Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Stakeholder management in tourism and hospitality

Stakeholder management in tourism and hospitality 2. Structure of the tourism and hospitality industry and role of stakeholders: (Burcu Ozgur, 2008) The stakeholders’ needs and demands are understood and responded to by organizations, based on the concept of stakeholder management. According to (Svendsen, 1998), the main role of stakeholder management is to protect the organization from the damaging impacts of the activities of the stakeholder. Some techniques like consultation, issue analysis, strategic communications, and formal contracts or agreements should be utilized by the organization. (Huber, Scharioth, Pallas, 2004), explained that organizations strive to gain the trust of the main stakeholders, who have a greater influence on them and with whom they have constructive interactions. For any organization, financial success is important and they will use any tools at the expense of the environment, members of staff, and/or local communities. This careless attitude will result in losses and damages in relationships with the stakeholders. The two significant variables for the decision on stakeholders by an organization are a) their possibility of threatening an organization and, b) their possibility of cooperating with an organization. The two relationship variables are cooperative potential and competitive threat. These two relationship variables reflect the capacity of stakeholders’ for cooperation and threat in a specific matter facing the organization. (Lim, Ahn, Lee, 2005), stated that companies can adopt four possible categories for stakeholder management: a) reactive, b) defensive, c) accommodative, and d) proactive. Depending on the stakeholder’s potential for threat and cooperation, companies decide their postures and strategies for stakeholder management such as a) leading, b) collaborating, c) involving, d) defending, e) educating, and f) monitoring. (Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics, 1999), developed a list of the essential principles of stakeholder management. The first principle highlights the requirement of identifying stakeholders’ legitimate interests, which will be used in decision making processes by an organization. The second principle refers to the need for communication between the organization and its stakeholders. The engagement with the stakeholder is required to reduce conflicts. The third principle reflects the idea that there could be differences with the involvement of stakeholders in the organization. While the organization may have official relationships with few of stakeholders, other stakeholders are approached in unofficial ways either through direct contact, press release or advertising. The fourth principle underlines the significance of balancing risks and rewards among various stakeholders impartially and observes the need of distributing benefits to all parties. The fifth principle highlights the need for cooperation with public and/or private entities with the sole objective to reduce risks related to corporate practices. The sixth principle relates the aspect of respecting human rights which are threatened by the present and future activities in an organization. The last principle brings the attention of managers to identify their own difference of interests to normalize stakeholder relationships in order to increase credibility of organization. 3. Strategic Stakeholder Management: Tourism’s Perspective One of the important generators of revenue is the Tourism sector which is also a job generating sector and serves as a medium of development. Tourism sector has gained great importance as it generates economic development and prosperity even in places which would not be used as an economic source. The industry’s coordinated actions; highly fragmented and diverse structure makes it special and successful. The tourism sector could be contemplated as a system. As (Mill Alastair, 2002) mentioned, there are many reasons to view tourism as a system. Some of them are: Interdependency in tourism i.e., all organizations in this sector are interrelated parts and work together to achieve common goals. Dynamic and constantly changing characteristics i.e. it be affected by outer influences such as political uncertainty, war, international relations, terrorism, technological developments, epidemics, and changes in demographic conditions. Complex sector with different types of activities and organizations. Intense competitiveness of tourism i.e. all kinds of tourism organizations have to vie with each other globally. Need for responsiveness. Tourism is a sector where many elements which are independent and any change in one element can cause changes in other parts. Therefore, it’s important to maintain harmony of all parts. The stakeholder management practices should be utilized to create the harmony and forge strong relationships between the tourism organizations and their stakeholders. 4. Environmental trends in the global tourism industry: (Dwyer, Deborah, Nina, Carolina, Noel, 2008) Tourism is closely connected to the environment. The two main reasons for determining the viability and attractiveness of an area as a tourist destination is the natural environment and climate conditions (Dwyer Kim, 2003). The developments for tourism are based on features such as gaining easy access for visitors to natural or manmade environments. The concerns of stakeholders of tourism which include researchers has always centered on the ways tourism development may offer opportunities for managing environmentally sensitive areas and the conservation of unique environments. (United Nations Environment Programme ((UNEP), 2002), reported that the focus is on tourism where it can help in reducing environmental pollution and usage of resources. The main environmental trends include change of climate, depletion of natural resources and loss of biodiversity: Change of Climate: The increase in release of concentrations of greenhouse gases influences the change of climate and global warming. Climate change is a global occurrence and its major effects are felt at the local and regional scale. Effects of climate change and warming trends include: rise in sea-level, changes to ocean currents, melting of glacial and polar ice, losing of snow cover, high heat index and high diurnal temperatures, and changes to precipitation patterns (IPCC, 2007). Climate changes are influential in determining the destinations preferred by tourists and also on the profitability of the industry through increase in costs of energy use. Policies to lessen emission of greenhouse gas will invariably affect the operator costs and destination competitiveness particularly for longer destinations (Dwyer Forsyth, 