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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce and explore blockchain technology and its potential implementation to hospitality and tourism firms’ wide range of business operations and transactions from a technological and functional point of view. This study’s central interest is to produce novel and rigorous in-depth-review analysis and foundations for a broad discussion and outlook on the potential applications of blockchain technology benefiting hospitality and tourism research, as well as the industry as a whole. Design/methodology/approach This study identifies and proposes several potential areas of the adoption and implementation of blockchain technology to the hospitality and tourism industry, including payment and cryptocurrencies, tracking and service customization, the disintermediation of hospitality and tourism, innovative loyalty programs, smart contracts, integrated property management systems, verified rating and review systems, collaborative initiatives and due diligence and smart tourism, each of which represents fertile avenues for future research. Findings This paper provides extensive critical discussions, reviews and answers to a fundamental question: “What critical functions of Blockchain mechanisms can be implemented to the existing core operational (i.e. booking and reservation systems, guest management, etc.) and business functions (i.e. loyalty/reward programs, agent transactions, etc.) of hospitality and tourism companies?”. Research limitations/implications Future studies should specifically delve further into various angles of this “BizTech” environment based not only on business operations and competition but also on vendor and customer collaboration. Practical implications This study intends to serve as a guidance for future research, facilitate knowledge accumulation and create a new understanding and awareness in both practice and academia. One of the most important applications of blockchain in this industry would be that pertaining to direct booking, online reservation systems (i.e. airlines and online travel agencies) and check-in/out with digital identities. With industry-wide blockchain adoption, guests’ personal information can be digitally validated, saved and secured as previously established cryptographically secured codes verify one’s identity without disclosing essential personal information. Originality/value It is obvious that the hospitality and tourism industry needs urgent technological transformation, industrial innovations and new growth avenues such as the adoption of blockchain technology and systems to maintain its global market share in the future. Therefore, the implementation of blockchain systems can promote the formation of multi-center (i.e. guest operations and customer service), weakly intermediated (i.e. loyalty programs and/or review and rating systems) areas in this industry.

Purpose – This paper aims to improve the accuracy of hotel daily occupancy forecasts – an essential element in the revenue management cycle – by proposing and testing a novel approach. The authors add the hotel competitive-set’s predicted occupancy as an input of the individual property forecast and, using a recursive approach, demonstrate that there is a potential for significant reduction in the forecasting error. Design/methodology/approach – The paper outlines the theoretical justification and the mechanism for this new approach. It applies a simulation for exploring the potential to improve the accuracy of the hotel’s daily occupancy forecasts, as well as analysis of data from a field study of two hotel clusters’ daily forecasts to provide empirical support to the procedure’s viability. Findings – The results provide strong support to the notion that the accuracy could be enhanced. Incorporating the competitive set prediction by using either a genetic algorithm or the simple linear regression model improves the accuracy of the forecast using either the absolute or the absolute percentage as the error measure. Research limitations/implications – The proliferation of data sharing practices in the hotel industry reveals that the timely data sharing-aggregation-dissemination mechanism required for implementing this forecasting paradigm is feasible. Originality/value – Given the crucial role of accurate forecasts in revenue management and recent changes in the hotels’ operating environment which made it harder to achieve or maintain high levels of accuracy, this study’s proposed novel approach has the potential to make a unique contribution in the realm of forecasting daily occupancies.

This study investigates how hotel managers describe strategy and identify key success factors for its formulation and implementation. The study analyzes qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews with property level top managers of hotels in Hong Kong. The findings show that hotel managers prioritize competition analysis and macro-environmental conditions over internal characteristics such as teamwork in strategy formulation. In the implementation phase, however, internal considerations such as employee involvement and strategic consensus are given prominence. This study provides a significant contribution by examining how top level practitioners in the industry interpret success factors in their strategic management efforts, and it highlights a largely neglected area in the hospitality and tourism management literature.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical review of the performance management literature in the hospitality and tourism (H/T) industry. Design/methodology/approach The study is conducted through a critical literature review based on three dimensions: progress on ontological and epistemological issues, on the purpose of performance measurement (PM) and on the emerging contexts. Findings The progress on the three topics, namely, ontological and epistemological, purpose and emerging context, is addressed. Based on these three issues, the performance management literature in the H/T industry has not had any concrete structure. Few studies have been conducted reviewing the progress on performance criteria in the hotel industry. A research agenda is recommended to build a concrete structure in the field. Research limitations/implications This study focused on only leading H/T journals to analyze the progress on the performance management literature in the H/T industry. The findings can help researchers (re)design research agendas to contribute to both mainstream performance management literature and literature related to the H/T industry. Originality/value This is one of the first studies highlighting the progress on the performance management literature in hospitality and tourism by considering ontological and epistemological issues, the purpose of PM and the emerging contexts.

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