tourism management
Morteza Bazrafshan; Hamid Zargham Borujeni; Mahdi Karobi
Abstract
Organizations are forced to adapt themselves to the ever-increasing advances in knowledge and technology in order to survive in this changing environment. They are to take fundamental measures and changes based on innovation, flexibility, responsiveness, creative redefinition of the market and new opportunities, ...
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Organizations are forced to adapt themselves to the ever-increasing advances in knowledge and technology in order to survive in this changing environment. They are to take fundamental measures and changes based on innovation, flexibility, responsiveness, creative redefinition of the market and new opportunities, and resources to gain a competitive advantage. These changes are focused on effective use of the knowledge-based capital, which is achieved by creating a learning organization. This article is to present a model for transforming hotels into learning organizations. Therefore, by compiling interview questions based on theoretical literature and obtaining experts' opinions with thematic analysis method, indicators and factors of the learning hotel for the Iranian hotel industry is presented. The model is composed of 61 basic concepts, 11 organizing concepts, and 3 comprehensive concepts including the drivers, the factors, and the consequences of the learning hotel.
Reza Hosseingholizadeh; Mahmood Alborzi; Abbas Toloie Eshlaghy; Hamid Zargham Boroujeni
Abstract
The beliefs of the stakeholders who provide tourism services in destinations play an important role in the sustainability of destinations. The values of variables affecting these beliefs are always ambiguous, and the causal relationships between them are uncertain. The reality of opinion dynamics ...
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The beliefs of the stakeholders who provide tourism services in destinations play an important role in the sustainability of destinations. The values of variables affecting these beliefs are always ambiguous, and the causal relationships between them are uncertain. The reality of opinion dynamics reflects even more complexity. Therefore, the present study used fuzzy logic, Bayesian belief networks, and opinion dynamics models to investigate a complex topic. The models were applied to the data obtained from the Iranian stakeholders in a bid to attract Chinese tourists. The data was collected by administering the questionnaire to 540 stakeholders during 2019, 2020 and 2021. Finally, the research provided not only an agent-based simulation to visualize trends and their evolution or co-evolution, but also the possibility of predicting defective and desirable trends with the ultimate aim of preventing or reinforcing them.IntroductionDespite the apparent regularity of the tourism process, ambiguity, uncertainty, and dynamism in the host community complicate the control of the process. It is ambiguous because different tastes are applied to it (Liu et al., 2021). It is uncertain because the stakeholders have different beliefs (Merigó et al., 2012). It is dynamic (Sainaghi & Baggio, 2017) because it is affected by environmental changes such as diseases (Soltan-Alinejad & Soltani, 2021), natural disasters (Rosselló et al., 2020), information technology (Xiang, 2018), and environmental issues (Saviolidis et al., 2021). Accordingly, conventional statistical tools are ineffective in capturing the whole complexity at work (Sun & Müller, 2013). In this respect, the current study used fuzzy logic, conditional probability, and diffusion processes on complex networks in order to model ambiguity, uncertainty, and dynamism, respectively. The fuzzy membership functions were used for the initial processing of the collected data (Serrano-Guerrero, 2021). The study utilized Bayesian belief networks to measure the community’s parameters in the current situation (Rohmer, 2020). Moreover, opinion dynamics was employed to predict future trends (Ureña et al., 2019). Specifically, the structural and parametric training of Bayesian belief networks was used to model the current beliefs of stakeholders in tourism destinations (Rohmer, 2020). The developed Bayesian belief network is able to make predictions, prescriptions, and causal inferences about the stakeholder-related variables of the community (Nadkarni & Shenoy, 2001). Therefore, various parameters of the community can be estimated by Bayesian belief networks (Gallardo, 2022). Stakeholders’ opinions are dynamic because they are influenced by contextual factors and other stakeholders (Steils et al., 2021). The study also intended to simulate the dynamics. There are many variables in stakeholders’ interactions that are influenced over time. Each stakeholder, also called the agent, has an opinion on each variable, so in interactions, stakeholders are influenced by their own opinions and those of others (Cape et al., 2018).Materials and MethodsThe current study aimed to create a structure for the beliefs of tourism stakeholders on the basis of tourists’ wishes and needs. Therefore, Bayesian belief networks, as a kind of causal network based on conditional probability theory, were used in this research. In the next step, the research employed opinion dynamics which is a subset of agent-based methods in the field of simulation. Agent-based methods, though recommended, are less addressed in the field of tourism. The data was collected by administering the questionnaire to 540 stakeholders in Iran during 2019, 2020, and 2021. The population of the stakeholders consisted of five