2008). Depletion of natural resource: The increasing paucity of natural resources required to steer industrial development will give rise to a number of effects. The factors affecting the availability of natural resources like food production, water and energy, are increase in population and economic development. The result of ‘peaking’ in oil production, commonly known as ‘Peak Oil’, will increase the expenses of fossil fuel based energy sources. ‘Peak Oil’ refers to the maximum rate, i.e. ‘peak’ of production of world oil to a point beyond which it goes to permanent decline. The decline in production of oil along with increase in demand will result in increase of fuel costs. Consequently, the new ‘carbon economy’ is set to push the want for energy efficiency and investment in renewable forms of energy. In future, half of the world’s population will face shortage of water due to scarcity of water resources. The arable land and native bush land will diminish extensive agriculture and broad-scale land clearing due to demands for higher food production. Loss of bio diversity: (United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 2003), reported that the main danger to loss of species biodiversity is habitat loss. Loss of biodiversity is expected to substantially affect those destinations that highlight nature based or eco tourism. Analyzing Marketing Opportunities Challenges: The Macro-environment (Amy, Eliza, Cynthia, 2009) The major macro-environmental forces recognize and discuss the affect the ability of hospitality industry to market its offerings. All organizations in the hospitality industry function in a constantly changing macro-environment, and thus giving prospect for marketers to conduct business or pose threats to the companies. The environmental changes have to be monitored closed before marketing strategies are considered by companies. The hospitality marketers must analyze and observe the six major forces (demographic, economic, political/legal, social/cultural, technological and natural/ecological), as shown below: Figure 1: Macro-Environmental Forces Table 1: Macro-environmental Forces 5. Market research Importance of Psychographic Research (Yvette Felix, 2004) (Wells, 1975), defined Psychographic research as â€Å"quantitative research intended to place consumers on psychological dimensions.† According to (Gladwell, 1990), this type of research â€Å"analyzes consumer’s attitudes, perceptions, needs, interests, opinions, activities, and daily lifestyle.† (Shih, 1986), recognized that â€Å"Psychographics is very meaningful and relevant† and (Abbey, 1979) stated that â€Å"it’s very important means to provide additional information beyond the demographic characteristics.† Abbey suggested that psychographic variables produce major differences between the groups of consumers, and these differences were bigger than the differences produced by the demographic profiles. (Mayo, 1975), stated that psychographics are useful than demographics in explaining consumers because they differentiate better between them (Ryel Grasse, 1991). The market segmentation has found a valuable means in Psychographics. (Gladwell, 1990), observed that psychographic characteristics of tourists have to be examined thoroughly by marketer if their destinations need to be marketed successfully to tourist. Psychographic variables are helpful in recognizing various types of tourists, distinguishing their segments and differentiating between the segments (Schewe Calantone, 1978). Psychographic measures provide complete profiles of tourists and give the marketers a clear picture of the tourists they are attracting. Psychographics cannot be independent even though psychographics has a comparative advantage over demographics, (Schewe Calantone, 1978). In order to understand a consumer market better, marketers should use psychographic data along with other criteria such as demographic, geographic, or behaviorist. Psychographic data needs to be incorporated in its research studies of the tourism and hospitality industry to benefit from the k nowledge of its customers. The data was collected through a qualitative research method. Qualitative methods offer varied empirical processes intended to describe and interpret the experiences of participants in a context specific setting. Data was collected from 30 representatives via semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Local residents, governmental, non-governmental and academic stakeholders were considered in order to acquire the opinion locally, regionally and nationally regarding the implementing sustainable tourism development. The concept of sustainable tourism development became important due to fact that local residents are involved in tourism planning and decision-making. (Jackson, 2000). A sampling strategy was arrived at to ensure residents participating were ambassadors of a cross-section of the community. The sampled residents included those who resided in the tourism/non-tourism zone and were directly/indirectly involved with and/or affected by tourism activities. Many of the interviewed residents and who were involved in the industry were engaged as local guides or owners of home stay lodging and resorts, or souvenir and food catering shops. In-depth interviews saw participation of 20 local residents. Convenience sampling constituted a technique of non probability that attempts to get a sample of convenient elements which is less expensive and less time-consuming when compared with other sampling techniques (Malhotra, 2004). Governmental institutions had an essential part in sustainable tourism development initiatives. Therefore, they participated in the study and to aid in establishing a swell of other respondents. This was considered the most appropriate method, as the researcher was not well informed about the formal or informal ‘network connections’ locally (Jennings, 2001). The researcher chose a few respondents involved decision making for the destination i.e. Town Council, Sub-District Administration Organization. Other relevant stakeholders interviewed were the local tourist office, a non-governmental organization and academics. Totally 10 governmental respondents were interviewed. Interview questions related to the sustainable tourism development concept and stakeholders were developed. These questions were directed to five local residents in August 2012. The interviews led to alterations in: (1) interview time and how respondents were approached, and (2) the interview questions usi ng simpler and non-technical terminology. Then, in-depth interviews were conducted in September 2012. In order to gain further insights and data, the questions were open ended. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and organized based on the interview questions.

