The transference of knowledge and the creation of a knowledge vault within operations of the Hospitality sector is the cornerstone to the success of this dynamic contributor to the economy, not only as a skills developer, but also as a collective group of experts that unknowingly build a community of expertise that transfer knowledge amongst themselves within an organisation. Leadership that share knowledge, whether tacit or implied, leads to the development and knowledge growth from members to those who are exposed to the intricacies of decision making and business practices. This leads then to the skills development and retention of the participants who feel nurtured and fulfilled in the employment within the organisation and view themselves as valued members. The finding of this research reveals a correlation between knowledge sharing and the desire for job security that leads to the feeling of being nurtured and finding the employment positive and enjoyable. The transference of knowledge allows the receiver of the knowledge to develop to where the point of the receiver becoming an expert in their chosen field is attained and the collective of the mangers are developed to the level of a community of experts in their various fields. However the academic qualifications of leadership is low, the significance of this highlights the level of networking amongst themselves as paramount to the success of this multi million rand industry.

The tourism and hospitality industry has made a meaningful contribution to the development of the South African economy. Not only the hotels, but also the demand for self-catering holiday properties such as guest houses and bed-and-breakfast (B&B) establishments is increasing which could boost the tourist industry. Moreover, the prospect of the self-catering holiday properties in South Africa is extremely positive, particularly when the country is given the opportunity to hold the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Thus, expectations and perceptions are significantly shaped and transformed by the prosperous environment. The self-catering holiday properties should provide the best possible service to international and domestic tourists and ensure that their needs are fully met. The general purpose of this study was to evaluate the service quality of guest houses and B&Bs in the Nelson Mandela Bay by comparing guests’ expectations and perceptions. The results of this study could assist the managers of guest house and B&B in improving its service performance to more effectively fulfil the needs of dynamic tourist market. The literature study provided an overview of tourism industry from the management and marketing perspectives, services marketing and a detailed discussion of service quality focusing on the nature of services, determinants of service quality and techniques for measuring service quality. The SERVQUAL model and its derivative, Lodging Quality Index (LQI), were adapted for measuring the guests’ perceived service quality in this research. ii The empirical data was collected by means of a survey, using a self-administered questionnaire distributed to guests who were staying at guest houses or B&Bs in the Nelson Mandela Bay identified in terms of convenience sampling. One hundred and five useable questionnaires were received. The empirical findings based on the perception-minus-expectation (P-E) gap analysis showed that the perception mean scores were consistently lower than the expectation mean scores. This implies that guests perceived service quality of guest house and B&B to be relatively low. It is recommended that the managers of guest houses and B&Bs should: {u10007A} uniform the employees; {u10007A} use every tool to figure out what the guest wants; {u10007A} establish specific working procedures and help employees to understand their job responsibilities and mangers’ expectations; {u10007A} invite suggestions of existing located facilities from guests, and move the inconvenient facilities if possible; {u10007A} employ a communication audit to evaluate the overall quality of the communication system by comparing communication objectives to actual performance; {u10007A} combine useful destination information from different sources and update them on the website frequently; and {u10007A} apply an attracting layout to build positive image.

The need for successful management of a guest house in the increasingly competitive hospitality industry in South Africa, compels guest house owners to understand their customers’ needs and deliver service of acceptable quality. The objective of the research is to find out what business travellers expect from a guest house and how these expectations compare with the perceptions of guest house owners in Port Elizabeth. Conclusions drawn from this research would also benefit guest house owners in other parts of the country. A literature review was conducted to provide an understanding of the nature of service and the role “evidence of service” can play in the perception of quality. The empirical study aimed at comparing business travellers’ expectations of guest house service with guest house owners’ perceptions of their guests’ expectations. The empirical findings showed that business travellers deemed secure parking and professionalism of staff as the most important attributes, while guest house owners thought it would be friendliness of front desk staff and efficient handling of complaints. Moreover, both groups indicated that cleanliness of rooms and services performed by staff adequately the first time, were of particular importance. It was also found that the importance rating of the different service dimensions were not significantly influenced by the business travellers’ gender, managerial position, nights of stay or by the guest house grading. The study proposes that guest house owners continue to focus on strategies for training and developing competent employees, simplify the steps of service delivery and improve on the standards of the servcie to ensure that business facilities are in line with the expectations of business travelers.

