Hubert B. Van Hoof

Uses of the Internet in the global hotel industry

This article discusses a study carried out among the membership of Global Hoteliers, an organization of executives in the international hotel industry. The study looked into the uses of the Internet, such as the World Wide Web and E-mail, and at any organizational and geographical influences on those uses. Hotel size, star rating, and hotel type were among the organizational factors which had some significant effect on certain aspects of the information hotels posted on the Web and on the use of E-mail. Similarly, the geographical location of hotels was also found to have a significant effect. The similarities and differences of the use of the Internet among global hotels call for future research into the relationships between market segmentation, organizational buying behavior, hotel operations and information technology.

Tourism and hospitality research journals: cross-citations among research communities

This article explores one facet of the relationship between the academic disciplines of hospitality and tourism. Citation analysis of articles in hospitality and tourism journals confirms previous research that reveals that there is little intermingling of research between the hospitality and tourism fields. More citations occur within disciplines than across disciplines. However, by far the most citations are to sources outside the hospitality and tourism areas entirely. Implications of these results are discussed.

U.S. Lodging Managers and the Internet Perceptions from the Industry

A survey of 454 U.S. hotel managers found that their chief perception of the internet is that it will someday be an effective marketing and communications tool, although it isnt now particularly useful for anything. The managers in particular saw little application of the internet as a tool for training. Indeed, although the managers themselves used the internet, they considered it less important for their employees than for themselves. Ironically, respondents with greater exposure to the internet rated its present usefulness lower than those with no internet experience. On the other hand, those same experienced users gave the internets future prospects a much higher rating than did the tyros. Likewise, managers from small properties gave dimmer reviews to the internets current value than did managers from large properties. One overriding concern shown by many respondents is for the security of data transmitted via the internet.

Issues in web-based distance education

This article looks at some of the issues surrounding Web-based education at the post-secondary level, both from the student and from the faculty perspectives. It describes communication, course management and student support as important issues on the minds of students, and looks at faculty support and recognition, intellectual property, and test security as some of the issues that need to be addressed to get faculty comfortable with Web-based education.

The impact of 9/11 and the recent economic downturn on recruiting in U.S. hospitality programs: Administrators’ opinions

This article describes the results of a study conducted in Spring 2002 that looked at the effects of 9/11 and the economic downturn on recruiting in hospitality management programs in the United States. Administrators of two- and four-year CHRIE member hospitality programs were surveyed. Comparative analysis found some significant differences between two-and four-year programs with regard to job offers received, the kinds of recruiters coming to campus, starting salary levels, and recruiter attendance at career fairs.

Publications in Review

Tourism and Cultural Development in Asia and Oceania is the result of discussions that were held at the Asia Forum in Ishikawa, Japan, in August 1994. The theme of the forum, “Tourism and Cultural Development in Asia and Oceania,” was selected as the title of this book of readings. Most, if not all, of the countries in Asia and Oceania have adopted tourism as a means of economic development in recent decades. This book, as opposed to some other publications on tourism development in the region (Go & Jenkins, 1997), is not primarily concerned with the economic effects of tourism. With most of its contributors being anthropologists, the emphasis in this volume is more on the effect that tourism has on local and national cultures. Moreover, whereas tourism is mostly seen in a negative light when it comes to its effects on local culture, the authors in this publication have taken a somewhat different approach. As the editors state, tourism is only one of many factors that influence and transform societies. In many cases, “tourism introduced by the government has . . . been ‘appropriated’ by the local people in order to assert their own identity in the contemporary world” (p. 15), and “local people are able to use ‘tourist culture’ for their own ends” (p. 28). In this book, the authors, in exploring the relationship between tourism and cultural development, are “concerned not only with the impact of tourism on local cultures, but rather with how these cultures develop during the dynamic process of making use of tourism to re-define their own identities” (p. 16). Besides the customary introductory chapter by the editors in which they introduce underlying themes and ensuing chapters, the book contains 10 chapters. Chapter 2 describes the making of the now famous documentary film Cannibal Tours by its director, Dennis O’Rourke. In the film, O’Rourke depicts the visits of Western tourists to a village in Papua New Guinea in which he saw “little fruitful interchange . . . such as cultural, educational and spiritual [between tourists and locals]” (p. 39). Chapter 3 looks at tourism and cultural development in Thailand, and deplores the role the government has played in “nationalizing” many local traditional festivities. It describes how a local traditional festival, the Illuminated Boat Procession, just like many other local traditional festivities, was taken over and used as a tourist attraction by provincial and national governments. The author states that “because of the interference of the public sector, the local festival has lost its indigenous substance. The main purpose of organizing the ceremony is now to fulfill the government’s policy” (p. 57). The Illuminated Boat Procession “has almost ceased to exist as an event which responds to the local belief system” (p. 58). In chapter 4, the focus shifts to Indonesia, and to an interesting discussion of the government-sponsored development of “cultural tourism” and the “integration of local cultures into Indonesian national culture” (p. 62). The focus of the article is on the government’s management of many of the country’s historical monuments, in particular the Borobudur

