Due to various ongoing environmental crises, there is an urgent need for sustainable solutions and initiatives, as it has become an imperative criterion for businesses to include in their operations. Further, the hospitality sector is a multibillion-dollar industry and has a great impact on not only the economy, but the environment as well. Therefore, the industry is transitioning increasingly fast, and incorporating greater actions to operate sustainably. It should be imperative for businesses to operationalise all facets (environmental, economic, and social) of sustainability within the organisation. However, previous literature has indicated that over the last decade, one solution has been presented to achieve this goal: the creation and implementation of the Sustainable Business Model. It is a concept, which would allow for the planning and organising, delivering, and obtaining value of a business in a sustainable structure. Whilst this concept has been adopted and applied in the business sector, there are still some uncertainties about how Sustainable Business Models are practised, and what makes them successful or not. In addition, there also still appears to be a lack of application in the hotel industry, and whether the implementation of this concept is viable and efficient towards operating sustainably. Therefore, this study addresses the lack of research by investigating the processes and implementation of a Sustainable Business Model in the context of a small luxury hotel group, through the perspective of Strategy-as-Practice as the main theory. The theoretical framework is this study, includes three theories (Strategy-as-Practice, Supply Chain Management and Green Supply Chain Management), however, Strategy-as-Practice is considered the main theory that serves as a foundation, and is also a branch of Practice Theory. With this theoretical framework, studying how individuals perceive Sustainable Business Models, and the activities performed within the industry, allows for this research to reveal the significance, skills, and competencies that enable the implementation of a Sustainable Business Model. This study was conducted through a qualitative approach, and gathered empirical data from three semi-structured interviews and a non-participant observation conducted in the hotel. The findings and analysis, backed by one case study, uncovered six themes, indicating that passion and personal interest along with the involvement of the practitioners (managers), time and allocation of financial investments are all key elements towards the practices related to the implementation of Sustainable Business Models in the context of a luxury hotel.

The hospitality industry is increasingly incorporating self-service technology, suchas online booking systems, automated check-in and check-out, and in-roomtechnology, to enhance the customer experience and streamline operations. However,there is limited research on the adoption and usage of self-service technology bybaby boomers (BB) in this industry. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring theadoption and usage patterns of self-service technology (SST) among BBs in thehospitality industry.The paper follows a deductive approach drawing upon the extensive literature on thetopic. With a proposed qualitative viewpoint, the purpose of the study is to identifythe BBs’ attitude when using SSTs in hotels, and furthermore, to understand in whatinstances consumers prefer human interactions over technological encounters. Theempirical data was obtained through interviews that were conducted among 10Swedish BBs. The findings then were analyzed through thematic analysis, towithdraw patterns, similarities and differences.The conclusion of this thesis shows BBs have different preferences when it comes toadopting SSTs. The attitudes ranged from enthusiasm, to avoidance and hesitation.However, the common theme that emerged among all three types of attitudes, wasthe fact that they all prefer to use SSTs as a complementary step to what the hotelstaff will provide. It was also proposed in order to encourage the SST hesitant orSST avoidant group, the service design should be straightforward and theinstructions must be clear.

The global tourism and hotel industry have been among the fastest-growing sectors for years. However, the global pandemic of COVID-19 caused extreme disruption and changed the situation all around the globe. The global COVID-19 pandemic did not only leave an imprint on economic sectors all over the world but also caused changes in the everyday lives of people. Implemented travel restrictions and self-isolation have resulted in workforce reductions in all economic sectors and job losses impacting individuals, organizations, and countries globally. With regard to the hotel industry, the crisis has led to an immense number of cancellations and a loss of foreign clientele. The situation has altered and the behavior of guests has changed accordingly. This research aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on guest behavior and its consequences. To achieve this aim, a mixed methods research approach consisting of 2 stages of empirical study is employed. The qualitative method in the form of email interviews was aimed at the hotel staff of 5 chosen health spa hotels in Slovakia where 9 employees were asked questions about the impact of COVID-19 on the hotel industry and guest behavior from a hotel employee’s perspective. The collected data were analyzed by using thematic analysis. The quantitative method was used to investigate the impact of the global pandemic from hotel guests’ points of view themselves. The second part of the research therefore involves 100 participants of an online survey about guest behavior during the pandemic, change in values and behavior patterns. The findings proved that there is a significant change in guest behavior induced by the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences. Furthermore, the aftermath of adopted behaviors has been identified, including the change in the booking process, difficulties in rules compliance, and main differences in hotel stays before and during the pandemic.

