The future of standardised quality management in tourism: evidence from the Spanish tourist sector

Place-Branded Foods with Responsible and Sustainable Management: A La Carte Serving in Regional Restaurants

This study assesses whether the association of place-branded foods and the adoption of responsible and sustainable management practices (e.g., quality management, environmental management, and corporate social responsibility) influence the financial performance of regional restaurants linked to the land of origin. The data collected from 265 regional restaurants located in the Centre Region of Portugal allowed estimation of a selected set of discrete-choice model specifications, namely, probit, logit and generalised extreme value regression models. The empirical findings reveal that the use of place-branded foods increases the demand for regional restaurants, which positively influences their financial performance. In addition, responsible sustainable management practices such as collaboration with customers to improve products and services, quality and safety control, choice of organic foods, commitment to maintaining jobs and cooperation with the community reveal a positive and significant influence on financial performance. Conversely, the results show that the use of origin certification in marketing and advertising campaigns and improvement of the restaurant’s image through the use of place-branded products have a significantly negative influence on regional restaurants’ financial performance, considering the pandemic crisis and the additional costs associated with this differentiation procedure.

Sustainable Development of Mountain Hotels through the Implementation of International Management Standards: The Romanian Case

This paper aims to identify the current level of implementation of the principles of sustainable development among hotels in the mountain area of Romania, how these standards influence the occupancy rate with the help of communication strategies, and to what extent the implementation of international management standards leads to an increase in the profitability rate. The research was carried out on the basis of questionnaires addressed to the hotels in the mountain areas of Romania, with information being collected from a number of 77 hotels, rated between 2 and 5 stars. The results obtained from the research highlighted the existence of positive correlations, both between the use of a communication strategy on the sustainable development objectives and the occupancy rate, as well as between the implementation of international management standards and the increase of the profitability rate.

Effects of Service Quality Policies in the Tourism Sector Performance: An Empirical Analysis of Spanish Hotels and Restaurants

In the last few years, it has become essential, in order for companies to ensure their survival, to approach the customer and bet on quality. This is due to the importance of tourism in many economies and the increase in supply and demand. For this reason, there are numerous studies found in literature that evaluate the extent to which quality practices impact finances and competitiveness of tourism companies. Furthermore, the usual practice in many of these studies is to classify all types of tourism businesses in the same category, even though there seem to be significant a priori differences between them. The main objects of scrutiny in this study are restaurants and hospitality. The analysis of the aggregate results of two surveys carried out among executives in Spain that employed SEM methodology demonstrates that quality practices have influence, albeit indirectly, on a firm’s performance in a positive way. However, separate analysis of subsamples show disparities between hotels and restaurants. This paper illustrates that, although both subgroups operate in the same sector, they obtain different results from implementing quality policies. Therefore, the specific features and typology of the selected tourism company should be considered.

The Impact of International Management Standards on Academic Research

Management standards serve as an effective knowledge diffusion channel, considering that they offer comprehensive scientific and practical knowledge for many different stakeholders. This research aims to study the potential of management standards to diffuse knowledge, especially within the scientific community. Therefore, it analyzes the relationship between management standards and the academic literature. It focuses on international management standards, namely ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 and their ‘European counterparts’ EMAS and the EFQM Excellence model. We tested whether scientific publications, which address these international and European management standards, are more likely to lead to follow-up research than comparable scientific publications measured by the impact on average forward citations. Hence, we applied a negative binominal regression model on bibliometric data. Findings show that publications addressing ISO 14001 alone or in combination with other standards lead to higher average forward citations than the comparison group. In conclusion, international management standards foster the academic research progress of the topics addressed by the respective standard. Our research implies the importance of monitoring standards for the scientific community and suggests Standard Setting Organizations to foster actively the research progress.

Implementation of ISO 9001 in the Spanish tourism industry

Purpose

Although many studies have concentrated on analyzing the impact of the implementation of ISO 9001 certification, there is still a clear need for research in specific sectors. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the implementation of this international management system standard in the tourism industry, and in particular the motivations conducting to its adoption and the satisfaction derived from it.

Design/methodology/approach

A questionnaire survey was conducted among 120 ISO 9001-certified Spanish tourism companies. Confirmatory factor analysis tests were used to verify the scales validity and reliability. The logit model was utilized to investigate the statistical effects of ISO certification.

Findings

The paper findings showed that the certified companies in the tourism industry implement ISO 9001 more for internal reasons, like improving processes and procedures or products and/or services, than for external reasons, like the image of the company or promotional or sales tools. The variables size, age and use of a consultant affect the cost and time factors for the implementation of a quality system. In addition, the certification process generated three categories of benefits, with the organizational and control benefits being the more relevant. These benefits are correlated to the antiquity of the certificate. In the final analysis, results show that tourism companies are generally satisfied with the ISO 9001 certificate.

Originality/value

The ISO 9001 quality management system is part of the modern management tools. The paper contributes to a better understanding of the motivations and benefits for implementing the ISO 9001 certification and to the analysis of its application in a particular industry as important as the tourism industry in Spain, a country that is recognized for its leadership in tourism.

Level of quality management in the Municipal Sports Services, contrast trough EFQM Excellence Model

The quality management in the Municipal Sports Services is embedded in the servuction provided to the citizens, which are their internal customers who determine the quality improvement ensuring competitiveness with excellence criteria. The Model of the European Foundation for Quality Management enables the evaluation of organization progress towards achieving quality goals, from a structured, measurable and comparable methodology. The aim is to carry out a diagnosis of the level of implementation of quality in the Municipal Sports Services of the Region of Murcia, Spain. The sample of 287 workers of 30 sports services gets a high level of reliability at all scales, with a coefficient of variation of .985 (range .810–.943). The score in the criteria of Policy and Strategy, People Management, Alliances and Resources, Processes and People Results were significantly higher (p < .05) in the Municipalities with more than 25,000 inhabitants when compared with those less than 10,000 and with those from 10,000 to 25,000 inhabitants obtaining global ratings of 571 points, those less than 10,000, 590 points those from 10,000 to 25,000 and those higher than 25,000 reach 636, having a good level of quality in relation to the scale that determines the model.