Restaurateurs often assume that customers' online reviews of their dining experiences are a reflection of their dining preferences. This study finds this assumption not to be true. Online written reviews do not explain diners’ preferred dining experiences. In this study post-experience reactions captured in reviews are shown to be contextually different to established dining preferences. Results show online reviews to be most important in facilitating customer dining expectations, but not influencing customers’ preferences in dining experiences. Evidence gathered during the secondary research shows that in general, social media has become the great marketing equaliser in commerce. In the dining industry, restaurants cannot solely rely on traditional media in the initial attraction and retention of dining customers. Continuous interaction between the business and customers is increasingly necessary for restaurateurs to remain competitive and in-touch with customers’ needs. This study concentrates its research area on the post-experience evaluation phase as found on review websites, like TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor has especially become a popular means to perpetuate word-of-mouth opinions of dining experiences among prospective customers. Research shows clear evidence of the importance of other's online opinions in the consumer decision-making process. The main variables of the study, namely customer experiences, restaurant dining and social media, are theoretically explored within the disciplines of service management and customer behaviour. These theories have laid a sound foundation for the subsequent research methods followed. The main purpose of the study was using social media reviews from TripAdvisor to investigate dining experiences in the restaurant industry. The outcomes desired were: firstly to advise the restaurant industry about superior customer practices, secondly emphasising the importance for industry of social media use in the dining experience, and thirdly rendering clarification on the experience perceptions of customers about factors that might lead to ‘delight’ and ‘frustration’. This research centralises the constructs of delight and frustration factors, which are typically extremely emotional dining experiences for the customer, that have the common element of surprise. Methodologically, the research required two phases: firstly, the qualitative analysis of online user-generated content by content analysis. The global sample consisted of seven international cities, which included the best, worst and average-rated TripAdvisor restaurant reviews. The content analysis produced the theoretical base for the dining perception variables used in the empirical survey. In the second phase of the study, the global surveys administered resulted in measuring the general public’s perceptions of the delight and frustration factors of dining experiences. Subsequently, the research process required various quantitative data analyses to reach substantial results with inferences. The results and interpreted findings achieved were twofold: Firstly, from the content analysis: customers regard service quality as relatively unimportant in relation to the holistic dining experience. Customers regarded food and beverage quality as crucial in the dining experience. Value for money increasingly becomes an issue as customers become more frustrated, more so than when the dining was generally experienced as pleasant. Secondly, from the empirical data: mood and aesthetics are essential, especially when diners chose between their favourite restaurants. Further results show managing the service basics for restaurants is essential; this included welcoming, professional, attentive and friendly service. Service consistency has also proven to be imperative in customers’ perceptions. Results further show that different nationalities could perceive food quality and service reliability differently. In addition, men and women could perceive food quality, mood and aesthetics, and value for money differently. This study recommends various findings to the restaurant industry: most importantly that the post-experience reviews are contextually different to customers’ dining preferences. The factor determining the reputation of a restaurant is food quality and not so much service quality. Value for money should be associated with a specific service or product feature for it to be of meaningful consequence to the restaurateur.

A good understanding of customer expectations is very important to service providers. Since the Chinese first came to South Africa and started their restaurant businesses. Chinese fine-dining restaurants have become more and more popular. Identifying the customer expectations and Chinese fine-dining restaurant owner perceptions will help Chinese service providers to understand better the restaurant businesses. To ensure the development of the Chinese restaurant business in South Africa, it is very important to understand what South African customers want, whether there are differences between the Chinese restaurant owner perceptions of the service quality and South African customer expectations of the service quality. This would depend on the customers’ preferences, and provide a positive contribution to customer decision-making. Therefore, it is essential to understand and identify what is customer expectations are, what the management perceptions are and the differences between them. 5 In order to achieve the objectives of the research, the following approach was followed: Factors that influence the customer expectations and management perceptions are explained. Five factors used to measure the service quality of Chinese fine-dining restaurants are identified, namely reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, tangibility. The responses to the questionnaire were collected and analysed to determine the extent to which factors are both important to customer expectations and management perceptions.

The aim of this thesis is to create a business plan for a start-up enterprise acting in the hospitality industry with an emphasis on a healthy lifestyle. The thesis consists of two main parts, theoretical and practical. The theoretical part, based on the literature, provides the reader with methodological procedures, which are applied in the plan. At First there are described the basic concepts of business and general recommendations in connection with this issue, next parts are the structure of the business plan. The practical part is the real business plan. Equally important part of the work is the conclusion which summarizes the findings identified in the practical part, about the benefits and feasibility of the project.

