Literature on women's participation in the tourism and hospitality workplace highlights various imbalances although elite kitchens have received little attention. This thesis enhances knowledge on women's participation in elite kitchens in the United Kingdom through quantitative and qualitative analysis and an evaluation of the discursive constructs of expert industry observers. The thesis explores power mechanisms and the extent to which they support inclusive attitudes, raise expectations and support real employment opportunities for women. It also explores the multidimensional operation of forces that oppose women's participation and promote polarisation, alienation and detachment from the elite culinary arts workplace. Women occupied just 5% of head chef's positions in Michelin star restaurants. Successful women tended to be iconised and their achievements much celebrated. Yet, women's low participation at senior levels is longstanding, despite a raft of policies aimed at promoting gender equality. This thesis provides a rich picture of elite kitchens from a post-modern, contextual feminist perspective. Semi-structured interviews with expert industry observers provided in-depth insight into the complex and subtle ways in which the activity and inactivity of leaders and groups and the sheer weight of organisations - political, institutional and educational - served to perpetuate gender imbalance. Hard, quantitative data was used to show the true extent of gender imbalance. This thesis concludes that real employment opportunities did not exist for women because the mechanisms intended to support them were a mirage resulting in raised but unfulfilled aspirations. Reason was not being mobilised effectively in public debate to counter the power processes that perpetuated exclusion legitimising male domination, leaving women in a position of oppressed quiescence. This thesis makes a contribution to understanding women's choices and constraints and is a major contribution to the development of hospitality and catering studies.

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Purpose – This thesis proposes to address the research gap of understanding the relationshipbetween ‘Information Communication Technology (ICT)’ and ‘marketing performance’ in upscale hotels in Jordan. Design/methodology/approach – Extensive literature that links both ICT and marketing performance forms the framework of this research. This research examines the level of ICT usage by hotels as well as their marketing performance to support the theoretical framework that can be used for practical application in the hospitality industry and provides direction for both practising managers and theoreticians. The quantitative survey technique, using structured closed questions, was the main method applied to test the theoretical framework and all of its hypotheses as well as to provide answers to all the research questions. The quantitative survey was undertaken of 61 Jordanian hotels in Amman, Aqaba, the Dead Sea and Petra over the time period from May to July 2013. The senior managers including CEOs, managing directors, and general managers or marketing directors of the hotels, who are responsible for making decisions regarding the hotel marketing activities, were selected to provide the primary data regarding the use of ICT in their hotels and their marketing performance. Findings – The findings demonstrate that the majority of Jordanian hotels have a high level of ICT adoption, however, the integrated (i.e. interconnectivity) level and the usage level of ICT are significantly less. Moreover, the availability, interconnectivity and the usage extent of ICT vary according to the size of the hotel, star-rating, and the experience of hotel management in ICT. The findings also suggest that Jordanian hoteliers are to some extent satisfied with their marketing performance and particularly with the financial aspect of marketing performance. Additionally, the results exhibited important differences in the contribution that each technology makes to the marketing performance. For example, the electronic-points-of-sales systems (EPOS) and the booking-enabled hotel Website are the highest individual ICT systems that impact the marketing performance. Finally, the invention measures (e.g. the ability of launching new products/ services) are the most affected aspect of marketing performance when adopting interconnected ICT systems in hotel establishments. Practical implications – There are multiple areas and issues that need to be considered in making and implementing ICT investment decisions if they are to contribute to the hotel marketing performance. Hotel companies need to be selective in their ICT adoption decisions and look at each ICT system from the marketing management perspective. The Electronic Distribution Systems (e.g. Booking-Enabled Website), and Hotel Front-Office Systems (e.g. PMS) are some of the most differentiating technologies, which may be implemented by 3-, 4- and 5-star hotels to improve marketing performance, especially; the non-financial aspects of marketing performance (e.g. the ability to launch new processes and services and the perceived quality of these processes and services). Originality/value – This is one of the first studies in the hospitality field that offers practical evidence on how ICT systems affect the marketing performance. This research identifies the most discriminating ICT solutions across three, four, and five-star hotels, and discusses their potential for improving marketing performance. It also provides recommendations for Jordanian hotels to improve their marketing effectiveness by using the appropriate technologies in the hospitality industry.

