The process of watching a movie is a common way to be entertained in this day and age. There are multiple ways in which people can enjoy a movie ranging from the big screen at a commercial theater, on their home's television, or even in a car while driving. One outcome associated with watching a destination movie might be that the viewer will be compelled to visit or not the location portrayed in the movie. It is a primary assumption of this thesis that movies have the ability to create or change an individual's image of a destination by its portrayal within the motion picture. This study was conducted in an effort to examine this global phenomenon called movie tourism and contribute to the tourism literature. This study focused on determining the differences between pre and post measures resulting from watching a destination specific movie. The research method was a pretest-posttest experimental design conducted to a convenience sample of 247 hospitality management students enrolled in a major metropolitan university located in the southeastern portion of the United States. The research instrument was a pre and posttest questionnaire that included structured and unstructured questions in order to capture the complex destination image. The treatment between the pre and posttest was a destination specific movie. A 100% response rate was obtained from the pretest group and a 99.2% response rate from the posttest group. Results of the study revealed that: 1) certain perceived destination images were different before and after the movie; 2) level of interest in visiting the destination was not different before and after the movie; 3) destination image had a positive relationship with the level of interest in visiting the destination; and 4) certain audience characteristics had an impact on destination image and interest in visiting the location. Implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed in the final chapter.

Several researchers have attempted to understand the tourism expenditure patterns from the traveler's perspective (Cai, Hong, and Morrision, 1995; Dardis, et al., 1981; Prais and Houthakker,1971; Sheldon and Mak , 1987; Jang, et al.,2003). However, an examination of the previous studies indicates that only limited understanding of the traveler's expenditure patterns has been provided either because of only anecdotal evidence in the studies, or because of their failure to examine the impacts of the factors affecting expenditure patterns. This study examined the effects of socio-demographic, travel-related, and psychographic variables on travel expenditures. The expenditure patterns included lodging, meals and restaurants, attractions and festivals, entertainment, shopping, transportation, and total expenditures. From a theoretical perspective, this study contributes to the body of literature in relation to travel expenditure by examining the variables under each of the three constructs identified in predicting travel expenditures. The results of the study provide a more comprehensive and holistic picture in the search of travel expenditures based on multiple independent variables. This study found that travel-related variables (i.e. number of adult(s) and length of stay) were the most influential variables affecting tourism expenditures per person per day. From a practical standpoint, this study sheds light by providing information about how the traveler's characteristic effects travel expenditure patterns and destination marketers may use this information to better segment their target market, allocate their marketing dollars more effectively, and tailor their products to compete for tourist's dollars. Since consumer dollars and tourism organizations' marketing budgets are limited, this study may provide information which will help tourism marketers to develop better strategic marketing tools to satisfy and fulfill those tourists' needs and understand certain reasons behind their spending patterns.

This study reviews the effect of Internet bookings on the Central Florida lodging market over the past five years. As the number of lodging accommodations booked directly by the consumer over the Internet continues to increase, the ramifications brought about by this emerging distribution channel have not been fully investigated or interpreted. This study observes how Internet-enabled distribution channel bookings have trended in occupancy and average daily rate in the Central Florida lodging market in the past five years. Specifically the author segmented the survey respondents into the lodging product service categories of budget, moderate, upscale and luxury to analyze if there were any observable trends between the categories over the past five years. The author also segmented the respondents into the lodging geographic sub-categories of airport, downtown, suburban and resort/attractions area to determine if there were any observable trends between the sub-classifications over the past five years. Utilizing a descriptive approach, the author determined that each product service category and lodging sub-classification displayed continuous growth in Internet-enabled distribution channel bookings over the five-year period of 1999-2003. The author also observed that each product service category continuously represented a discounted Internet distribution channel rate over the five-year period of 1999-2003. This analysis suggests that lodging properties in the Central Florida market are discounting their Internet-enabled distribution channel rates in comparison to the property's overall average rate. At the same time, these properties appear to be increasing their Internet-enabled distribution channel bookings as a percentage of overall bookings.

