Denis Rudd

The Impact of Exchange Rates On Hotel Occupancy

ABSTRACT In many hospitality and tourism programs, students are usually required to take only the most basic finance course. This can leave them drastically under-prepared for real-world situations. Hospitality and tourism is the worlds single largest industry and probably one of the industries most affected by foreign exchange movements. This exposure to foreign exchange movements is magnified by the discretionary nature of hospitality and tourism spending, making the profitability of hospitality providers very sensitive to changes in the exchange rate. This paper explores the effect, if any, of a change in the dollar value of five currencies–UK pound, euro, Canadian dollar, Japanese yen, and Mexican peso–on the hotel occupancy in seven major U.S. tourist destinations–Orlando, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, Miami, and Las Vegas.

Should investments professors join the “crowd”

Just like the market which has its bulls and its bears, investments has its fundamentalists crowd and its technicians crowd. The academic finance profession must wake up and realize that investing is no longer driven solely by fundamental and statistical analysis. While as a profession we believe in and teach the fundamental investment subjects such as CAPM or EMH, we also realize the need to examine ways to explain the 80 per cent of the variability of stock returns not explained by the fundamentals. In addition to the fundamental investment subjects an increased exposure to both behavioral finance and the psychology of financial markets is absolutely necessary to increase the understanding of how and why stocks move. Just as the bulls need the bears, fundamentalists need technicians. Behavioral finance, crowd psychology, and the psychology of financial markets are the underpinnings of technical analysis. Western technical analysis predates CAPM and EMH by decades, if not more, tracing its roots back to ...

An Educational Game for Tourism and Hospitality Education

ABSTRACT This paper presents an educational game where players act as travel agents to learn how a travel agency functions. They are provided with an uncertain environment in which they make strategic decisions aimed at maximizing their agencys wealth. Players are expected to make managerial decisions while experiencing how market structures and strategic decision-making can affect commerce within a simulated tourism and hospitality industry. The auction game offers students hands-on experience that assists them in understanding the functioning of markets in all aspects of business. Students are also given an opportunity to interact with team-players, to compete against other students, and to develop an appreciation of the pressures facing travel agencies.

Environment and Performance of Family Businesses in the Reforming Polish Economy

Abstract In the former planned economies, a major result of the economic reform programs has been the resurgence of private sector. As recent research has been unable to explain what leads to substantive growth performance in family businesses in Central and Eastern Europe, this study seeks to increase our understanding of the growth process in small businesses in the region. The paper attempts to identify the types of problems and impediments Polish small family businesses confront. The paper investigates the association of various problems with a firms stage of growth and development using a sample of one hundred family businesses that operate in the southern region of Poland.

Teaching Business Issues in Hospitality and Tourism Education

This paper presents a classroom experiment that places students directly into the learning environment and allows them to make business decisions in simulated classroom activities. The experiment offers students hands-on experience that assists them in understanding the function of markets in all aspects of business. After participating in an experiment, a debriefing session is conducted to enhance the effectiveness of their learning process. Students are also given an opportunity to interact with team players, to compete against other students, and to receive an appreciation of the pressures faced in the hospitality and tourism industry. The experiment described can be successfully adopted in the undergraduate hospitality and tourism education.

Casino Stocks and Katrina: An Example of Market Over-Reaction?

ABSTRACT How efficient was the market in anticipating the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast casino industry? This study uses event study methodology to investigate the stock markets reaction affecting equity prices of small casino companies with operations on the Gulf Coast centered on Biloxi, Mississippi. Cumulative Abnormal Returns (CARs) for one-day, three-day, and six-day event windows are examined. As such, the impact of Katrina on stock prices of casino firms in the Gulf Coast is better understood.