Alexandros Paraskevas

Crisis management or crisis response system

Purpose – To offer a complexity‐informed framework for the design of an effective organizational crisis response system.Design/methodology/approach – A narrative analysis of the crisis response in a hotel chain facing a major food poisoning outbreak, seen from a complexity theory perspective. Data were collected through 17 in‐depth interviews of persons involved in the crisis response and through analysis of secondary data.Findings – The analysis identified weaknesses in the chains crisis response and complexity theory provided a good theoretical foundation of the proposals to overcome them.Practical implications – Organizations should redefine the role of crisis management plans and crisis management teams. An effective crisis response should be viewed as a living (co‐evolving) system within the organization. By adopting complexity principles the organization can make this system far more effective.Originality/value – The paper is among the very few that deal with crisis management from a complexity per...

Internal service encounters in hotels: an empirical study

Over the last two decades, the hospitality industry has witnessed a considerable shift of focus towards customer orientation, however, the vast body of the relevant hospitality research literature – with few exceptions concentrating on the concept of internal marketing and internal service constructs – is focused on the external customer neglecting the importance of the quality of internal service encounters, where one department in the hotel serves another. The purpose of this study was to explore an “internal service chain” in three international city hotels and identify the events and behaviours (service dimensions) that distinguish a successful internal service encounter from a non‐successful one. Although internal customers were usually not recognised as such, it was found that interpersonal relations affect to a great extent all internal service encounters in a hotel. Other factors influencing the internal service encounters are the professionalism, the dependability, the conscientiousness of the in...

Outsourcing IT for small hotels: the opportunities and challenges of using application service providers

Abstract Operators of small hotel companies can get big-time help by leasing illegible???

Search Engine Marketing: Transforming Search Engines into Hotel Distribution Channels

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of online marketing whereby marketers and webmasters use a range of techniques to ensure that their webpage listing appears in a favorable location in search engines’ results pages (e.g., Google, Bing, AlltheWeb, Altavista). The key strategy is to optimize webpages for the search engines, by ensuring that the company’s webpages contain appropriate keywords and that the website’s page hierarchy is logically arranged. An appropriate website design encourages the search engines’ web crawlers or spiders to index a particular set of pages, and proper keywords promote an optimum ranking in search engines. This study aims to explore the different variables and aspects that come into play in SEM and to offer a strategy that hotel marketers can use to achieve these objectives, based on a focus group of eleven corporate-level hotel marketers and SEM consultants. The study employs the following four-stage framework for SEM strategy development: analysis, planning, implementation, and control.

Beyond Consensus: An Alternative use of Delphi Enquiry in Hospitality Research

Purpose – This papers aim is to critically review the use of Delphi techniques in qualitative research for utilising “expert” opinions and to explore through a detailed example how Policy Delphi can be used by hospitality researchers as an alternative to the more widely used Normative Delphi.Design/methodology/approach – The paper reflects on the research methodology of a project that explored organisational crisis signals detection using Policy Delphi with a criterion sample comprising 16 senior hotel executives involved in crisis management.Findings – The main methodological concerns regarding Delphi are the definition of consensus, the expertise of the panel, its lack of scientific rigour, and – due to its lack of uniformity – reliability and validity of findings. Policy Delphi by default addresses the first since it does not seek consensus and can, through its design and execution, address the remaining concerns.Research limitations/implications – Carefully designed Policy Delphi can offer a powerful...

Exploring hotel internal service chains: a theoretical approach.

Quality has been historically viewed by hospitality organisations in terms of product and service efficiency. The emergence of total quality management in the 1980s has forced a significant number of them to move away from the idea of efficiency and put more emphasis on customer needs. Such culture should give equal emphasis on the internal dynamics of the organisation, recognising that, in order for a hospitality organisation to be truly effective, each department within the hotel should treat the recipients of their output as an internal customer and strive to provide high quality outputs for them. This will consequently lead to a high level of quality built into the service offered to the external customer. While considerable research has been conducted in the hospitality industry focusing on (external) service encounters and external customer satisfaction, internal service encounters and internal customer satisfaction have received very little attention. This article explores from a theoretical perspective, the internal service encounters that take place in a hotel and to set a framework of investigation for future empirical research.

Signal detection as the first line of defence in tourism crisis management

Abstract The vulnerability of the tourism industry to a range of crises has attracted many scholars to investigate the crisis strategies and practices employed by destinations and tourism organizations mainly with regards to crisis preparedness, containment and damage limitation, crisis recovery and subsequent learning. One over-looked area has been that of crisis signal detection. This paper proposes a three-stage conceptual framework for crisis signal detection consisting of signal scanning, capture and transmission to the crisis response centre. With this framework as a basis, 16 corporate level executives of international tourism organizations were interviewed in order to explore the significance of signal detection in their crisis management practice and the challenges faced in each of these three stages. The findings offer insights into the design of crisis management mechanisms and open areas for further research.

Management selection practices in Greece: are hospitality recruiters any different?

Abstract Apart from the traditional managerial selection techniques, a number of new selection tools have been introduced over the past two decades aiming mainly at the application of skills, rather than their possession. A study was undertaken among 25 recruiters from the hotel sector and 120 human resources managers from other sectors of the Greek economy for the purpose of determining (a) the extent to which Greek recruiters and in particular the ones in the hospitality sector are using selection techniques relevant to this new culture, and (b) the reasons of their possible hesitation. The results showed an overall resistance to the new culture in managerial selection due to cost and reliability concerns. Further, although Greek hospitality recruiters are more interested in the personality aspects of the managerial candidate than their colleagues in other sectors, they tend not to use techniques that would help them towards this end. The study showed that hospitality recruiters in theory share the same views with their colleagues in other sectors in terms of specific techniques’ validity and usefulness, however, their practice is totally different.

Aligning strategy to threat: a baseline anti‐terrorism strategy for hotels

Purpose – Although the threat of terrorist attacks is not a new phenomenon for hotels, limited literature exists on measures that hotels can take to prevent them or limit their damage. The purpose of this paper is to propose a baseline strategy to address this threat.Design/methodology/approach – Using the terrorist attack cycle and the security function models introduced in this paper, 19 hotel security experts, members of an international working group on terrorism, were tasked to reach consensus on a baseline anti‐terrorist strategy for a hotel. To reach this consensus, the study employed the Nominal Group Technique.Findings – The study presents a six‐step baseline anti‐terrorism strategy and a series of measures and actions under each step. In the centre of this strategy lies the disruption of the terrorist attack cycle.Research limitations/implications – There are limitations inherent to the Nominal Group Technique which may not allow the generalizability of the findings. However, every effort was ma...

Teaching hospitality and tourism management: A matter of style

ABSTRACT Successful teaching is the provision of a learning experience that is accessible to all students regardless of their individually favored learning preferences or styles. Learning styles are concerned with a number of heterogeneous issues involving cognition, conceptualization, affect and behavior. They are also related to the way the learners brain operates. This paper presents the application of McCarthys 4MAT model which enables the educator to design a lecture in a bal-Alexandros Paraskevas is Senior Lecturer in Operations Management, Department of Hospitality, Leisure and Tourism Management Business School, Oxford Brookes University, Headington Campus, Oxford OX3 0BP, United Kingdom (E-mail: aparaskevas@brookes.ac.uk). anced manner giving the students the opportunity to learn in their preferable way, stimulating both their brain hemispheres, helping them acquire the ability to strengthen weaker areas of their learning process and adapt to other learning styles. Two practical teaching applications in two different universities are presented. Implications of this approach to teaching in hospitality and tourism and suggestions for further research are provided.