David Egan

Towards a Theory of Intraurban Hotel Location

In his seminal paper on the urban land market, Alonso notes that when a purchaser acquires land, he acquires two goods (land and location) in one transaction, and a single payment is made for the combination. Thus it is possible to trade off a quantity of land against location, the principle underlying Alonsos bid-rent analysis. It is argued that the Alonso model of bid-rent analysis is still applicable to those types of economic activity which display a hierarchy of use in terms of distance from the city centre. The concern here is with hotel location, and we develop a model of the Alonso type which casts light upon the intraurban location decisions of hotels.

The changing structure of UK brewing and pub retailing

This paper charts the major structural changes that have occurred in both UK brewing and pub retailing during the period 1989-2000. This has been a period of rapid and extensive changes in the UK brewing industry culminating in the strategic decision of two of the nation’s biggest breweries to sell off their brewing operations and, in the case of Whitbread, to sell off their public house estate and concentrate on their hotel and leisure interests. A key theme in the restructuring of the brewing industry has been the rapid consolidation of the brewing sector in an attempt to achieve economies of scale in production, distribution and marketing. This paper attempts to analyse the changes in the UK brewing industry from 1989, the year of publication of the MMC’s report, The Supply of Beer – A Report on the Supply of Beer for Retail Sale in the United Kingdom, which could be regarded as the catalyst to the restructuring of the UK brewing industry.

Tourism and hospitality education in Brazil and the UK: a comparison.

Makes a comparative analysis between undergraduate level courses in tourism/hospitality in Brazil and those in the UK, building on work by Teixeira et al. Analyses courses structure, reason for creation and focus. In Brazil, according to Rejowski, undergraduate university level courses in tourism/hospitality are relatively recent, beginning in the 1970s. The first hospitality course was created by the Universidade de Caxias do Sul, 1978. According to data gathered by the Ministry of Education, there has been an impressive growth in the number of tourism/hospitality undergraduate courses in Brazil. Data provided by the Ministry state that the total number of courses registered is 284; 225 in tourism and 59 in hospitality/hospitality management. First, presents a brief theoretical review about tourism/hospitality education; after that, a description of the methodological approach adopted in this study with a description of type, method, tools, and data collection procedures used in the research. Analyses the results of the project along with comparisons in the UK. Finally, presents a conclusion to this study.

A framework for monitoring during the planning stage for a sports mega-event

This paper proposes a monitoring framework to be used during the planning stage for a sports mega-event. The research identifies a lack of monitoring and evaluation studies during the development stage for sports mega-events. Importantly, it notes the absence of research which evaluates an event systematically from the outset of the process and from the perspectives of host residents and event planners. The framework was developed on the basis of the philosophical approach of pragmatism; it focused on a sustainable development perspective, and it was applied to a case study of the Kaohsiung 2009 World Games. A survey of the views of 606 host residents about the potential impacts of the event revealed that the respondents tended to show higher levels of agreement on the host benefits. The results of 38 interviews with various stakeholders indicated big gaps in both the citys long-term development aspirations and the Games themselves and also in the event strategies adopted. Using this information, key sustainability issues can be identified and monitored during the event planning stage so that the desirable outcomes of events can be enhanced and then sustained in the longer term.

The Future Impact of Changes in Rate Parity Agreements on Hotel Chains: The long-term implications of the removal of rate parity agreements between hotels and online travel agents using closed consumer group booking models

ABSTRACT The Office of Fair Trading, a not-for-profit and non-ministerial government department of the United Kingdom (from April 2014 incorporated within the Competition and Markets Authority), investigated the legality of rate parity from 2012, particularly rate parity agreements made between Intercontinental Hotel Group, Booking.com, and Expedia. Consequently, these major hotel brands and agents have committed to remove rate parity for closed consumer groups. This article identifies confusion over such groups and longer term implications. Smaller agents will enter the market, leading to increased fragmentation and competition. Branded hotels will face tough challenges in protecting prices and value from aggressive agents suddenly facing a more competitive market and independent hoteliers able to establish effective relationships with the new, smaller agents.

Tourism Trends in Ghana: The Accommodation Sector

Tourism in Ghana has become a major socioeconomic activity and one of the most important and fastest growing sectors of the Ghanaian economy. It is the fourth largest foreign exchange earner after cocoa, gold, and remittances from abroad. Ghanas tourism growth rate is about 12% per annum. Hence, the importance of tourism and its sociocultural, political, and economic values to Ghana is enormous. The tourism industry has over the years demonstrated its ability to contribute significantly towards national economic development, especially in the areas of employment generation, wealth creation, and poverty reduction at national and community levels. Since independence in 1957, a number of tourism development plans has been drawn up to guide the growth of the industry. Unfortunately, none of these plans has been fully implemented due to unfavorable economic and political environment. Although most sections of Ghanas tourism development plans since independence have not been fully implemented, the tourism sector in Ghana has seen substantial growth. The government is determined to reap the full benefits that the industry offers by putting in place necessary plans, policies, actions, and resources to stimulate guided growth in the sector and ensure that tourism does not become a missed opportunity. This article gives an overview of tourism in Ghana; in particular, the demand and supply trends in the accommodation sector. It also examines the contribution of the accommodation sector to the Ghanaian economy.

Manager perceptions of big data reliability in revenue management.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceptions that managers have of the value and reliability of using big data to make hotel revenue management and pricing decisions.,A three-stage iterative thematic analysis technique based on the approaches of Braun and Clarke (2006) and Nowell et al. (2017) and using different research instruments to collect and analyse qualitative data at each stage was used to develop an explanatory framework.,Whilst big data-driven automated revenue systems are technically capable of making pricing and inventory decisions without user input, the findings here show that the reality is that managers still interact with every stage of the revenue and pricing process from data collection to the implementation of price changes. They believe that their personal insights are as valid as big data in increasing the reliability of the decision-making process. This is driven primarily by a lack of trust on the behalf of managers in the ability of the big data systems to understand and interpret local market and customer dynamics.,The less a manager believes in the ability of those systems to interpret these data, the more they perceive gut instinct to increase the reliability of their decision making and the less they conduct an analysis of the statistical data provided by the systems. This provides a clear message that there appears to be a need for automated revenue systems to be flexible enough for managers to import the local data, information and knowledge that they believe leads to revenue growth.,There is currently little research explicitly investigating the role of big data in decision making within hotel revenue management and certainly even less focussing on decision making at property level and the perceptions of managers of the value of big data in increasing the reliability of revenue and pricing decision making.

Revisiting the relevance of economic theory to hotel revenue management education and practice in the era of Big Data

This paper explores the role of economics in hospitality education and industry practice, with a particular focus on revenue management, and puts forward an argument for a return to the inclusion of economic theory in UK hospitality education, not seen since the 1990s. Given the increasing amounts of pricing data available to both managers and customers and the consequent market complexities now seen, developing economic literacy is demonstrated to be a crucial skill required for future hospitality graduates, allowing them to make successful revenue decisions and sense-check with confidence the decisions made by automated revenue systems. Economic literacy is defined as a balanced understanding of economic theory that can be applied in real-life business scenarios, extending beyond simple consideration of supply and demand to a mixture of neoclassical and behavioural approaches to economics.