Sunday, January 19, 2020

Personal Narrative: The First Time I Got Stitches :: essays research papers

I was about ten years old and in the fifth grade. My mother had just picked me up from school that day and had bought me some delicious popcorn. I could not wait to get home to pop my popcorn, and we lived all the way in Rose Hill, Alabama. I was getting pretty restless by the time we got home. So we got home and I went directly to the big, black microwave. I put it in, and began pressing the buttons. It was popping and popping, and the buttery smell was getting to me. My mother said that she had to go to the bathroom for a second and that I was not to take out the popcorn until she got back. Time drug slowly by as I was waiting and waiting, growing more and more impatient. The anticipation was more than I could stand, I disobeyed and got the popcorn out anyway. I opened the popcorn very slowly. The steam came gushing out and burnt the tips of my fingers, face, and neck. I quickly dropped the popcorn. It hit the floor and went everywhere. I quickly began to eat the popcorn and decided I needed to put it all in a bowl. I searched for a bowl, and the best I could find was on the very top shelf of the cabinet. I opened the bottom cabinet door and slowly climbed my way up the cabinet and onto the counter top. I reached the bowls and carefully lifted the two bowls that were on top of my bowl. I took my bowl down and arranged everything back in perfect order. I began thinking about the best way to get down. The best way down was the way I came up. I carefully pulled the bottom cabinet door closed, and with my bowl in my hand, I jumped. I did not make it to the floor. My feet were oddly dangling and did not touch the floor. I had a sharp pain in the left side of my butt. The cabinet handle had gotten pushed through the bottom of my butt cheek. I called for my mother’s help and she told me to hold on for a second. She was still in the bathroom and thought a bee stung me. I put my hands on top of the counter and lifted and away from the cabinet. I ran as fast as I could towards the bathroom with a trail of bright red blood behind me.