The phenomenon of business failure has attracted research interest in finance literature partly because of its impact on the U.S economy. Whereas an impressive body of knowledge has been accumulated on this subject thus far, the hospitality literature has lacked empirical studies that seek to explain the nature of this phenomenon in the hospitality industry. The restaurant industry has consistently had the most business failures of any single segment within the retail trade sector in the eighties. Therefore, there were three purposes in this study: 1) to develop a model for predicting business failure which can be a useful tool in helping researchers and industry practitioners to identify warning signs of business failure in the restaurant industry, 2) to determine whether the financial variables of a predictive model for business failure in the restaurant industry are the same as in the hotel industry, and 3) to determine whether the financial variables that are associated with reorganization are different from those that are associated with liquidation in the restaurant industry. The sample consisted of 23 failed and 23 non-failed restaurant firms, and 15 failed and 15 non-failed hotel firms within the period of 1982-1993. The predictive business failure models were developed through logistic regression analysis employing 8 financial variables based on one year prior to business failure. The models were tested at two and three years prior to business failure. The empirical evidence illustrated that the business failure model developed for the restaurant industry is capable of predicting business failure, and even bankruptcy with high classification accuracy. The relationship between reorganization and liquidation was investigated through logistic regression analysis employing two sets of indicators for capital structure and profitability. The sample consisted of 14 reorganizers and 10 liquidators from the restaurant industry. The empirical evidence showed that reorganization and liquidation are not dependent on each other, that is, reorganization and liquidation cannot be determined by both Capital structure and profitability in the restaurant a failed [end of author-provided abstract]. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this study is to understand and describe the meaning of employees’ work experiences of professional socialization in hotel and restaurants, and further describe the professional life that is created within the industry. Previous research shows that the industry consists mainly of young workers while those over 50 are few, which indicates that both young and old workers leave the industry. The gender distribution for the whole industry is even, but a closer look shows that kitchens are male dominated while the service-oriented professions are female-dominated. This contributes to the industry facing several challenges such as high staff turnover and sexual harassments. Based on this, there is a reason to further explore their professional life. Professional life is used as an umbrella term for the theoretical concepts: career, professional socialization, professional culture, professional identity, age, and gender. The results are based on 13 interviews with reception, serving and kitchen staff between the ages of 20-45. The result shows that the professional culture includes a harsh, and sexist jargon. Through the professional socialization, the employees must adapt and accept the culture by proving their willingness to a long-term career, participate in the jargon and create mutual relationships built on trust and respect. Employees are aware of the difficulty of ageing in the industry and therefore they start planning early in their careers for how to reduce the active work as they get older. Gender and age mainly affect women who need to adapt and accept the sexist jargon that can lead to discrimination. One of the conclusions are that an important part of professional socialization is to differentiate oneself from employees who see their work as a transitional profession and accept the tough professional culture. This, together with the impact that age and gender have, is significant for their professional identity and willingness to create a long-term professional life.

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / Learning outcomes: Identify the types of innovation that Gastón Acurio’s proposal has created. Understand the key strategies developed to grown and consolidate Peruvian food as a category internationally and as part of Acurio’s business. Identify elements of the business model using the business model canvas. Explain how elements of a business model are related, reinforce each other and drive results. Evaluate strengths, opportunities, weaknesses and threats to a business model. Analyze changes to the model that can capitalize upon or mitigate these factors based on evidence. Case overview/synopsis: Gastón Acurio is a successful Peruvian chef and restauranteur who was key in shaping the country’s gastronomic industry. His innovative business model distinguished him from other Peruvian restauranteurs and allowed him to grow and take advantage of opportunities in Peru and internationally. His success and growth attracted US$52m in investment funding. However, his model’s challenges surfaced during a difficult restaurant launch exacerbated by a harsh review in the New York Times. Students must identify and analyze the key elements of Acurio’s business model to evaluate and propose changes to better take advantage of its strengths and opportunities, as well as to mitigate weaknesses and threats. Complexity academic level: Master’s or MBA. Supplementary materials: Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Subject code: CSS 12: Tourism and hospitality.

Performance improvement is at the heart of all strategic management. Thus, the principal objectives of this study were to develop an industry-specific instrument to measure lodging strategy, identify a set of strategic dimensions underlying such strategy, and relate performance differences among lodging units to varying strategic dimensions emphasized by such units. The study adopted the individual hotel as the unit of analysis, and realized strategy was measured as opposed to the intended. Five hundred and seventy nine hotels, which are part of the franchise systems of two industry-leading chains contributed information for this research. Following a comparative approach to the measurement of the strategy construct, this study developed a lOS-item lodging industry-specific strategy measurement scale, capturing a comprehensive set of strategic characteristics from the business strategy (porter, 1980) and service management (Gronroos, 1990; Zeithaml, Parasuraman, and Berry, 1990) literatures. Through factor analysis, a parsimonious set of seven strategic dimensions, Service Quality Leadership, Technological Leadership, Push, Cost Control, Pull, Group Channels, and Cross-Training, underlying this lOS-item scale was delineated. Using Yield Per Room, Market Share Index, and Return on Sales as the performance measures, the study indicated that strategies followed by high and low performing hotels were different. The empirical evidence showed that, in general, the Push, Service Quality Leadership, and Technological Leadership strategic dimensions tended to be associated with high performance. The evidence also indicated that strategies emphasized by high and low performing hotels differed by the four control variables studied: Location, (Service) Segment, (Ownership-Management) Affiliation, and Size. Additionally, similar differences were also obtained when the hotels studied were classified by the performance measure most used by them to evaluate themselves, and the age of the properties. Preliminary indications were also obtained to confirm the existence of a strategic time lag effect. The results from this study should be valuable not only for extending hospitality strategy research, but also for their normative implications. / Ph. D.