1984 research outputs found
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The International Hotel Management Agreement: Origins, Evolution, and Status
No full textThe hotel management agreement is now universally accepted as a tool to link hotel operators with investors who wish to develop and own hotels. Hotels are operated under management agreements in all parts of the world, and the same principal issues are present in any negotiation between operator and owner.1 As I discuss in this paper, agreements in the United States differ somewhat from those used in other parts of the world. In this report, I review the origins and evolution of the international hotel management agreement, and discuss the deal points that are commonly found in such agreements today
The Role of Service Improvisation in Improving Hotel Customer Satisfaction
No full textAlthough hotels generally try for consistency, efficiency, and economy in service, guests appreciate employees’ willingness to depart from scripted outlines and improvise service processes. This study of 320 hotel managers and 137 hotel employees highlights the nature and effects of organizational improvisation by examining three key elements of service improvisation—creativity, spontaneity, and bricolage, which is the ability to assemble new services from available resources. Employees at higher-end hotels reported being more likely to improvise, in part because they feel empowered to do so and have more resources at their disposal. Additionally, their guests expect a favorable response to unusual requests. Ironically, the opportunity to improve guest satisfaction through service improvisation is actually greater in lower-tier hotels where guests do not have such high expectations. Guests particularly appreciate it when employees at lower tier hotels are encouraged to improvise. One interesting finding is that the managers’ estimate of the extent to which their employees used improvisation was noticeably lower than the levels of improvisation reported by the employees themselves
Free Drink or Free Mug? Managing Service Experience with Experiential vs. Material Complimentary Gifts
No full textIn the marketplace, complimentary gifts can take the form of experiential elements (e.g., a meal) or material items (e.g., tangible objects such as a mug). We identify these free gifts as a meaningful service design choice that helps service providers innovate service. Specifically, we examine the circumstances under which experiential or material gifts are preferred and generate greater consumer satisfaction, enhancing the overall service experience. Across three experiments, we demonstrate that consumers are generally happier with experiential offerings, and they prefer (and are more satisfied with) experiential offerings on ordinary consumption occasions; experiential elements are believed to further enrich otherwise mundane experiences. However, this experiential advantage disappears for consumers on meaningful and special occasions because of a strong desire to obtain a memory cue that will help them recall the experience. Indeed, the preference for a material item holds only when the gift has the quality to serve as a salient memory marker, but not when it lacks this quality. This research provides insight for managers to take into account consumption occasions or type of consumers (e.g., special occasions, repeat customers) to effectively design service bundles with complimentary gifts and thus better manage overall service experience
Fundamental Drivers of Dependence in REIT Returns
No full textWe analyse the empirical relationships between firm fundamentals and the dependence structure between individual REIT and stock market returns. In contrast to previous studies, we distinguish between the average systematic risk of REITs and their asymmetric risk in the sense of a disproportionate likelihood of joint negative return clusters between REITs and the stock market. We find that REITs with low systematic risk are typically small, with low short-term momentum, low turnover, high growth opportunities and strong long-term momentum. Holding systematic risk constant, the main driving forces of asymmetric risk are leverage and, to some extent, short-term momentum. Specifically, we find that leverage has an asymmetric effect on REIT return dependence that outweighs the extent to which it increases the average sensitivity of REIT equity to market fluctuations, explaining the strong negative impact of leverage on firm performance especially during crisis periods that has been documented in recent empirical work
Real Assets, Liquidation Value and Choice of Financing
No full textWe use real estate firms to examine how asset liquidation values influence a firm’s financing choice, because the productivity and quality of each asset is observable and potential measures of an asset’s liquidation value are easier to ascertain ex ante. We show that compared to firms that issue equity, firms that issue debt have higher asset quality. The effect of their expected asset liquidation value is significant, even after we control for other factors that influence financing decisions. For firms whose assets’ quality is not easily observable, we find that firms’ financing choices depend heavily on conditions in the overall real estate market
In Search of a Healthy Future: Hospitality
No full textPanelists discuss the adoption of healthier offerings in hospitality firms, Oct. 11, 2016 at the Cornell Symposium for Hospitality, Health, & Design. Featuring: Rohit Verma, Executive Director of CIHF; Alfredo Carvajal, President of Delos Signature; Jeff Hargett, senior corporate director at The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center; Dayssi Olarte Kanavos SHA ’77, President and COO of Flag Luxury Group, LLC; and Rob Rush SHA’77, Managing Director in the Advisory Group of Deloitte & Touche LLP
Do Individuals or Firms Matter More? The Case of Patent Generation
Get PDFThis paper studies the relative importance of individual inventors’ human capital and firms’ organizational capital in promoting a firm’s innovation output. We decompose the variation in innovation output into inventor- and firm-specific components. Inventors’ human capital is about 13 times as important as firms’ organizational capital in explaining a firm’s innovation performance in terms of patent counts and citations, while inventors’ human capital is only about the same as important when explaining the firm’s innovation styles in terms of patent exploratory and exploitive scores. In the cross section, inventors contribute more to innovation output when they are better networked, in firms with higher inventor mobility, in industries in which innovation is more difficult to achieve, and in publicly traded firms. Additional tests suggest that our main findings continue to hold after accounting for inventors’ endogenous moving. This paper highlights the importance of individual inventors in enhancing firm innovation and sheds new light on the theory of the firm
Environmental Implications of Hotel Growth in China: Integrating Sustainability with Hotel Development
No full textChina has embarked on the largest program of new hotel construction the world has ever seen. Even though the nation’s growth rate has eased somewhat in the past year, China’s hotel development continues at a pace that would see at least three new 150+ room hotels open every day for the next 25 years.1 Even if the industry does not continue to expand at this rate, China’s hotel growth carries substantial consequences in terms of increases in energy and water consumption, and an expanding carbon footprint. In this paper, we outline the dimensions of this issue, and we urge hotel developers to heed the national government’s push for greater sustainability
Pathways: A Conversation with Karl Mistry \u2704
Get PDFKarl Mistry’s responsibilities include oversight of all Toll Brothers communities throughout Houston, Texas, and he is actively involved in the acquisition and approval process for new residential development. Mistry joined Toll Brothers in 2004 as an Assistant Project Manager, and most recently was promoted to Division President in 2012. He has served as a Board Member of the Greater Houston Builders Association since 2013
Betting Against the House: Redeveloping a Former Casino in Reno, Nevada
Get PDFReno, Nevada, one of the nation’s original gaming meccas, is in the midst of reinventing itself and dramatically broadening its economic base. The timing is portentous, as a soft market for casino gaming prevails, largely due to nationwide expansion. Several Reno casinos have recently folded, and several more are facing difficulties