Search results

This paper aims to introduce the theme issue and strategic question: What should Indian tourism and hospitality managers focus on to stay competitive in the coming decade? It also presents an overview of recent developments in the tourism and hospitality industry and presents some statistics and trends relating to prospects for the tourism and hospitality industry in India.

Emerging trends emanate from various official reports and expert views. The paper also highlights key issues and areas for investigation by the theme issue contributors.

Strong growth is predicted for the tourism and hospitality industry and some of the underpinning issues that will influence competitiveness are the role of social media, business model innovations, risk management, talent management, valuation models, the influence of information technology, employee loyalty and design thinking in hospitality higher education.

Given the expansion occurring in the domestic market in India and the involvement of international operators in the Indian environment, this paper will be of interest to practitioners with an interest in the emerging opportunities and challenging issues related in this dynamic marketplace.

This introductory paper captures the essence of the prevailing trends in the tourism and hospitality industry as a starting point for this theme issue.

After completion of the case study, the participants would be able to understand the challenges in building a sustainable homestay tourism business; develop a positioning statement for La Pinekonez which builds a unique competitive advantage; and outline elements of the business strategy to profitably sustain and grow a sustainable tourism homestay in terms of service offering, pricing, marketing and operations.

La Pinekonez Homestay, located in the beautiful region of Himachal Pradesh, India, is the subject of this case study, which explores both its successes and its difficulties. In August 2022, Arvind, the dedicated sole proprietor of La Pinekonez, grappled with multifaceted challenges, the first being the foray of established hotel chains into the homestay business. As the protagonist, was is in dilemma of preserving La Pinekonez’s unique identity amidst corporate competitors, particularly with regards to differentiating from the expanding hotel chains. The clash between customer expectations for hotel-like amenities and the homestay’s commitment to sustainable tourism presented a crucial challenge. Negative reviews questioning the authenticity of La Pinekonez’s green initiatives heightened the complexity. Adding to Arvind’s predicament were the seasonal fluctuations in tourist inflow and his aspiration to embrace immersive tourism trends. This case study facilitates exploration of strategic positioning, sustainability management and marketing strategies in the dynamic and competitive hospitality industry. It also offers insights into the complexities of balancing differentiation, customer satisfaction and sustainability while navigating the evolving landscape of tourism trends.

This case study is suitable for students of tourism and hospitality management at postgraduate level. The case study can be discussed once the basic concepts of hospitality management and service dimensions are covered.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CCS 12: Tourism and hospitality.

After a successful discussion and analysis of the case, the participants will be able to distinguish and appreciate the situations of conflict of interest (COI), whistle-blowing, etc. Initiate appropriate methods to avoid/minimize the impact of COI and ensure justice and fair-play to all stake-holders. Identify and appreciate the work-context of each executive-position and initiate standard operating procedures to protect the interests of the enterprise and all its stakeholders. Appreciate the relevance of whistle-blowing and to initiate appropriate methods to ensure justice and fair-play to all stake-holders.

In the context of the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI)-bank, the systemic inadequacies seemed to have failed in preventing the incidences of COI. The organization was too centralized to be able to respond proactively to the allegations. The case lays bare the inadequacy of professionalism among the media in responding promptly to such instances. The case generalizes that, with increasing globalization, such incidences have global ramifications and the organizations face much greater risks than ever. The case concludes that to emerge as a mature and leading organization in the global market, ICICI-bank needed to strengthen various aspects of corporate governance; similarly to emerge as a developed economy, India needed to develop independent watchdogs to monitor the activities of corporations continuously. Media needed to be independent and mature to fulfil its duty of continuous and transparent communication to the public.

The case can be understood and analysed by management students in the post-graduate level or by working executives with at least four to five years of experience in the corporate sector.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

This study aims to analyse the synchronization sustainability has with coolness and how promotion of sustainable fashion can be dealt in an ameliorate way. It also provides insights to the fashion brands on how they can engage customers through brand coolness and romance for meliorated bottom and top lines.

It employs a mixed-method approach through the combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. For qualitative part, data are garnered through in-depth interviews (n = 23) with sustainable brand owners, marketers, academicians, bloggers and influencers having different roles to play in the strategizing sustainability, slow fashion and consciousness amongst Gen Z. On the other hand, quantitative data are collected from apparel shoppers (n = 688) through structured questionnaire.

The qualitative data transcribed are analysed through NVivo, and findings received in this regard limns that sustainable fashion to be embellished as cool. Moreover, brand coolness has a relationship with sustainable fashion, emotional attachment factor such as brand romance affect purchase intention of sustainable fashion clothing. Furthermore, brand romance is identified as a mediating variable between brand coolness and purchase intention of sustainable clothing.

Limitations of the study is that with a structured interview, the respondents could not be asked to freely associate “anything related to cool”, rather they were directly asked to “define cool” and tell whether “they think sustainability in fashion can be stated as cool”. Without this constrain, the result could have been possibly being different. Moreover, the participants for the quantitative study were from developing countries which leads to limited generalizability of research findings.

This research attempts to develop an understanding of sustainable fashion so that brand managers can face the present challenges in a better way. The findings in this attempt of ours suggest that the sustainable fashion can be better employed only when both customers and brands are acting responsible. To make customers purchase the brands, the organizations must connect consumers through coolness and romance towards their brand.

