Josephine Pryce

A preliminary study of service predispositions amongst hospitality workers in Australia

Purpose – To assess the attitudes toward service delivery of employees in Australian hotels with a long‐term view of establishing job service “norms” against which candidates may be ultimately evaluated.Design/methodology/approach – Lee‐Rosss Service Predisposition Instrument (SPI) questionnaire was used to elicit information about the attitudes of front‐line hotel workers towards service delivery. This quantitative approach sought to identify the innate presence of service dimensions amongst workers previously found in other studies of service predispositions.Findings – After initial analysis, the dimensionality of the SPI questionnaire was found to be less substantial than when tested in other studies. Indeed, a new dimension of “negative service” emerged. Hotel employees rated all “service dimensions” elicited by the SPI as important. However, competence and the provision of “extras” were ranked notably highly. Affinity was scored the lowest of all dimensions. This suggests that workers recognize the ...

Industrial railway heritage trains: the evolution of a heritage tourism genre and its attributes

Heritage tourism forms a specific genre within the wider field of tourism; however, this genre itself encompasses a wide range of different types of heritage attractions, of which industrial attractions, military attractions, stately homes and attractions associated with historic people are all examples. This paper discusses the evolution of industrial railway heritage attractions from their original railway operations to visitor attractions; second, it examines the key attributes defining successful industrial railway heritage attractions; and third, it compares and contrasts these attributes for three industrial railway heritage attractions, spanning three separate locations and two countries (Australia and Malaysia). The findings from the study identify and support ranges of success factors and suggest a framework for examining the genre of industrial railway heritage attractions and their attributes. This framework can direct future studies that investigate the nature of industrial railway heritage trains, and contribute to enriching understanding and knowledge of this genre of attractions.

Health professionals working in remote Australia: a review of the literature

Health professionals working in remote Australia have demanding and stressful yet diverse and rewarding roles. The health domain literature examines the challenges of health service delivery non-cognisant of the benefits of a human resource management (HRM) approach. This systematic literature review uses an HRM approach to examine what is already known on this topic, and to identify key extant themes in order to determine: 1) which factors are common across the entire remote health workforce; and 2) whether there are factors that are unique to working in remote Indigenous communities that need further consideration. The findings suggest that the challenges and rewards are similar for health professionals working in remote Indigenous communities and those working in rural and remote regions. Therefore, the emergent themes (Personal, Professional, Organisational and Contextual) presented within a conceptual framework in this article, are pertinent for all health professionals working in remote Australia.

Research Note: Macroeconomic Impacts of the Tourism Industry and the Contemporaneous Feedback Effect — An Australian Case Study

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate methods for analysing the dynamic impact of the tourism sector on key drivers of economic growth for destinations in Australia, while allowing for simultaneity of economic variables. The tourism sector is captured through the proxy of ‘tourism receipts’. In addition, investment and productivity growth are selected as sources of economic growth, in accordance with post-Keynesian growth theory. The paper uses time series quarterly data, covering the period 1995:Q1–2011:Q4, and employs time series estimation techniques, including structural vector autoregressive modelling and impulse response analysis, to describe the macroeconomic responses to sudden shocks in the tourism sector. The results indicate that the growth benefits of an increase in tourist expenditure are positive and statistically significant. Moreover, as suggested by the analysis of impulse response functions, a positive shock to tourist expenditure provides positive, substantial and rather long-lived implications regarding productivity and investment decisions.

Utilising collaborative autoethnography in exploring affinity tourism: insights from experiences in the Field at Gardens by the Bay

This chapter considers how a collaborative autoethnographic (CAE) approach informed and lent insight into our research. The research explored how affinity tourism can ignite interest in the not-so-familiar and through the familiar connect visitors with the foreign or exotic in a destination. In the process, it focused on the case of the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore (The Gardens) and CAE and so, allowed for use of ‘reflexivity’ to explore and examine how the phenomenon of affinity tourism plays a role in enhancing the efficacy of attractions as tourism resources. The concept of affinity refers to tourists’ activities that involve elements that are familiar to tourists. These recognisable aspects conjure notions of a shared or similar cultural understanding and draw tourist to attractions, events or destinations. By engaging a CAE approach that is grounded in reflexivity, this chapter presents accounts of the experiences of two people who employed CAE as a way to explore and understand how they as people of one culture (Australian) could connect with and learn about the culture of ‘The Other’, in this case Singaporean. It explains how engagement with a coresearcher who encountered the same tourist activity and experienced it in similar or different ways opens up opportunities for new insights about The Other. Use of participant observation, photographs and diary notes assisted in crafting of narratives, which when shared and probed contributed to exploration of the expectations and perceptions of the authors themselves as tourists and as researchers in their endeavours to engage with The Other. In so doing, this chapter advances knowledge about methodological approaches in exploring tourists’ experiences and affinity tourism and contributes to a growing interest in reflexivity as a valuable and valid tool for conducting tourism research. It shows the contribution, credibility and limitations which CAE can bring to tourism research.

Visitor Interest in Heritage Railways of Asia

Interest in heritage railways has grown phenomenally in the last 50 years, with countries like the UK, Australia and US, noting the value of this interest to visitors, workers, volunteers, and communities; and more broadly, to conservation of historic artefacts and their environments. This paper explores visitor interest in heritage railways of Asia. The sustainability of heritage railways is dependent on visitor numbers; and so, factors which contribute to the appeal of heritage railways are worthy of investigation. This paper focuses on three heritage mountain railways, and examines websites and blogs to gauge the level of visitor interest, highlighting themes which shed insight into the appeal of heritage railways. The findings indicate that operators of heritage railway attractions need to engage a variety of initiatives to meet the needs of the leisure market and continue to attract visitors. Such information will inform continued optimism in the conservation of heritage railways for all stakeholders.

Toward a theoretical understanding of occupational culture: meanings from the hospitality industry

This paper examines the concept of occupational culture and how meanings from the hospitality industry contribute to expanding our theoretical understanding of this concept. The notion of occupational communities has received considerable attention in the literature. More recently research findings report the existence of occupational cultures. This paper argues that the two concepts are related but identifies a possible difference which can extinguish anomalies or uncertainties in associated debates. Support for the argument is gained from results of a qualitative study which indicated that there is a common occupational culture, which influences hotel workers to behave in a similar way regardless of the organisation they work for. A number of factors were identified that confirmed the existence of a hospitality occupational culture. These factors included: universal nature of hotel work; hospitality occupational attitudes; group longevity; and collegiality. From this it is proposed that there exists a hospitality occupational culture which transcends the culture of organisations within which these individuals work, which does not fully exhibit defining characteristics of occupational communities and which governs the behaviour and performance of hospitality workers. Such an insight adds to the paucity of literature and research on our understanding of the phenomenon of occupational cultures.