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Due to the negative environmental impact, corporate social responsibility is an important concept in today's competitive lodging industry. Hotels attribute 75% of the overall lodging industries consumption of energy, water and non-durable goods. To remain competitive, organizations implement green lodging programs to demonstrate social responsibility. However, the understanding and implementation of best practices in sustainable tourism in the United States (US) is hampered because the standards that mandate the criteria are disparate. This paper describes a framework to aggregate the variety of best management practice standards so lodging properties and patrons can more easily identify gaps in compliance to the sustainable tourism standard's criteria. The proposed framework uses standards compliance information found on property sites to infer a ranking in green tourism across twelve third party US standards bodies. Herein, a hierarchy of pre-existing and newly developed domain-specific ontologies has been combined in a semantic knowledge base to describe the relationship between best management practices and accreditation criteria from each of the sustainable tourism standards bodies. Then, inference is used to automatically evaluate a properties conformance to all other green lodging programs based on an evaluation from one. This theoretical framework could better inform hotels and tourism operators on their best management practices and consumers when choosing between green lodging properties.

Mobile phone technology has become a necessary component for today's travellers. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have substantially affected tourism and hospitality consumers over the past two decades. Mobile technologies such as smartphones, tablets, and mobile applications have become travellers' primary access to information. This study focuses on mobile technologies such as smartphones and mobile applications (apps) and consumers' use of mobile technology when travelling. A scoping review following PRISMA guidelines was used to answer the research question; "How do tourism consumers use mobile technologies for travel and tourism during the COVID era?" This study will identify and analyse any relationships, patterns, trends, and gaps in the literature. Peer-reviewed journal articles from the COVID era (2020 to 2022) were included in this study. Articles were sourced using the keywords listed below. The full articles were imported into NVivo, and the main themes and subthemes were extracted from the data and reported using an inductive qualitative thematic analysis. The results from this study identified "food" as the main theme and "food delivery" as the most frequent subtheme. Food, tourism, transportation, Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), Hotel Operations, and Shopping were the top 6 themes. The 4IR is changing how smartphone consumers use their devices for travel and tourism. In the COVID Era, Smartphone technology has been recognised as a solution to maintaining safe distancing and contactless transactions. This research will benefit tourism operators and policymakers to remain competitive in an ever-changing environment during the COVID era

Research Question: The purpose of this study was to determine whether the addition of an American Cultural Model to an existing English as a Second Language (ESL) program improved the performance of international students.  Idea: The English language proficiency is essential for students in global emerging economies in order to be competitive, and our study can be generalized to learning other languages within the respective cultural model. Motivation: The results of our study can be applied to higher education worldwide since currently the international business language is English.  Data: The data collected were analyzed and interpreted to determine whether cultural training improved scores on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL).  Tools: Two groups of incoming students were compared as the treatment and control groups, using the t-test with appropriate statistical package. Findings: Data analysis showed a statistically significant difference in TOEFL scores between the control group and the experimental group benefiting from the implementation of the Introduction of the American Cultural Model. Contribution: The English language proficiency is essential for students in global emerging economies in order for them to be competitive, and our study can be generalized to learning other languages within a respective cultural model.

This study explores the changing role of Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic within the regional context of Tropical North Queensland. A case study of a Regional Tourism Organisation (RTO) is utilised to gain insights into external and internal stakeholder perspectives on the changing role of DMOs in response to COVID-19. This research adopts a qualitative approach to investigate insights into the specific phenomenon of the changing role of regional DMOs in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The research was conducted in two stages: semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis of the transcripts. This research project (including methodologies engaged) was approved by James Cook University’s Human Research Ethics Committee, reference number H8559, on September 29 2021. The insights provided suggest that changes made within the RTO were mostly temporary and that there is a desire from external and internal stakeholders for the RTO to return to a marketing function post the acute phase of the Pandemic. Findings indicate that the role of a regional DMO can shift to a role of destination management in times of crisis and then revert to one adapted to marketing functions in the recovery period. Recommendations for the role of destination marketing and management organisations in response to times of crisis are presented and include flexibility of the role of DMOs in crisis management, the requirement for strong leadership and the need for ongoing consultation with the industry about the desired role and function of DMOs.

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