classes including 265 hotels and accommodation centers, 170 tourism companies, 85 bus companies, 15 airlines, and 5 railway companies. The stratified sampling method was used to select the research participants.Results and DiscussionBy generating a joint probability distribution function for the variables governing the beliefs of the Iranian tourism stakeholders, the research integrated the beliefs into a coherent mathematical structure. In practice, this equation represented a kind of causal network structure that can answer different questions with the advantage that it can be retrained to be used to create a more updated distribution function when new data is entered. Relying on the agent-based method of opinion dynamics, the study simulated the future behavior of tourism stakeholders. The simulation showed what behaviors can be useful in attracting tourists, what behaviors are not in line with protecting the environment, and what behaviors can be suitable or unsuitable for attracting female tourists.ConclusionThe research was designed to use the methods separately in order to avoid increasing the complexity of the research process due to the simultaneous use of diverse and powerful tools. Therefore, it is possible for researchers to use each of the methods independently. In addition, the obtained results are useful, diverse, and practical, and suggest the suitability and further use of agent-based methods (e.g., opinion dynamics) in the tourism research
Morteza Khazaei Pool; Abolfazl Tajzadehnamin; Hamid Zargham Boroujeni; Mehdi Karoubi
Abstract
This research has two main objectives, the first goal is to provide an entrepreneurial marketing model for the hotel industry in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the second goal is to measure entrepreneurial marketing and its effects on hotel performance. To do this research an exploratory mixed method ...
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This research has two main objectives, the first goal is to provide an entrepreneurial marketing model for the hotel industry in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the second goal is to measure entrepreneurial marketing and its effects on hotel performance. To do this research an exploratory mixed method (qualitative-quantitative) have been used. In the qualitative section, the researcher used qualitative content analysis to develop an entrepreneurial marketing scale and a model. To gather data; in-depth interviews have been used with 20 directors of 3, 4 and 5-star hotels in Tehran. In the quantitative sector, in order to collect data, three questionnaires of entrepreneurial marketing, financial and non-financial performance was used. Accordingly, 48 questionnaires of entrepreneurial marketing and financial performance and 384 questionnaires of non-financial have been gathered. For the validity of the questionnaires, Corrected Item-Total Correlation, content validity ratio, face validity, and confirmatory factor analysis were used and for reliability Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability (Dillon-Goldstein's rho coefficient) were calculated by using the Smart PLS software. The results showed that everything was appropriate. Structural equation modeling was also used to test the hypotheses of the research using Smart PLS software. The results confirm the direct impact of entrepreneurial marketing on financial performance and rejecting the mediating role of non-financial performance in transferring the effect of entrepreneurial marketing on financial performance
Hamid Zargham; mehdi ebrahimi; Faeze S. Mirfakhraddini
Volume 8, Issue 22 , June 2013, , Pages 31-72
Abstract
The aim of this research is to evaluate the performance of hotel services with Fuzzy BSC approach. Identification of the strengths and weaknesses of the hotel services from the financial, costumer, internal procedures, and growth and learning aspects are among the key aims of this research. The other ...
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The aim of this research is to evaluate the performance of hotel services with Fuzzy BSC approach. Identification of the strengths and weaknesses of the hotel services from the financial, costumer, internal procedures, and growth and learning aspects are among the key aims of this research. The other aim of this study is to use the research findings in order to compile and formulate strategies for the survival of hotels in the future. As data gathering tool, this research has made use of questionnaires which were filled by university professors and the hotel managers and senior employees working in Yazd Province’s 3 and above stared hotels. Mixed BSC / FANP / FTOPSIS approach was used in order to evaluate the service provided in the hotels. Additionally, the critical indices of hotel performance were identified via the ratio of importance-performance and Pareto rule. Results manifest that the service provided in the selected hotels are desirable in the costumer and internal procedures aspects; while the hotels have weak performance in both financial, and growth and learning aspects. Also, eight components of hotel service performance assessment (including: uniqueness of the hotels’ services, capital return, room occupancy rate, employeeproductivity, effective usage of marketing information by the staff, bilateral relationship with costumers, ratio of net interest to total income and new servicing procedure) were identified as the critical indices of success. The costumer and internal procedure aspects were proved to be in the first and fourth place of importance respectively.
