Purpose – To provide insight into the barriers to the application of best practices in hospitality and tourism small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK. Design/methodology/approach – In‐depth interviews were conducted with owners, managers and staff in 89 award‐winning...

Purpose: This paper aims to describe the detailed process of development of a reliable scale to measure customer perceptions of the upscale hotel servicescape that could then be used as a basis for intra- and inter-hotel comparisons and to examine relationships with other variables, such as...

Reviews the development of approaches to reservations management in the hotel industry alongside models of the stages of development in information technology (IT). Suggests that strategic success and operational implementation have been built on the prevailing IT “era”. Explores the future...

Achieving a balance between occupancy and average room rate is now well recognised as a prime determinant of good rooms department performance. Yield management techniques are increasingly used to help maximise rooms department sales revenue. However, it can be argued that the complexity of...

To be able to deliver consistent quality to hospitality customers, it is ecessary to be able to identify those aspects of the service encounter that bring about satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Explores a simple technique for recording success and failure in service situations. This will allow...

Reconciles the traditional view of hospitality operations based on process analysis, with the more recent output‐based model, by identifying four levels of hospitality operations management. Process analysis is appropriate for understanding operating systems; and output analysis for...

Interest in flexible working methods is increasing in the hospitality industry but to date there is little research evidence of current practice or potential. The range of methods available to the hospitality manager is reviewed and the major benefits and problems arising from the adoption of...

This article discusses approaches to work flexibility and the use of core and peripheral workers in the hotel industry. It argues that hotel companies have traditionally neglected building a core workforce and resorted to using “peripheral” workers in key operative jobs. It distinguishes...

Low productivity within service industries has been a major concern, but this situation is unlikely to improve without a general change in the way productivity is measured and managed. This paper aims to illustrate the value of stepwise data envelopment analysis (DEA) for measuring and...