Employee motivation shall be defined by Robbins (as cited in Ramlall, 2004) as: "the willingness to exert high levels of effort toward organizational goals, conditioned by the effort's ability to satisfy some individual need." To engage in the practice of motivating employees, employers must understand the unsatisfied needs of each of the employee groups. This study desires to provide practitioners in the restaurant industry the ability to recognize motivators for these different employment groups and their relationship to organizational commitment. The restaurant industry consists of two types of employees: salaried and hourly. This study focuses on hourly employees, and their subdivision: tipped employees. For the purpose of this research hourly employees shall be defined as employees that depend on their hourly wage as their main source of income and tipped employees shall be defined as employees that depend on the receipt of tips as their main source of income. The purpose of this study desires to provide practitioners in the restaurant industry a comparison and analysis of employee motivation between the two employment groups and their level of organizational commitment. After formulating a thorough research review, a questionnaire instrument was assembled. The sample for this study was a convenience sample consisting of 104 restaurant hourly tipped and non-tipped, front of the house personnel employed in a single branded, national restaurant chain located in the metropolitan area of Orlando, Florida. The research instrument was a survey questionnaire instrument comprised of three sections: 1.) twelve motivational factors derived from Kovach (1995), 2.) nine questions from the reduced OCQ from Mowday, Steers, and Porter (1979), and a section concerning demographic information of gender, age, race, education level, marital status, job type and tenure in the industry. Results from the study revealed that firstly, all of the employees in this thesis study felt that management loyalty was the most important motivating factor; secondly, intrinsic motivation factors were more important to non-tipped hourly employees; thirdly, gender had a strong influence in half of the motivating factors; fourthly, promotion and career development was found to be more important to non-tipped employees; lastly, overall mostly medium positive relationships were found between employee motivation and organizational commitment. Implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed in the final chapter.

Innovations in information technology have played an important role in the way business is conducted. Technology innovations have great impact on tourism destination marketing organizations such as convention and visitor bureaus, since they are highly dependent on information and timely distribution of it to the public. Information technology innovations such as the Internet allow CVBs to perform their marketing functions in a more efficient manner. The implementation of web-based marketing functions is impacted by organizational characteristics that either foster or hinder their implementation (Thong, 1999; Tornatzky & Fleischer, 1990; Wang & Fesenmaier, 2006; Zhu & Kraemer, 2005). Information technology innovations have been adopted by organizations in different levels of sophistication. Since the main function of a CVB is the promotion of a destination technologies that facilitate this process are important to this type of organization. Unfortunately, the marketing practice of American CVBs is still dominated by principles of mass marketing by communicating the same message to all consumers. As a result, the use of websites by American CVB has been limited to information provision functions and has lost opportunities to build relationship with customers through additional web-based marketing activities. This study proposes that CVBs should use web-based marketing activities to attract and retain relationships with customers. This study provides two main contributions to the existing literature: a) examines web-based marketing functions from a relationship marketing perspective and b) examines the impact of organizational characteristics on the sophistication level of web-based marketing functions. The use and effectiveness of web functions and its applications were examined. The results showed that the majority of the CVBs focus the use of their website to provide information. A standard multiple regression was used to investigate the impact of the organizational factors on the different web functions. The results of the regression show that size, financial resources and management team's technological expertise are the only factors that impact the level of web functions implemented by CVBs.

This study explored the relationships between knowledge, skills, ability, self-efficacy, and experiential learning and performance expectations and satisfaction. The purpose of this study was threefold. First, the study attempted to understand the motivators for student motivation to recommend the program. Second, the study looked at the contribution of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators for retention and positive word-of-mouth. Further, the research evaluated the relationship of the curriculum in influencing the student’s performance and satisfaction. The study sample consisted of 676 undergraduate students attending one of six PGA Professional Golf management programs in the spring of 2011. The survey instrument was developed specifically for this study after an extensive literature review of higher education analysis, performance, satisfaction and word-of-mouth. The instrument was constructed in eight content areas: knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA); self-efficacy; experiential learning; performance; satisfaction, and word-of-mouth. The findings indicated that experiential learning and to a lesser degree ability made the strongest contribution to the student’s performance and satisfaction. Focus of degree was a predictor of performance while not a predictor of satisfaction. Satisfaction and to a lesser degree performance were strong contributors to the student’s word-of-mouth. Finally, self-efficacy was found to have little relationship to satisfaction or performance contrary to findings in previous research.

Numerous studies in the hospitality field have focused on the importance of the convention industry to the economic well being of the local tourism industry. Because of intense competition between convention centers, destinations are practicing strategies of expanding their convention facilities and related infrastructure. Unfortunately, many of these expansions appear to have been based on feasibility studies that failed to present rigorous reviews and examinations regarding alleged claims of positive impacts and over-optimistic operational pro-forma statements. The main objective of this study is to propose an alternative framework for feasibility studies, which consists of an updated, rigorous methodology to calculate a more comprehensive picture, on what convention centers can deliver on public and private investment. Data from the Orange County Convention Center (OCCC) in Orlando, Florida were used for assessing this proposed framework.