Throughout the last years, the service encounter has gone through drastic changes due to rapid technological developments. The research area of service marketing is therefore putting a stronger focus on the academic field of technology-infused service encounters. Marketers have moreover also started to implement self-service technology (SST) within their service encounters, in order enhance their service delivery. This phenomenon has also been visible within the hospitality industry, whereby the hotel industry has experienced an increasing adoption of SST encounters. Consequently, hotels’ implementation of SST kiosks has enhanced the hotel guests’ participation level within the service encounter. Therefore, this thesis aims to gather insights on the emerging SST customer roles, by investigating the guests’ attitude towards the SST encounter. This leads to the investigation of distinctive SST customer roles within hotels’ self-check-ins.   The choice of the research topic was driven by the fact that existing research about SST implementation in the service encounter, lacks an investigation of the customers’ perspective. Thereby, a research gap was identified that outlays the customers’ enhanced participation as service co-producers. Previous research has focused on investigating customers’ technology acceptance, rather than their own identification as co-producers. Thereof, this thesis will put an emphasis on hotel guests’ attitude towards SST, as a specific aspect of the technology acceptance process. Moreover, this thesis will focus its investigation on self-check-ins within hotels that do not incorporate a human interaction point for their guests. Consequently, in order to investigate the SST customer roles more thoroughly, this thesis will also consider the viewpoint of the hotel. Therefore, qualitative interviews among nineteen hotel guests and one hotel representative were conducted.   The findings of this thesis revealed that SST customer roles cannot be predetermined within a hotel self-check-in. Instead, the hotel guests define their own SST customer roles through a reflection upon their purpose of the hotel stay, expectations of the check-in encounter, arising special needs and perceived benefits of the self-check-in. This determines their individual ‘role file card’, which can be utilized into the proposed SST customer roles archetypes of: technology enthusiast, beneficiary, traditionalist and contradictor. In regard to that, it has been identified that the information provided prior to the hotel guests’ stay, influences the reflection upon their SST customer roles. Moreover, it was discovered that with their increased responsibility over the check-in process, the hotel guests identified themselves as co-producers. Therefore, the findings outlined that the guests would want the price of the hotel stay to reflect their increased involvement in the service delivery.   From a theoretical perspective this thesis bridged the identified research gap of investigating hotel guests’ attitude towards SST, in order to classify the different customer roles that arise within a hotel’s self-check-in. Moreover, the findings revealed practical implications for hotel managers in regards of the need to provide their guests with more information about the SST encounter. Thereby, hotel managers will be enabled to increase their guests’ satisfaction with the SST encounter, as the guests’ expectations would be coherent with the hotel’s offerings.

This study investigates how hotels use social media marketing and electronic word-of-mouth to enhance hotel brand awareness and customer relations. The aim of this study is to examine how hotels use social media and electronic word-of-mouth to build and strengthen the hotel's brand awareness and the relationship between the hotel and customer. We conducted a multiple case study where we interviewed six hotels to find out how they use social media marketing and electronic word-of-mouth. The result shows that hotels use social media marketing in order to communicate and share information with customers and strengthen the customer commitment, but also to find out what customers think of the hotel. The result also shows that customer reviews have a great impact on the hotel's brand awareness and on the hotel's relations with customers. The result also shows that the hotel's brand awareness and customer commitment is strengthened when hotels actively use social media's various platforms and by responding to customer online reviews

The current study demonstrates human resource strategies in hospitality industry (Hotel segment) and its impact on employee competencies and skills. The human resource management enhances employee performance and their credibility to maximize overall firm goals in hotel segment. Employees with level of attitude and behavior provide best services and performances. In this regard, service managers need to support and improve their employees’ skills and competencies related to the organization structure and strategy. Therefore, it is necessary for organization to have strong human resource management strategies to optimize the employees’ competencies and performance which drives higher organizational productivity. The research question of this thesis is how managers perceive that human resource management strategies influence on employees’ skill and competence in the hotel segment of Gothenburg? The data collection indicates that different human resource strategies executed to sustain employee roles and responsibilities. Various human resource strategies should implement to achieve valuable outcomes contributing to employees’ satisfaction and organization performance. Training practices, recruitment and selection, compensation and incentive practices, performance management and job design are essential human resource strategies which are identified in this research study. The thesis applies qualitative approach. Empirical data are collected through structured interviews. Moreover, the interactive model is used to analyze the collected empirical data.

