<p>  </p> <p>Global hospitality and tourism activities are becoming increasingly diverse in the profile of international visitors as well as in the destination communities that host them. Along with the geographic and demographic shifts, today’s hospitality and tourism employees not only come from multicultural backgrounds themselves but also serve and interact with guests and visitors of different cultures from all over the world. The study was conducted against this backdrop and focused on intercultural competence and intercultural learning in four-year hospitality and tourism programs in the universities of the United States. The purpose of the study is to advance intercultural learning of hospitality and tourism undergraduate students through forward-looking curriculum design. Specifically, the study aims to 1) analyze the extent to which intercultural learning is embedded in current hospitality and tourism programs; 2) identify the intercultural competence in undergraduate students presently enrolled in the programs and effective formats for students’ intercultural learning; 3) evaluate desirable learning materials, approaches, and assessments of intercultural learning from the perspectives of students, educators, and industry professionals; and 4) propose a model of and make recommendations for intercultural learning through curriculum design.</p> <p>A series of mixed methods were adopted to achieve the research goal and objectives. They include descriptive and semantic analyses, a self-administered survey questionnaire, and semi-structured in-depth interviews. The data were collected from 53 four-year bachelor’s hospitality and tourism programs in public or land-grant universities. The results of descriptive and semantic analyses show that clear and direct statements and content about intercultural learning are lacking in general program literature as well as in specific course syllabi. Results of survey questionnaire data demonstrate that the intercultural competence level of undergraduate students in hospitality and tourism programs is neither high nor low. The most effective format for intercultural learning is through personal involvement and interaction. Intercultural activities organized by the university and community are examples of this format. The findings from the interviews reveal the core characteristics of intercultural learning materials, approaches, and assessments. The learning materials need to be current, visualized, and industry-focused. The learning approaches should be interactive and active to place students in the center during their intercultural learning process. The learning assessments are expected to provide opportunities and platforms for students to share their experiences and reflect on what they have learned from intercultural courses. Based on the key findings from the study, a conceptual model of intercultural learning through curriculum design is proposed for hospitality and tourism programs. </p> <p>The study makes some theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, the study enriches the literature on intercultural learning and intercultural competence in hospitality and tourism from the curriculum design viewpoint and multiple perspectives of students, educators, and industry professionals. The research integrates intercultural curriculum and internationalization at home into an innovative learning approach to facilitate students’ intercultural learning. The proposed model lays a conceptual foundation for future academic discourse and empirical research. Practically in the educational context, the study offers guidelines for hospitality and tourism programs to develop and design intercultural curriculum through an illustration of an introductory tourism course. The study contextualizes intercultural learning as involving two or more world cultures. The findings are significant in intracultural and subcultural settings as well. The expectations of guests and visitors, be they international or domestic, are influenced by their primary cultures and subcultures alike. Hospitality businesses and tourism organizations can provide a higher level of service quality to their guests and visitors from diverse cultural backgrounds if their employees are interculturally competent through education and training and other human resource functions. </p> <p>The findings from the study bear implications beyond higher education and hospitality and tourism. The study suggests that hospitality businesses and tourism organizations can contribute to building an inclusive community when they are staffed by interculturally competent employees. There have been increasing occurrences of direct and indirect forms of prejudice, discrimination, group profiling, social exclusion, and even hostility both in the United States and around the globe. While these occurrences are rooted in historical, geopolitical, and ideological contexts, they also result from the absence or lack of cultural understanding. Intercultural competence through intercultural learning plays a direct role in promoting harmony and inclusiveness on campus, in the workplace, and in society at large. </p>

This thesis puts forth a model for analyzing and understanding the social construction of the concept of place. The Place Deconstruction Model (PDM) consists of a decentered and a centered perspective. The decentered perspective identifies three instances of sense making, at the levels of perception (crude place), meaning making (constructed place), and the building of artifice (commodified place). The centered perspective accounts for the subjectivity of the observer, as determined by memory, expectations, and the experience of the here and now. The method of analysis involves the juxtaposition of spatial (space, place identity, place image), temporal (time, history, heritage), and social (being, self identity, self image) lenses that require adjustment of parameters such as perspective and unit of analysis. The findings derived from the application of this model have both academic and practical applications.