Distribution channel plays an important role in the operation of hotel revenue management (RM), it is a key vehicle that can facilitate effective communication of the whole RM strategy, which helps hotels to accomplish their ultimate goal of revenue maximisation. However, the importance of distribution channel management in hotel revenue management has not received much attention in academic research (Ivanov and Zhechev, 2012), and there is a lack of studies relating to distribution channel selection and optimisation (Guillet and Mohammed, 2015). In addition, with the increasing popularity of the Internet and the rapid development of information technology, online distribution channels have been intensively promoted by hotel companies in the contemporary business environment, and these have been well received by customers (Masiero and Law, 2016). Accordingly, this research is aimed at investigating the functions of hotel online distribution channels (hotel’s own website and OTA websites), and to examine customers booking intention toward each of these two distribution channels. The overall results of the present study could help hotel companies to optimise the utility of their online distribution channels, thus to achieve their ultimate goal of revenue maximisation. In this research, there were three studies were conducted to fulfil the investigation. The first study was a qualitative study with hotel experts, based upon the method of semi-structured interview, which examined the functions of hotel online distribution channels from the organisational perspective. The second study was a qualitative study with hotel customers, based upon the method of focus group interview, which examined the functions of hotel online distribution channels from the customers’ perspective. Thus, the findings could verify whether the functions that were highlighted by the companies were actually approved by the customers. The third study was a quantitative study with hotel customers, based upon the method of survey questionnaire, which provided a further insight into customers’ booking intention toward hotels’ own websites and OTAs respectively. Based upon the qualitative studies with hotel experts and customers, 6 functions of hotel online distribution channels were identified: information, communication, promotion, security, relationship building, and payment. All these identified functions were verified to exist in both hotels’ own websites and online travel agent websites, but some functions might be performed better by one of the distributors than another one. For example, hotels’ own websites provide more detailed information about an individual property, but OTAs offer easy comparisons; hotels’ own websites have better performance in personal communications, while OTAs are good at mass market communications. The results of the quantitative study shown that attitude carried the most weight in explaining the intention of customers to make bookings via hotels’ own websites. Therefore, for the distribution channel of hotels’ own websites, hotel managers need to pay more attention to the factors that contribute to the generation of favourable attitude. In the OTA group of the present study, perceived behavioural control carried the most weight in explaining the intention of customers to make bookings on OTAs, which indicted that perceived behavioural control was the most important determinant that affected the customers who used OTAs to place hotel bookings, and these OTA customers felt confident and in control of using the distribution channel. This research provides the theoretical contribution to the literature. Firstly, by taking into account the issue that distribution channel has been overlooked in the literature of RM and the trend of online distribution channel, this research contributes to the knowledge of online distribution channel in hotel RM literature. Secondly, this research has adopted the perceptions of both hotel-related companies and hotel customers in generating comprehensive knowledge about the functions of hotel online distribution channels. The results of the overall study also offer important implications for hotel companies, which enable them to clearly understand the strengths and weaknesses of their own websites and OTA websites. As a result, they can set up efficient strategies to optimise the utility of both their internal and external online distribution channels, which for the purpose of maximise their total revenue.

This thesis seeks to develop an understanding of hospitality businesses and their relationship with the environment, thereby developing the subject discipline by addressing an under-researched area. Specifically, it seeks to provide an empirically based understanding of the rationale and process behind the decision to adopt environmental management practices, with a view to encourage their wider adoption in the industry through the successful promotion of environmental initiatives. Accordingly, the study addresses three main dimensions: the process of decision-making and the decisional factors leading to the decision; the rationale behind it; and the outcome of the decision. To suit the explorative nature of the investigation the research adopts an interpretivist, qualitative approach using semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with a sample of purposively selected owner-managers of serviced accommodation establishments in Scotland. Participating businesses were all members of the Green Tourism Business Scheme, an environmental accreditation scheme for tourism businesses. The data is analysed following Crabtree and Miller's (1992) template approach to coding in the first stage of analysis, and a cognitive mapping approach based on Kelly's Personal Construct Theory (1955) in the secondary stage of analysis. The analytical software used for the development and analysis of cognitive maps is Decision Explorer. The trustworthiness of the study is ensured by addressing the four criteria of credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability. The study found that the decision to adopt environmental management practices reflected a lifestyle choice, was driven by personal values and beliefs and influenced by a wealth of personal, socio-cultural and situational factors. Four distinct motivational groups were identified based on the emerging rationale for action: Profit-motivated Greens (financially driven), Practival Greens (both financially and ethically driven), Ethical Greens (ethically driven) and Holistic Greens (also ethically driven but to a greater extent). Variations in personal environment ethic, personal construct of environmental practices and the type of value attributed to action further distinguished respondents in the four typologies. Attitudinal, operational and financial factors were found to act as constraints to further action. A range of intrinsic benefits (personal satisfaction and peace of mind) as well as extrinsic benefits (financial, operational and marketing) were acknowledged following adoption of environmental practices and participation in the scheme. It is concluded that whilst promotion strategies should continue to promote the financial benefits of environmental involvement, equal consideration should be given to appealing to the moral conscience of individual business owners. Efforts should also seek to educate operators on action strategies and on the value of their contribution. A need for improved support and infrastructure is identified. Finally, in order to attract participation, environmental accreditation schemes such as the Green Tourism Business Scheme, which provides the context for this study, must prove commercially beneficial to businesses. This, it is argued, can only be achieved through improved promotion, and consequently, widespread consumer recognition. Recommendations are provided as a basis for action in this direction.