Saturday, January 11, 2020

The Hardest Decision I Ever Made

The Hardest Decision I Ever Made It was about 3 months ago when everything started; I woke up one day and got ready to go to work. Since it was the summer break my father had asked me if I could help out in the hotel because the receptionist had a surgery and couldn’t come to work for a whole month, so I accepted. I finished getting ready and left. On my way out I stopped by our letterbox because something was stuck there, (A leaf I think). I opened the letterbox and there it was: the leaflet that changed my whole life.That leaflet was not any leaflet: it was a publicity leaflet for the best rhythmic gymnastics club that was moving its training location to the public school near my house. While I was reading the leaflet, it brought back to me the memories of the years in elementary school when all of my friends did rhythmic gymnastics and I was the only one who was forced by her mother to do every single day 3 hours of ballet after school. I would always look at them playing w ith the ribbons they would bring to school or try to teach me how to do a handstand.Flexibility wasn’t a problem since in ballet I needed to be very flexible when doing the jump-split*(it’s when you jump in the air and do a sideways split while you’re in the air) also in my category I was the only girl to be able to do the perfect-split (when you do a sideways or frontal split and lean backwards and forwards with your upper body and touching the ground with your nose). Looking at the paper made me regret even more the decision I had made to quit ballet when I turned 14. The lame excuse was that studying got harder and exams were more frequent, the conclusion was: no more ballet.My mother, after a lot of convincing, accepted my decision and I no longer did ballet. Such a silly decision. I should have continued, because of that most of my flexibility is gone. On the leaflet there was a name and a phone number, it also said the first day of tryouts is free, I had a bsolutely nothing to lose, the tryouts were free, the day of the tryouts I was free, and the place was literately a 5 minutes’ walk from my house. I had no excuse not to go. The time to leave for the tryouts was close and my nerves grew bigger, What if I suck? What if I can’t do the split anymore? What if I get laughed at?All sorts of questions started to pop up in my head at the speed of light, I was really looking forward to it but at the same time I was dreading the minutes that passed by. I took my phone out and dialed my dad’s number to cancel but then it hit me, I was not the only one who was going for tryouts, other girls were going too. Other girls who might have never done rhythmic gymnastics as well! That’s why it is called tryouts, silly me! I took my bag and left the office. The weather outside was sunny but the wind was strong and cold, what’s new! The weather almost always was cold and windy here even though it was still in mid-august .We arrived and entered the building. The school gate was big and somewhat outdated, there were trees blocking the view, only a path made of stones was visible. My dad made his way through the trees and I followed behind. I trusted my father, since when he was in high school, he attended this school. The narrow stone path led to a wide and big playground outdated too, we climbed up the stairs and entered the gymnasium, once inside the teacher greeted us and told me to go over to the girls and introduce myself, I made fast friends with the girls and the lesson started.In all my 12 years of ballet and other hobbies, none made me feel so excited and happy like rhythmic gymnastics. I felt the same feeling of elegance and grace that I had felt in ballet in rhythmic gymnastics, but there was another feeling, a feeling that had been missing in ballet, I felt for the first time that I wasn’t doing it out of obligation for my mom. For the first time I was willing to go on my own.

Friday, January 3, 2020

How Did The Invention Of Agriculture Allowed Stable...

Unit 1 (Beginning of Recorded Time to 600 BCE) Key Dates and Events 8000 BCE: Beginning of agriculture The invention of agriculture allowed stable subsistence of the human population. It increased food production and allowed for surplus. It also forced nomadic populations to settle, creating the transition between Paleolithic and Neolithic eras. Neolithic peoples sought to ensure themselves of more regular food supplies by encouraging the growth of edible crops and bringing wild animals into dependence on human keepers. Women most likely began the revolution, as they became familiar with life cycles of plants and noticed the effect of natural conditions on their growth. 3000 BCE: Beginning of Bronze Age; Early River Valley Civilizations Along with agriculture, metallurgy helped revolutionize food production. Metal tools were more durable and efficient. The organized operations of mining, smelting, and casting required the specialization of labor and the production of surplus food to support a class of artisans, while the search for raw materials stimulated the exploration and colonization of new territories. 2900 BCE: Cuneiform writing The first writing system in the world developed in the lower Tigris and Euphrates valley by Sumerians. It was based on pictograms and quickly developed to represent more abstract concepts. 2800 BCE: Babylonian Empire Empire in lower Mesopotamia, in the lower Euphrates valley. It became a major influence on the region because of itsShow MoreRelatedEconomic Theories of population growth7492 Words   |  30 PagesPopulation Growth and Natural Resources 73 3.2 Economic Theories of Population Growth In this section the demographic transition process observed in the previous section will be examined in terms of economic theories. 3.2.1 The Malthus model Thomas Robert Malthus Â…1766 ±1834† is known as a pioneer in the economic theory of population. His Principle of Population Â…[1798] 1926† was a re ¯ection of England s premiere entrance into the process of modern demographic transition. His populationRead MoreThe Birth of Civilization18947 Words   |  76 PagesCRAIMC01_xxxii-031hr2.qxp 2/17/11 3:22 PM Page xxxii EARLY HUMANS AND THEIR CULTURE page 1 WHY IS â€Å"culture† considered a defining trait of human beings? EARLY CIVILIZATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST TO ABOUT 1000 B.C.E. page 5 HOW DID control over water resources influence early Middle Eastern civilizations? 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