room Service and Food & Beverage Outlets depicting that guests were not as satisfied as the expectations they had from the hotels. There are gaps between the hotel employees' and hotel guests' perception on satisfaction derived from services and products. The hotel employees perceived hotel guests to be more satisfied than actual satisfaction levels of guests.

Despite being researched so widely for a considerable period of time, sustainable tourism remains a controversial issue in tourism literature with very little consensus about the understanding of the term, its practical implementations, as well as its implications. The practice of sustainability in tourism can take diverse paths as evidenced in tourism research, but recently debate is on collaboration and involvement among tourism stakeholders is gaining importance as a key to sustainable tourism development, although research in support in this issue requires further support. This study investigates the perceptions about various dimensions of sustainable tourism among four groups of tourism stakeholder's; viz.; Residents, Tourists, Entrepreneurs and Government Officials. To discover if difference exists, an ANOVA test was conducted for each dimension, followed by a Scheffes' test to determine inter-group differences of perceptions and result shows that statistically significant differences exists in perception among stakeholder groups for six out of the seven dimensions. Differences were identified between tourist and residents, entrepreneurs, government officials in the case of understanding sustainability, focus of sustainable tourism, attitude towards participation in sustainable tourism, between residents and tourists, entrepreneurs, government officials in the case of sustainable tourism management, between tourists and residents, government officials in the case of support for sustainable tourism development and between tourists, residents and entrepreneurs, government officials in the case of economic focus of sustainable tourism. In the case of tourism industry and sustainability, none were significant.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the customer engagement and customer loyalty in ensuring sustainable development in the Indian hospitality sector. As hospitality sector have widely adopted customer engagement strategies for managing sustainable customer relationships, further understanding of this concept is essential. A probability sampling technique with a simple random approach has been used in this study. A questionnaire derived from the literature review was completed by 240 customers from four star hotels, (70% customers) and five star hotels, (30% customers) in Jammu and Kashmir, India. Exploratory factor analysis and regression analysis were used to test the constructs. The findings suggest that customer engagement make a significant contribution to the prediction of customer loyalty in ensuring sustainable development. The results suggest that hotel marketers should actively embrace strategies to foster customer engagement which ultimately builds a sustainable loyal customer relationship. The results can prove helpful to practitioners in engaging customers while branding and marketing their goods and services so as to build a sustainable loyal customer base.

One effective way of improving employees' performance is increasing their organizational commitment to the workplace. A good internal marketing system could positively contribute to employee organizational commitment development. The current study is exploratory in nature. It aims to explore the impact of internal marketing dimensions on travel agencies' employee organizational commitment. A questionnaire form was used to collect data from travel agencies' employees randomly. Structural equation modelling technique was used to test the hypotheses of the study and reveal rigorous, valid, and reliable findings. Findings revealed that some dimensions of internal marketing are significantly contributing to organizational commitment of travel agencies' employees. Contributions of study to knowledge and practices are also introduced.

Taking into consideration the unique, vast and varied tourist resource potential of India, there is tremendous scope for development of International Tourism. Aware of its rich treasure, India, in fact has consistently been trying to allure more and more world trotters, ever since its independence. Incidentally its performance has so far remained too marginal, especially in view of the existing potential, though there has been steady increase in the tourist influx over the years. Talking statistically, the Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) in India continued to grow from 1.28 million in 1981 to 1.68 million in 1991, 2.54 million in 2001, 6.31 million in 2011 and reached to 7.68 million in 2014. During the year 2014, India registered a positive growth of 10.2 %. The share of India in international tourist arrivals in 2014 was increased to 0.68%, from 0.61% in 2010, and the share of international tourism receipt was 1.58% in 2014 with Foreign Exchange Earnings (FEE) of US $ 20.24 billion. However, India's rank in the world was 41 in 2014. India accounted for 2.92% of the tourist arrivals in Asia Pacific Region in 2014, occupying 12th ranks in the region, but none the less the fact remains that the country is desperately trying to make out its rightful place in global tourism. The present study examines India's performance in International tourism market over the years and a look into foreign tourists' perspective on various aspects of Tourism in India.

The present study investigated the effects of film posters with destination marketing content on audiences' attitude towards the destination, intention to visit and destination image. The basic assumption was that positive and negative destination placement in films of two different attractive tourist destinations could influence audiences' attitude towards the destination, intention to visit and destination image. Using film posters as experimental stimuli, proposed hypotheses were examined by employing a 2 (destination placement in films: positive/negative) × 2 (attractive tourist destination: high/low) factorial design. Results suggest that audiences' responses towards positive destination placement in film facilitated high and favourable attitude towards the destination, visit intention and destination image than negative destination placement regardless of the type of attractive tourist destination(high/low). Findings of the present study are relevant for tourism and destination marketers who are constantly searching for a suitable way and medium to place destinations in mass media. The results also call for more empirical studies within the influence of films with negative plots on the depicted destinations, such as their long-lasting effect on the destination image.

The Today, tourism has been appreciated and recognized as an economic giant, globally. In, fact, it has become livelihood for more than three dozen countries especially, developing nations. According to WTTC (2015) tourism contributes 10 percent of global GDP, 7.0 percent of the total world exports, 30 percent of services exports and 9.09 percent of global employment while in India the contribution of tourism in GDP has been 4.90 per cent and accounting for 6.78 per cent of total employment in the country. Tourist behaviour has become more complex and complecated regarding the choosing tourist destinations / servcies. Therefore, most of the academicians have turned their interest towards evaluating tourist behaviour. Keeping in view the importance of tourist behaviour and tourist satisfaction, the present research paper is aimed to find out the association between tourist satisfaction dimensions and nationality of the tourists.

One effective way of improving employees' performance is increasing their organizational commitment to the workplace. A good internal marketing system could positively contribute to employee organizational commitment development. The current study is exploratory in nature. It aims to explore the impact of internal marketing dimensions on travel agencies' employee organizational commitment. A questionnaire form was used to collect data from travel agencies' employees randomly. Structural equation modelling technique was used to test the hypotheses of the study and reveal rigorous, valid, and reliable findings. Findings revealed that some dimensions of internal marketing are significantly contributing to organizational commitment of travel agencies' employees. Contributions of study to knowledge and practices are also introduced.

Although a very large number of Indian tourists travel around the country for purposes of fun and work, this market has been marginalized and almost forgotten. The present study examines the travel behavior of Indian tourists whose primary purpose of trip is either hedonic or for work. Using trip pattern and trip motivation as the two factors, the tourists were divided into four types: single destination/ hedonic, single destination/work, multi-destination/hedonic and multi-destination/work. The four groups were found to be statistically different in tripographics and some socio-demographic characteristics. Several important recommendations have been provided for the marketers for pursuing Indian travelers as a niche market based on the understanding of their travel behavior.

Booming travel and tourism trade cause a tremendous growth in hotel industry in Malaysia. This industry will continue to promote country and other businesses in a good way. Therefore, the evaluation of customers perception, satisfaction and loyalty in hospitality industry has been major of attention in marketing strategies. This research aims to evaluate customer loyalty at in-house restaurant hotels in Malaysia. To achieve this goal, this research takes two steps to better understand the role and influence of each constructs, (1) Examines customer satisfaction by considering the effect of service quality antecedents on customer satisfaction. (2) Investigates the association between customer satisfaction and loyalty by identifying the moderating role of switching cost in satisfaction-loyalty relationship. The data is collected through self-administrated questionnaire from hotels in two states of Malaysia from 200 customers who have been served at in-house restaurant of those hotels ...