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CQ Reviewers’ Reactions to My Editorial Policies
No full text[Excerpt] Peer review is an important part of the scientific process. It helps to separate good research from bad so that scarce journal pages and readers’ attention go the former rather than the latter. As editor of Cornell Hospitality Quarterly (CQ), I am particularly dependent on reviewers’ help because CQ is a cross-disciplinary journal whose submissions cover literatures and methodologies that vastly exceed my ken
Letter from the Editors
Full text linkThe Editorial Board of the Cornell Real Estate Review is pleased to present Volume 16 (2018). The Review is a student run publication under the direction of the Baker Program in Real Estate founded as a forum for faculty, professionals, and real estate students to focus attention on current issues in the real estate industry. The Review focuses on the interdisciplinary nature of real estate, blending informative articles on real estate practice with application-based academic research. The Review covers a broad range of issues from the various real estate disciplines including design, business economics, engineering, finance, law, planning, development, marketing, and property management
Dubai: The Transformation of A Landscape
No full textWhen the Baker Program visited Dubai for its annual international trek, a sense of welcoming was ever present. This was no surprise as Dubai has sought to open itself up to the world since the 1990s when the ruling Maktoum family made decisions that would chart the future course for the Emirate
35th Annual Real Estate Conference Recap
Full text linkOn October 13, 2017, the 35th Annual Cornell Real Estate Conference took place at the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan. Over 300 people attended the conference, including students, faculty, and industry professionals. The conference theme was “Mega Trends Impacting the Real Estate Industry.” The conference focused on how changes in how we live, work, shop and travel impact real estate
What Really Happens During Flight to Safety: Evidence from Real Estate Markets
No full textFlight to safety (FTS) affects the markets for risky assets such as stocks, corporate bonds, and commodities. Yet, little is known about the effects on commercial real estate. We show that REITs offer a partial hedge against FTS, with daily total returns being less sensitive to FTS than many other industries and measures of REIT liquidity actually improving on FTS days. However, a cluster of FTS days signals a decline in economic fundamentals in the long run. We find that the odds of a drop in REIT quarterly revenue increase by 15% after an FTS cluster, ceteris paribus. This effect persists for up to four quarters. We also find that commercial real estate price appreciation is all but wiped out over up to four quarters following an FTS cluster. Our findings benefit investors by providing estimates of the short-term return and liquidity response of REITs to FTS episodes, and by documenting long-term effects on REIT revenues and real asset values
What Do Hotel Guests Really Want? Anticipated Versus Actual Use of Amenities
Full text linkHotels provide a lengthy menu of amenities based on the (largely accurate) perception that guests want those amenities and claim they will use them. While many guests do exactly that, a substantial percentage will “overpredict” which amenities they will use. This study of fifty hotel-wide and in-room amenities details both the overpredictions and, in some cases, underpredictions of amenity use by 724 guests in thirty-three hotels operated by six hotel brands—one upscale, two upper upscale, and three luxury—belonging to one hotel company. This study is intended to assist brand managers and hotel owners in determining which amenities make the most sense for their particular brand. Among the amenities that were highly overpredicted were an alarm clock, a spa, and in-room dining for dinner and late night. That is, a much larger percentage of guests expected to use these amenities than actually did so (although they still were used by some guests). Unexpected underpredictions included lobby seating, valet parking, and concierge service, for which the percentage of guests expecting to use the service was noticeably smaller than the percentage who did use them
Customer Satisfaction through Service Excellence: The Importance of Focused Training
No full text[Excerpt] Technology has shifted the dynamics of guest interactions in the hospitality industry. Two key elements of this shift are that service providers now have fewer opportunities for direct interaction with guests, and interactions may often be the result of service failures. In these face-to-face encounters, employees’ ability to effectively manage the emotional components of the guest interaction can make a major contribution to a guest’s satisfaction with the outcome. Intrinsic employee behaviors, namely, employee engagement, communication, and attitude (that is, the “how” in the delivery of service) influence guest’s perceptions of service outcomes. In a preliminary study, relatively intense training of hotel front-desk employees, using a blend of online and face-to-face training, changed employee behaviors in a way that guests reported an improvement in staff helpfulness. This study employed modules of the Cornell University Service Excellence On- Demand Training as a tool for improving the work of front-line service providers. Such training can foster improved handling of guest interactions, thereby offering a substantial opportunity for improved guest satisfaction
Natural Occupancy Shifts in Hotel Markets
No full textThe natural occupancy rate underpins room price adjustment models for hotel market evaluations; however, models that assume that this rate is time invariant and everywhere constant may introduce error when forecasting future real room rates and benchmarking market strength. We use monthly STR room rate and occupancy data for five large U.S. metropolitan hotel markets to estimate natural occupancy differences in time and across markets. The notion of a time-varying natural occupancy aligns with changing market equilibrium. When aggregating over the entire sample, long-run average occupancy is reasonably good approximation of estimated constant natural occupancy. We use a Markov switching model to determine the likely equilibrium occupancy for unique periods in time, and these results inform Tse and Fischer’s model to estimate time- and market-specific natural occupancy. Using the estimated natural occupancy rates for prevailing market regimes produces better fitting predictions than either constant natural occupancy or long-run average occupancy. Accordingly, they are most appropriate for practical applications
Case Competitions
No full textCornell graduate real estate students continued their success in national real estate case competitions over the past year, including a second-place finish in the 2017 Impact Investing in Commercial Real Estate Competition hosted by the University of Miami, a third-place finish in the 2017 The Case Competition hosted by MIT, and a finalist finish in the 2017 Kellogg Real Estate Venture Competition hosted by Northwestern. Cornell teams have also been selected as finalists in the 2018 ULI-Hines Student Competition, 2018 The Case Competition hosted by MIT, and 2018 Impact Investing in Commercial Real Estate Competition hosted by the University of Miami; final placements in these competitions will be announced by the end of the 2017-2018 academic year
International Trek to Dubai: A City Built in the Desert
No full textIn December 2018, the second-year students of the Baker Program in Real Estate had the pleasure of visiting the United Arab Emirates. The main goal of the annual trek is to get an understanding of how the interests of the stakeholders in real estate differ globally, both in terms of private and public goals. To do this, the students needed to get an understanding of the recent history of Dubai and Abu Dhabi and their rapid rise to prominence as a major worldwide commercial center