Editorial

Citation

Okumus, F. and Van Niekerk, M. (2018), "Editorial", Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 2-3. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHTI-02-2018-018

It is our pleasure to publish the first issue of the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights (JHTI). This new journal aims to enhance the ongoing conversation among hospitality and tourism practitioners, academics and professionals. Our editorial policy focuses on publishing current and cutting-edge research in the hospitality and tourism industry worldwide. It is our vision to make JHTI the most creative, innovative and provocative journal in our field and to establish itself as one of the leading academic journals in hospitality and tourism. To accomplish our vision, we have appointed international established scholars as well as many rising stars to JHTI’s editorial advisory board (EAB). We are also very proud to announce that more than half of our editorial team and EAB members are women. We are also very excited that several forthcoming special issues are already lined up for JHTI. The first special issue is on trends and opportunities in the lodging industry and the second on medical tourism. We encourage our editorial board members, reviewers and authors to submit call for papers for special issues on important and trending topics.

Contributions to JHTI are particularly welcome from practitioners, professionals and academics working in private, public and non-profit organizations globally. We also welcome and encourage graduate students, junior faculty and industry practitioners to submit their work to JHTI. Similar to its sister journal (IJCHM), JHTI welcomes different disciplines, perspectives and methods. All theoretical, empirical and applied manuscripts related to various sectors within the hospitality and tourism industry will be considered for publication. Manuscripts can be based on theoretical arguments, empirical findings, case studies and/or methodological developments. Qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methodology submissions are all welcome. Manuscripts related to operations, marketing, consumer behavior, planning, accounting, finance, information technology, human resources, economics, international business, strategic management, innovation, entrepreneurship, sustainability and green issues, socio-cultural aspects, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder engagement, ethics in hospitality and tourism are considered for publication.

The first issue of JHTI includes five interesting and strong articles. The first article by Robin Back, Linda Lowry and Elizabeth Cartier discusses current practices and processes that enable transformation in the workplace in a South African multi-unit hospitality and tourism business. The study employed a constructivist grounded theory approach. Empirical data were collected via semi-structured interviews. The research findings provide insights about the processes and practices that enabled previously disadvantaged people to move into management and ownership of a multi-unit South African hospitality and tourism business. Leapfrogging emerged as a theoretical perspective that provides interpretive understanding of atypical upward employment mobility. This study discusses the leapfrogging concept, which has not previously been applied in the context of atypical employment progression within the corporation.

The second article by Jeeyeon Hahm and Kimberly Severt investigates the image and familiarity of Alabama as a tourism destination. The study employed a quantitative approach and examined both prior visitors and non-visitors of the state to compare their familiarity, image and visit intentions. Data were collected online and analyzed using t-tests and importance-performance analysis. Study results reveal the predominant difference between people who have visited Alabama (visitors) and those who had never visited (non-visitors) was their image or lack of image of Alabama. Non-visitors had no image or characteristic that came to mind when asked about their image of Alabama, while people who had visited noted beaches the most positive image. This study’s originality lies in the fact that the image of Alabama as a tourism destination has never been explored in academic research and this study offers clear theoretical and practical implications. This study offers strong theoretical and practical implications for destinations like Alabama.

The third article by Amy Gregory and Xioxiao Fu examines the phenomena of family cohesion or travel party composition and the role they play in influencing satisfaction. Data were collected from 400 vacationing families. Study results from this study suggest that Family Cohesion is comprised of two primary factors: emotional bonding and decision making and family boundaries and coalitions. Study results suggest that family cohesion and activity satisfaction contributes to overall vacation satisfaction. However, as an addition to extant research, the findings demonstrate that travel party size moderates this relationship.

The next article by Edwin Torres, Ady Milman and Soona Park explores the key drivers of customer delight and outrage in theme parks by analyzing TripAdvisor’s comments from visitors to the top 20 North American theme parks. Following the analysis of thousands of extremely positive and negative comments using MAXQDA qualitative software, keywords drivers of delight and outrage were identified. This study applied both thematic and root cause in order to ascertain the sources leading to both positive and negative consumer feedbacks. According to the research findings, delighted guests relay various aspects of their experience including positive affect experience, positive value perceptions and limited wait times. Root causes that influence customer delight include excellent core product, quality food and beverage, servicescape, pricing decisions and low visitor demand or sensible admissions policies. Outraged guests describe various aspects of their experiences such as negative perceptions of value, long waits, poor customer service and negative emotions. Root causes for customer outrage include low quality or deficient core products, poor quality of food and beverage, poor facility maintenance, aggressive pricing decisions, poor staff selection, training, and working conditions, and high customer demand on any given date or aggressive admissions policies. This study is unique in that it exposes the key themes of customer delight and outrage in the theme park setting, presents a conceptual model and analyzes its root causes.

The final article by Kevin Murphy empirically examines the student interns’ experience by considering perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty in the context of the Disney College Program internship experience for international students. The study incorporated the perceived value of the learning experience based on the interrelationships with satisfaction and loyalty intentions for students from various hospitality colleges in Korea and China. Asian university students who had completed an international internship experience responded to a post-internship survey. The survey gauged the students’ perception of their internship experience, overall satisfaction, loyalty intentions and value dimensions. The proposed model was estimated by using PLS path modeling. Study results show that the value interns get and give is a significant indicator of satisfaction and loyalty intentions. The value of an international internship experience, especially the get component, has a significant effect on the students’ loyalty intentions for their international internship experience and satisfaction with their experience. No previous study has so far examined international student interns’ value, satisfaction and loyalty intentions perceptions of the Disney College Program internship program.

We would like to congratulate all the authors on the successful completion of their research endeavors. We would also like to thank to all our reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments that assisted the authors to improve the quality of the papers. We hope that our readers will find all the papers published in this issue timely, relevant and insightful. Finally, we want to thank our readers, authors, reviewers, EAB members, editorial team and colleagues from Emerald for their support and contribution to this first issue of JHTI as well as creating a platform and opportunity to launch JHTI.