I Sverige kommunicerar de välkända hotellgrupperna att de uppskattar medarbetare med olika kulturella bakgrunder. Forskning i Sverige inom kulturell mångfald är begränsad. Kulturell mångfald innefattar religion, etnicitet, kultur och språk. Studien undersöker vad hotellgrupper värderar kring kulturell mångfald. Genom användning av en mångfaldsmodell bestående av fem perspektiv har studien beskrivit hotellgruppers bakomliggande motivationer kring värderingar om kulturell mångfald. Studien är en en dokumentstudie och har utgått från en kvalitativ forskningsmetod. Med hjälp av olika subkategorier och perspektiv från teorin har studien undersökt organisationers kommunikation via deras webbplatser. Resultatet av studien visar att det finns skillnader i vad hotellgrupper kommunicerar inom kulturell mångfald. Med hjälp av de fem mångfaldsperspektiven går det att härleda mönster utifrån organisationers värderingar genom deras kommunikation. Studien visar att olika hotellgrupper värderar kulturell mångfald på olika sätt, vissa mer än andra. Flera hotellgrupper strävar efter att skapa personalgrupper som speglar samhällets invånare och kan därmed nå ut till en större kundgrupp. Resultatet visar också att samtliga hotellgrupper som ingått i undersökningen har som målsättning att skapa kompetenta och presterande medarbetare. / In Sweden, the well-known hotel groups communicate that they appreciate employees with different cultural backgrounds. Research in Sweden within cultural diversity is limited. Cultural diversity includes religion, ethnicity, culture and language. The study examines what hotel groups value about cultural diversity. Using a diversity model consisting of five perspectives, the study has described hotel groups' underlying motivations regarding values about cultural diversity. The study is a document study and has been based on a qualitative research method. With the help of different subcategories and perspectives from the theory, the study has examined the organizations' communication via their websites. The results of the study show that there are differences in what hotel groups communicate in cultural diversity. Using the five diversity perspectives, it is possible to derive patterns from organizations' values through their communication. The study shows that different hotel groups value cultural diversity in different ways, some more than others. Several hotel groups strive to create staff groups that reflect the inhabitants of the community and can thus reach out to a larger customer group. The result also shows that all hotel groups included in the survey have the goal of creating competent and performing employees.

本研究欲達成之主要目的為分析我國國際觀光旅館業人力運用之概況、特性與相關問題，以及勞動條件、人力資源管理實務之現況，以及實踐於個案國際觀光旅館業之情形。 本研究主要以深度訪談法進行，分別針對G酒店、H大飯店以及L大飯店三家國際觀光旅館之人資部門主管人員進行深度訪談。訪談內容包括勞動條件、適用勞基法之情形、人力資源運用與人力資源管理實務，以及產業競爭環境下未來人力資源管理策略等相關議題。 經由相關文獻與深度訪談之分析，本研究發現高基層人力比例、部分工時人員與外包人力等彈性人力資源之運用，均為我國國際觀光旅館業從業人員之特殊結構屬性。另一方面，國際觀光旅館業提供的勞動條件普遍偏低，人力運用方面則重視數量及功能上的彈性運用，人力資源管理實務則於個案旅館中因經營管理型態而稍有差異，而未來國際觀光旅館業的營業擴展趨勢將使人力面臨短缺，而影響人力資源策略的形成。 / It has long been recognized that hotel industry generally suffered from shortage of human resource, relatively high turnover rate, and lower paying, no matter overseas or domestic. However, it is not an astonishing phenomenon for international tourist hotels which highlight the importance of service quality and attitude. Thus, human resource management is a critical element of operating performance in international tourist hotels. The topic for discussion of this research is exploring human resources management practice and relative issues in international tourist hotels in Taiwan. Therefore, analyzing labor conditions, practice of human resources management, as well as present application of human resources of international tourist hotels in Taiwan are subject of this study. The purposes of the research are listed: 1. Discussing the characteristic and profile of the international tourist hotels industry in Taiwan, along with the operation and conduct types, and business situation, such as operating income and cost, occupation rate, average room rate, customer category, and so on. 2. Discussing the general situation of human resources exercises, characteristic, practice, and related issues of international tourist hotels in Taiwan. 3. To dissect business profile and exercises of human resources, labor conditions, and human resource management practice of three case hotels. To implement the purposes, this research was processed by in-depth interview, during May on 2006. The interviewees are all supervisors at human resources department in G hotel, H hotel and L hotel. According to previous findings, issues involved in the questionnaire are labor conditions, manipulation of human resources, practice of human resources management of these three hotels, including recruitment, selection, promotion and merit, training, profile of turnover rate, and the human resource strategy under competitive industry environment in the future. There are three major results of this study. First, to utilize human resources in international tourist hotels, the numerical and functional flexibility are significant to adjust to business requirement. Such as overtime work, part-time worker, and outsourcing labor are common practices. Second, even though international tourist hotel industry applies to Labor Standards Act, labor conditions in international tourist hotel are rather inferior. Third, human resource management practices in the case hotels show kind of similar on system, with their own chain business type.

