COVID-led consumption displacement: A longitudinal analysis of hotel booking patterns

This research contributes to the literature on consumption displacement by exploring the pandemic-led shifts in hotel booking patterns. We perform a longitudinal analysis and a critical comparison of bookings before and after COVID-19 outbreak, focusing on the booking window, length of stay, and booking channel. Data include weekly bookings of a representative sample of Balearic Islands' hotels between 2018 and 2021. Results indicate that the pandemic has led to a drop in the volume of bookings and a remarkable change in booking patterns. Specifically, we find a temporal shift in booking behavior, characterized by a lower anticipation and a change in the tourism supply chain, namely a decrease in the share of intermediated bookings. The expected increase in the frequency of exogenous shocks, such as weather-related and sanitary crises, could affect purchasing behaviors, thus enhancing the relevance of this study, with managerial implications for industry and destination managers.

Drivers of food waste generation and best practice towards sustainable food waste management in the hotel sector: a systematic review

The growing volumes of food globally are lost or wasted along the entire food chain. However, a high effort in investigating why food waste (FW) occurs remains scattered for each subsector in detail, particularly in the hotel sector. Therefore, this systematic review focuses on FW issues in the hotel sector to identify FW generation drivers and good business practices towards mitigating FW. The review compiled literature from 25 related studies and adopted the PRISMA statement, utilising two leading journal databases: Scopus and Web of Science. This review shows that hoteliers initially feel guilty about wasting food, primarily based on financial loss rather than concerns about the social and environmental footprint. Based on the review, hotel staff from various internal departments faced conflicts between good intentions with reducing FW and the guests' unsustainable food consumption patterns. Within the scope of this review, we suggest that further research is necessary with a focus on procedures and regulations (hotel policy) to encourage guests to minimise plate waste and redistribute unsold hotel food to charities or food banks. Overall, this review offers some interesting guidelines and actionable inferences to reduce FW generation in the hotel sector.

China hotel research: A systematic review of the English language academic literature

This paper presents the findings of a systematic review performed on 115 academic papers published over a 26-year period from 1984 to 2009 and provides a content analysis of research themes and trends in China hotel research. The findings reveal that hotel management and performance is the theme most frequently examined by researchers, followed by hotel development strategies, and hotel business environment analysis. The analysis also indicates shifts in research methods, trends of publication, journal outlets and authorship information.

Potential challenges of employing a formal environmental scanning approach in hospitality organizations

Most previous studies on environmental scanning (ES) in the field of hospitality management suggest that hospitality organizations establish formal systematic ES procedures and have a freestanding ES unit to identify opportunities and threats in their external environment. However, some serious criticisms have been raised in the field of strategic management against the employment of such a formal and systematic approach to ES. These opposing views have rarely been discussed in the hospitality management literature. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to bring these views to the fore in the process of reviewing previous research into ES, and to discuss the major challenges involved for hospitality organizations in employing such a formal approach to ES. The discussion throughout this paper reveals that ES is essential for every organization; however, it is even more complex and difficult to accomplish than portrayed in most previous studies in the hospitality management field. The paper identifies and discusses major challenges and problems in employing a form ES approach in hospitality organizations. It also provides recommendations about how ES activities can best be carried out in complex and dynamic environments.