This study investigated service excellence and hospitality in a healthcare setting. It is unique from other hospitality research in that it considers hospitality and service excellence as separate concepts, applicable across industries. Part of the premise of this study explores how hospitality extends past service excellence to create a comfortable and welcoming environment to combat patient anxiety and stress. Furthermore, this is one of the first qualitative studies on the importance of service excellence and hospitality in the healthcare industry. This case study measured top management's perceptions of service excellence and hospitality within one community-based hospital located in Orlando, Florida. The researcher conducted one-hour interviews with twelve leading managers to gain their opinions of service excellence and hospitality within their organization. Consistent with a thorough review of literature, three conclusions were revealed: 1) there is a strong, but mixed, top management commitment to service excellence and hospitality throughout organization; 2) the terms "service excellence" and "hospitality", when used, were discussed interchangeably as if the two theories were equivalent; and 3) External barriers to the patient experience that were identified included improvement of technology, increased consumerism, quality regulations, and workforce deficits. Internal barriers to the patient experience include communication and inconsistency. The research provided implications to healthcare organizations that are looking to implement practices of hospitality and service management to improve service delivery. Additionally, the study of hospitality outside the industry offers ideas of improvement for hospitality management and organizational researchers. It can also be used as a foundation to formulate additional studies in the area of service excellence and hospitality within the healthcare field, as this research is limited to only top management's views.

This study examined how employees of the hotel industry perceived green practices. Data was collected from 220 employees working in eight green certified hotels in Orlando. Research results revealed that performance levels of green practices implemented by hotels were lower than the importance levels of those same green practices as perceived by hotel employees. The results of the study illustrated that (1) the employees' perception regarding green practices was not different than one of hoteliers in terms of importance and performance, and (2) employees weighted the green practices that were beneficial to them as more important than green practices that required their behavior change. Also, a positive correlation between organizational commitment and green practices detected in this study which suggests that hotel organizations may anticipate positive ramifications of green practices in relation to HR approach when they embrace green practices. Unfortunately, employees' green perceptions at work were not generalized by their demographic characteristics, yet a number of considerable results were garnered from this study. These were (1) employees in operational departments were more green conscious than employees in other departments, (2) generation X was critical about green performance by the hotels, and (3) minorities showed more green concerns than other ethnicities. This study suggests that hotels need to spend more time and effort in communicating their green practice to employees. Training to improve green practices should be versatile and job-specific with strategies developed to motivate the employees to engage in green practices. Overall, this study proposes for hotels simply deploying green practices is not enough. They should carefully plan their green practices by training and motivating employees.

Customer-based brand equity (CBBE) has been extensively applied to examine a variety of travelers' behavioral intentions and tourism destination choices. However, from the perspective of competition among destinations, the use of the overall destination brand equity (ODBE) dimension is still in its experimental stage. The objective of this research is to determine the impact of destination brand awareness (DBA), image (DBI), quality (DBQ), and value (DBV) on ODBE. Specifically, this study focuses on the case of Japan tourism from the view of American travelers. Moreover, this study aims to incorporate tourism xenophilia (TXI), which is an emerging concept in tourism study and indicates people's attraction toward the perceived foreignness of destinations. This study investigates the group difference in the CBBE model between low- and high-TXI groups. Throughout an online self-administrative survey on Prolific, 408 questionnaires were gathered for data analysis. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was employed to determine the final measurement items. A series of multiple regression analyses tested the impacts of CBBE dimensions on ODBE and the differences of tourism xenophilic (low TXI vs. high TXI) groups on those relationships. The results of the EFA confirmed five key dimensions in CBEE (DBA, DBI, DBQ, DBV, and ODBE) as expected, except one measurement item (DBA6) excluded from DBA. The results confirm the positive impact of DBA, DBI, and DBV on OBDE, except the impact of DBQ on ODBE. The high TXI group had a stronger impact on the relationship between DBA and ODBE and between DBV and ODBE than the low TXI group, while the impact of DBI on ODBE was stronger with the low TXI group than the high TXI group. Theoretically, this study extended a research framework of CBBE by incorporating ODBE and TXI. It deepens the understanding of TXI and its role in tourists' brand equity evaluation process. Practically, it helps Japanese destination managers design and implement effective international marketing strategies, especially for their primary target market of Americans. Marketing strategies that enhance their social/self-image and the value of travel can be more effective in gaining attention from target markets and persuading travel to Japan rather than appealing to the quality of attractions overall. Furthermore, highlighting cost effectiveness first and gaining awareness second could be one effective way to target high-TXI travelers, while another could be enhancing destination image for low-TXI travelers.