The issue of behavioural intentions has attracted the attention of hotel marketers and academics because favourable behavioural intentions help hotels to retain customers. The marketing literature has identified that service quality, perceived value, image, customer satisfaction and demographic variables are significant determinants of behavioural intentions. This suggests that behavioural intentions are a multi-dimensional concept. Despite the importance of behavioural intentions, there is limited research on this construct in the hotel industry. The aim of this research was to gain an empirical understanding of behavioural intentions in the Taiwan hotel sector. A multi-level model was used as a framework for the analysis. The dimensions of service quality as perceived by hotel customers were identified through the literature review and focus group discussions. Hypotheses were formulated and tested to examine the interrelationships between behavioural intentions, service quality, customer satisfaction, perceived value and image, and to determine if perceived value plays a moderating role between service quality and customer satisfaction. Finally, customer perceptions of these constructs were compared based on demographic factors such as age, gender and income. The findings of this study were based on the analysis of a sample of 580 customers who had stayed at a five-star hotel in Kaohsiung City of Taiwan. Support was found for the use of a multi-level model and the primary dimensions: Interaction Quality, Physical Environment Quality and Outcome Quality, as broad dimensions of service quality. The 12 sub-dimensions of service quality, as perceived by hotel customers, were identified. These were: Employees’ Conduct, Employees’ Expertise, Employees’ Problem-Solving, Customer-to-Customer Interaction, Décor & Ambience, Room Quality, Availability of Facility, Design, Location, Valence, Waiting Time and Sociability. The results indicated that each of the primary dimensions varied in terms of their importance to overall perceived service quality, as did the sub-dimensions of the primary dimensions. In addition, the statistical results supported a relationship between perceived value and service quality, image and service quality, customer satisfaction, perceived value, image and service quality, and behavioural intentions, image and customer satisfaction. The results also revealed that customer perceptions of the constructs were primarily affected by their purpose of travel and occupation. The results contribute to the services marketing theory by providing an empirically based insight into the service quality, perceived value, image, customer satisfaction and behavioural intentions constructs in the Taiwan hotel industry. This research also provides an analytical framework for understanding the effects of the three primary dimensions on service quality and the effect of service quality on constructs, such as, perceived value, image, customer satisfaction and behavioural intentions. This study will assist the management of the hotel industry to develop and implement a market-oriented service strategy in order to achieve a high quality of service, upgrade customers’ levels of satisfaction, and create favourable future behavioural intentions.

I takt med att resandet ökar, har även konkurrensen mellan hotell ökat. För att hotell skall få återkommande gäster och goda recensioner av befintliga gäster behöver de sticka ut bland konkurrenterna. Ett sätt att göra detta är genom värdskap. Värdskap är något som personalen på hotell bidrar med när det utför en service med omtanke och inte bara på rutin. Av den anledningen har syftet med denna studie varit att få en djupare förståelse för hur värdskap på hotell i Stockholmsområdet kan påverka gästers upplevelse från ett producentperspektiv. De teorier som använts är, skillnad mellan värdskap och service, hur värdskap visas, ledningens roll i värdskapsarbetet, värdskap på en teaterscen, värdskap i teamet och värdskap efter vistelsen används och analyserats. En kvalitativ metod i form av intervjuer tillämpades för insamling av primärdata. Slutsatser som kan dras av denna studie är att värdskap kommer till uttryck i olika former, vilket är beroende av vilken service och image hotellen vill förmedla till sina gäster, samt vilken organisationskultur hotellen har. En annan slutsats som kan dras är att värdskap är knutet till bemötandet av gäster. / The continuing increase in traveling has over the years resulted in greater competition between hotels. In order for hotels to receive good reviews to attract new guests whilst simultaneously maintaining relationships with recurring guests they need to stand out among competitors. One way to do so is through exceptional hospitality. Exceptional hospitality means that the hotels services are delivered with care and attention, rather than being viewed as a routine. For this reason, the purpose of this study has been to gain a deeper understanding of how hospitality at hotels in Stockholm can affect the guest's experience from a producer perspective. The following will be researched; the difference between hospitality and service, how hospitality are shown, management’s role in hospitality, hospitality on a theater scene, hospitality in the team and hospitality after a stay at a hotel is used and analyzed. A qualitative method in form of interviews has been used to collect primary data. The results from this study are that hospitality can be shown in different ways. It depends on what type of service or image the hotel wants to communicate to their guests and what type of culture the organisation has and wants to maintain. The final conclusion is that hospitality is connected to the treatment of the guests at the hotel.