When there is dearth of literature on the association sustainability has with coolness, the present study holds originality in adding to the literature on the pertinent aspect. Besides this, the present study addresses the lack of an academic understanding of literature on sustainable fashion in its own way through conduct of in-depth interviews with experts working in the area of sustainable fashion and then validating the same by surveying the Gen Z buyers of sustainable clothes.

Outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has created the catastrophic situation, it has crippled all the economic activities and seized off the operations of food supply chain (FSC). Disrupted FSC escalated the societal concerns related to food safety and security. The purpose of this study is to consolidate various issues, exploring the perspectives associated with the agricultural practices, food industries and society concerns related with the FSC performance system dynamics amid of COVID-19 pandemic.

To structure this work, a detailed research literature insight focussing on the key findings associated with the past disease outbreaks like influenza, avian flu, Ebola, bird flu, SARS, foot and mouth disease and ongoing phase of COVID-19, encompassing the perspective related with various agricultural and concerned supply chain practices is clustered. Furthermore, issues having relevancy with the notion of this work, sourced from platforms of print and electronic media have been incorporated to ground the reality associated with the impacts, for better visualisation of the perspectives.

This study outlays the key findings which are relevant with the past pandemic outbreaks from the core of the research literature. It details the impact of the current COVID-19 scenario on the various FSC operations, focussing on dimensions allied with the industry, economic and society concerns. For the same, to mitigate the effects, relief measures focussing on the short- and long-term perspectives have been incorporated. Steps ramped up by the Government of India (GOI) to safeguard masses from the threat of food security, accelerate pace of the FSC operations and upscale operating capacities of the industries and agriculture practices have incorporated.

Presented work is persuaded amid of the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions hence it outlays the theoretical perspectives only. But, these perspectives portray the ongoing scenario's impacts, extending its implication to the people coming from the industry and academia background. This study can felicitate the government bodies to make them familiar with the various impacts which indented the FSCs, food industries and added woes to the society concerns.

India is the second largest populated nation of the world, and outspread of the COVID-19 has capsized the FSCs and raised the various instances, making population vulnerable to the threats of food insecurity. This study encompasses effect of the FSC disruption by incorporating its effect on the food industries practices, societal issues and extending possible relief measures to restructure the FSC dynamics. As of now, study focussing on the Indian FSC concerns, detailing of impacts due to pandemic outbreak, relief measures to sail out of the hard times are not available.

Facing the challenges posed by the pandemic of COVID-19, this paper aims to contribute to the resilience of businesses through the development of a real options approach (ROA) that provides alternatives and opportunities for a decision process under situations when future events and outcomes are unknown and not capable of being known from current information.

This paper involves a stochastic modelling process in generating a set of absolute option values, using available data and scenarios from the COVID-19 pandemic event. The modelling and simulations using ROA suggest how strategic portfolios resolve the growing problem during the endemic to all but in the most isolated societies.

This study finds the emergent correlation between circuit breakers and lockdowns, which have brought about a “distorted gravity” effect (inverse growth of global businesses and trades). However, “time-to-build” real options (i.e. deferral, expand, switch and compound exchange) start to function in the adaptive-transformative capabilities for growth opportunities of both government and corporate sectors. Significantly, some sectors grow faster than others while the compound exchange remains primarily challenging. Clearly, the government and corporate sectors are entangled, inevitably, the decoherence allows for the former to change uncertainty in the latter; therefore, government sector options change option values in the corporate sector.

The ROA by empirically focusing on both government and corporate sectors demonstrates under conditions of uncertainty how options in decision-making generate opportunities that hitherto have not been recognised and exercised upon by research in the immediate context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Importantly, the ROA provides an insightful concatenation (capability–behaviour approach) that drives resilience.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the role of cognitive styles (CgStys) and self-efficacy (SEff) in the formation of social entrepreneurial intentions (SEIs) among the students of a premier multi-campus technical university in India using the theory of planned behaviour as the research framework.

A 54-item questionnaire was responded by 550 students. The data were collected by employing a systematic random sampling method. In the total sample of the respondents, 67 per cent (n=368) were male and 33 per cent (n=182) were female and the average age of the respondents was 20 years. Structural equation modelling has been used for data analysis.

The results of the study support that the relationship between antecedents (CgStys and SEff) and SEIs was mediated by the attitude towards becoming a social entrepreneur, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. Findings of this research study also suggest that students with high level of SEff are more inclined towards social entrepreneurial activities.

The study was confined to the students from a technical university, and it may not give the generalized findings for students from the non-technical stream.

The finding of this research study will facilitate policy makers and educators for promoting social entrepreneurial activities at the university level. Based on the results and findings of the study, the educators may improve upon the support system to help and motivate students to opt social entrepreneurship as their career choice.

This is one of its kinds of research conducted in the Indian context. Findings of this research will be helpful in predicting how the intention process of Indian students is affected by their CgStys and SEff.

India's diagnostics business valued at USD 10 billion was growing at 20% annually. Several players with different business models competed. Dr. Lal PathLabs, the world's largest histopathology centre led with a menu of 3,500 tests, 1,600 collection centres and 7,000 pick-up points. Its Initial Public Offer had been oversubscribed 33.41 times and the team at Dr. Lal PathLabs was excited about expanding its international footprint. Two overseas companies were incorporated in Netherlands and Nepal. Yet, there were enormous unmet needs in India alongside potential for public-private partnerships. Trade-offs over portfolio choice and regional versus international footprint needed thinking through.