Women in antebellum New Orleans have often been memorialized as Voudou queens, slave-torturers who continue to haunt houses, prostitutes, and light-skinned concubines to wealthy, white men. This study focuses on women’s contribution to New Orleans’s economy through the hospitality industry as female bar owners from 1830-1861. In addition, it provides an overview of the role that alcohol and beverage consumption patterns played among men and women of all races, classes, and cultural backgrounds in antebellum New Orleans. Antebellum tourists, in addition to cotton and sugar, were an important source of income for many New Orleanians before the Civil War. As bar owners, these women profited from male-dominated spaces while providing for themselves, and in some cases, their families. A study of the hospitality industry in antebellum New Orleans is essential to those studying both economic and social histories of the city during the antebellum era.

HEIs have, over the recent decade, been involved in internationalisation of their academic programmes and in the delivery of their degrees in international locations. Internationalisation is associated with the incorporation of international facets into the composition of curriculum, faculty, and students through a combination of activities and policies. One such activity associated with internationalisation is transnational education, in which the degree students are located in a different country than where the institution delivering the education is based. Transnational education is often categorised in many forms: franchise, twinning, articulations, double degree programme, partnership, distance education, and international branch campus. Hospitality and tourism programmes have been identified as having been involved not only in internationalising their degree programmes, but also in delivering their degrees internationally in branch campus locations. However, even though the narrative has been on the start-up, operations, and management of these IBCs, less is known about the impacts the international branch campus has on the exporting hospitality and tourism programme. This research, based in management, tourism, and international education, and viewed through a post positivism and critical realist perspective, presents an understanding of the effects that exist between hospitality and tourism programmes in HEIs and their IBCs. This is achieved through developing a typology of the influences that overseas expansion has on the exporting hospitality and tourism programme. To address the objective of this research, a case strategy approach was used to support the exploratory and descriptive nature of this topic of study. The methodological design consisted of a mixed-methods approach, exploring three hospitality-tourism programmes in the United States delivering their degrees at international branches campuses. A conceptual framework based on elements associated with overseas expansion of both firms and HEIs and the theoretical foundations regarding internationalisation, guided data collection and analysis. The significance of this study is twofold. First, it contributes to greater understanding of IBCs from the perspective of the home campus. Much of the literature surrounding exporting education through IBCs broadly focuses on three themes: market entry, risks and benefits, and quality control issues. Understanding these influences back at the home campus programme contributes to an underdeveloped area in the transnational literature. Secondly, the research contributes to the topic of internationalisation specific to the academic field of hospitality and tourism management. Although there is much consensus that academic programmes should prepare students for an international industry and a global marketplace, it is unclear the role that exporting hospitality and tourism degrees on IBCs has in internationalising the exporting degree programme specific to students, faculty, and curriculum. Greater insight was gained regarding IBCs and internationalisation by assessing the influences of IBCs through the experiences of home campus faculty and staff. Additionally, findings may also prove useful to organisations, both academic and commercial, seeking to expand internationally. Findings of this research demonstrate that delivering a degree internationally is motivated by both internal and external factors, but home programme leadership combined with pull factors from the international location may be the catalyst in the decision to expand internationally. Additionally, the justification for international expansion and the outcome of this activity appears to be most associated with expanding the programme's brand and credibility in the area of international education. Impacts on faculty, students, and curriculum diverge somewhat when considering the mobility between both the home campus and international branch campus. Students at the home campus experience internationalising influences based on two factors. The first is their study abroad experiences at the branch campus, and the second is their interactions with foreign students who transfer to the home campus. Similarly, faculty who engage with the branch campus onsite in the international location are in some cases gaining international exposure that allows them to internationalise their perspective on the industry and their students. Faculty and staff at the home campus identify the challenges of supporting both the necessary resources of the international branch campus, and the requirements to serve the changes associated with the home campus environments.

<p dir="ltr">This research evaluates the impact of interactive technologies on consumer experiences in the hospitality and tourism sector. It specifically addresses technology adoption behaviors, interactive technology design, and privacy concerns associated with information disclosure. Chapter 1 conducts a meta-analysis of technology research published in top hospitality and tourism journals from 2000 to 2021. This analysis identifies critical factors influencing consumers' technology experiences and pinpoints design and privacy concerns as significant gaps in current research. Building on these insights, Chapter 2 delves into the design elements of technologies like service robots, addressing the gaps by taking a holistic approach to service robot design. The findings underscore the importance of design congruency in the deployment of service robots, providing practical insights and guidelines for industry stakeholders to optimize investments in such technologies. Chapter 3 employs an exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach to compare consumer private information disclosure behavior during interactions with technological and human service agents in the travel sector. This study indicates that technological agents are perceived as more competent, whereas human agents are trusted more for their integrity and benevolence in matters of information privacy. Together, these insights are crucial for service providers, technology developers, and policymakers as they seek to enhance consumer satisfaction and operational efficiency within the hospitality and tourism industry.</p>