Editorial

Citation

Teare, R. (2007), "Editorial", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 19 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijchm.2007.04119faa.001

Editorial

This issue contains articles on how to retain customers, product development and food safety, corporate identity and responsibility, internet marketing and tourism development.

In the opening article, Jay Kandampully and Shin Hi Hu pose the question: do hoteliers need to manage image to retain loyal customers? To explore this, the authors collected data from several cities in Mauritius. Their findings revealed that consistent, superior service delivery does affect a firm’s image in the minds of potential customers. Next, Michael Ottenbacher and Robert Harrington set out to discover how Michelin-starred chefs secure this prestigious rating. They compared and contrasted the innovation process as described by Michelin-starred chefs with the existing literature on the process of innovation by asking a sample of 12 Michelin-starred chefs in Germany about how they develop new food creations in their restaurants. The outcomes suggest that the development process typically used by Michelin-starred chefs has similarities and differences to the traditional concepts of product development. Typically, the chefs do not include a business analysis stage. Further, due to the simultaneity of production and consumption and the importance of human factors in service delivery, employees play a more important role in fine dining innovation that in other product innovation situations.

Judy Holcomb, Randall Upchurch and Fevzi Okumus set out to determine the levels of socially responsible behaviour among the top ten hotel companies. Their study used content analysis to identify and describe social responsibility patterns in websites, annual reports and corporate social responsibility reports. They found that 80 percent of the hotel companies reported socially responsible activities in the form of charitable donations; 60 percent reported a diversity policy and 40 percent mentioned social responsibility in their mission statements.

Andrew Knight, Michelle Worosz and Ewen Todd conducted a study of consumer perceptions of food safety at restaurants via telephone interviews with 1,014 randomly selected adults in the US. They found that a substantial number of consumers think about food safety in general and especially when eating out and second, that even though the majority of consumers felt that restaurants were doing a good job, were capable and committed to food safety, restaurants ranked significantly lower than other food handling categories such as farmers, food processors, manufacturers and grocery stores and supermarkets.

Ram Herstein, Yorum Mitki and Eugene Jaffe provide an approach to documenting the design and implementation of a new corporate identity communication process, using an example from a hotel management group to illustrate the issues relation to the process of corporate communications. Their case illustration shows that corporate identity communication occurs at a number of levels and the case study yields a strategic framework that could be used by any hotel management chain seeking to establish a new identity. Where might visitors find the lowest hotel room rates on the internet? This question is addressed by Rob Law, Ivy Chan and Carey Goh in relation to Hong Kong. Their study examines online room rates in Hong Kong hotels, drawing on eight distribution channels and forty-five hotels over a 13 month period. They found that the websites of local travel agents and reservation agents offered the lowest online room rates and that indirect distribution channels offered lower room rates than direct channels.

In the research in brief section, Filipe Sobral, Alketa Peci and Gustavo Costa de Souza present an analysis of the dynamics of tourism in South America with specific reference to Brazil, by measuring and analysing the growth in tourist arrivals between 1998 and 2002. Despite the fact that Brazil is the leading tourist destination in South America, the study reveals that it has been losing ground in relation to some of its neighbours in South America and explores some of the global events that have affected tourism to South America. Finally, in the viewpoint section, John Pratten presents the second of his three-part analysis of the UK public house (pub) sector in which he outlines the main changes that took place in the British pub from 1959 to 1989. During this period, the major brewers introduced new products to increase profits and invested in the refurbishment of their estates to attract and retain customers. The period also saw the development of off-trade and a large rise in female customers.

Richard TeareEditor