Book Review: Practical Tourism Forecasting:

Practical Tourism Demand is a book about applying statistical principles, observation, and reason to forecasting tourism demand (p. xvii). It is an introduction to various forecasting methods that are available to anyone interested in forecasting future demand for a tourism product and is designed to provide the basic and practical understanding of demand forecasting that tourism managers, marketers, planners and researchers will need to thrive in the decade ahead (p. 1). Frechtling provides a foundation for understanding the various forecasting methods that are presently available and encourages the reader to try his or her hand at forecasting some aspect of tourism demand (p. 2). The book is a wonderful source of information on tourism demand forecasting methodology. Frechtling obviously writes from a wealth of personal experience and makes concepts and ideas that might initially appear intricate very understandable. His approach to future demand forecasting is very realistic: the future is somewhat predictable and somewhat alterable implying sound forecasts are useful and feasible (p. 6). The book is divided in 10chapters. The first chapter offers a discussion on the scope of tourism, the importance of demand forecasting, the authors views on the difficulties and uses of tourism demand forecasting, and the consequences of poor forecasting. In chapter 2 the various methods of tourism demand forecasting are described. It presents the reader with the means to evaluate the results and accuracy of various tourism forecasting methods. The author broadly divides these into quantitative and qualitative methods. He then subdivides the quantitative methods into extrapolative and causal techniques, and highlights the delphi method, the consumer intentions survey, the subjective probability assessment, and the jury of executive opinion as examples of qualitative forecasting methods. In chapter 3, Frechtling discusses the tourism forecasting process in detailed, sequential steps: step 1, design; step 2, specification; step 3, implementation; and step 4, evaluation. He looks at the methods and models that are available to forecasters and describes evaluation standards and criteria for judging the quality of data. Chapters 4 through 6 discuss various extrapolative techniques, ranging from fairly simple time series models to the more complex Box-Jenkins technique. In all of the chapters, the author uses a time series of demand for commerciallodging in the Washington, D.C., area as an instructional tool and as an example of how to apply the various methods discussed. In chapters 7 and 8 the emphasis is on causal rather than extrapolative methodology. Frechtling details the value of regression analysis in forecasting demand and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of structural models. Chapter 9 highlights the qualitative or judgmental methods mentioned earlier and looks at occasions in which these might be appropriate, such as a lack of historical data, unreliable or invalid times series, or a rapidly changing macroenvironment. The author discusses the advantages and disadvantages of these forecasting methods and takes the reader through the various steps in each of the processes. In the concluding chapter the author looks at what other researchers have said over time about tourism demand forecasting in the form of 14 generalizations, and he finishes by giving us some of his own: Tourism demand is as much an art as it is a science.... [It] is a diverse, dynamic, changeable process that rewards the quick and observant but leaves the careless and inattentive behind (pp. 211-12). Practical Tourism Forecasting is not well suited for those that do not have somewhat of a statistical background, and its level of discussion goes beyond that of many tourism textbooks. Yet, it is ideally suited for scholars in tourism and tourism-related fields and industry and government executives. It should grace the bookshelf of anyone involved and interested in forecasting tourism demand.