Purpose The purpose of this paper is to mainly investigate what factors drive growth for independent hotel firms on an island. Design/methodology/approach Two steps were followed. First, to identify hotels demonstrated significant growth; 92 independent hotels in North Cyprus were analyzed via a self-report questionnaire. Second, key growth factors were examined in five hotels showing the growth over years among the independent hotels via in-depth, semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, and observations. Findings The study findings revealed 16 important growth factors for hotels, including active risk taking, education, family history, networks of contacts, other business interests, family investing friends, key employee partners, customer concentration, autonomy, innovativeness, proactiveness, competitive aggressiveness, location, desire to succeed, age of founders, and state support where are strong, weak, and interrelated relationships among these factors. These findings allow factors to be categorized into new groups, namely, strategic and tactical factors. The research findings unveil new factors referred to as “political conflict – pursuing different strategy and opportunities,” importance of second generations affect and entrepreneur’s metacognitive strategies, “informal networking.” Research limitations/implications More research should also be undertaken for entrepreneurs or managers who formulate and implement strategies to enter new markets or to tackle turbulent and/or unstable environments. Practical implications This study reveals that one factor on its own cannot influence the growth of hotels. Rather, successful growth depends on the entrepreneur’s ability to combine all factors in harmony. Originality/value Given that there is limited empirical evidence on the growth of independent hotels on islands, this study made an important attempt to contribute to the entrepreneurship literature in the hospitality management and family business fields via micro-level approaches concerning the factors influencing hotels’ growth on an island. This is one of the first studies presenting and discussing empirical findings on growth factors for small hotels on an island, and brings a new perspective by grouping factors as strategic and tactical factors.
Adsorption isotherms and kinetics of the removal of heavy metal ions (Ni, Pb, Zn) from aqueous solutions by natural adsorbents (zeolite, bentonite, clay) were investigated in a lab-scale batch study. The effect of various parameters such as adsorbent dosage, initial concentration of heavy metal ions, temperature, and agitation time were studied to optimise the conditions. Under those optimized conditions (180 rpm agitation rate, 120 min agitation time, pH 4.0, 298 K, 100 mg/dm 3 initial adsorbate concentration), the removal percentages of heavy metal ions for natural adsorbents have been determined. The adsorption mechanisms and characteristic parameters of the process were analyzed by two and three parameter isotherm models (Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin, Redlich-Peterson, Toth and Sips), and kinetic models (Lagergren's pseudo-first order, Ho and McKay's pseudo-second order). Adsorption thermodynamics of heavy metal ions (changes of standard enthalpy, entropy and free energy) on zeolite, bentonite and clay were also studied at 298, 318 and 338 K.
The sharing economy is a socio-economic system that has changed the meaning of sharing around the world. Similarly, blockchain technology has changed the way of doing business online. Trust was once the main problem in doing business online, while cutting out the middleman was another contentious issue, but the new Generation Z (Gen Z) wants to share more freely and securely. Blockchain is a disruptive technology and Gen Z is the future driver of the economy. Blockchain technology has enabled transactions to be decentralized, secure, and transparent in the sharing economy. Gen Z will be more comfortable with decentralized sharing economy business models in the future. In this chapter, the future of the sharing economy will be discussed under the disruptive technology of blockchain and Gen Z’s needs. The first part of the chapter will focus on Gen Z’s sharing economy perspective. The second part will cover the sharing economy’s transformation into digitalization. The third part will examine the details of blockchain technology and smart contracts. The fourth part is about blockchain technology working systems and models with smart contracts. Finally, the conclusion part of this chapter will deliver an overall evaluation of the integration of blockchain with smart contracts into the sharing economy, with the decentralized sharing economy’s benefits and future effects being discussed.
Hotel businesses have a physical work environment where tourists and employees interact at the same time. As Gen Z grew up in the digitalized virtual world, their expectations from the business environment were different. At the beginning of these differences is the necessity of changing the traditional approaches to human resources management in hotels. Human resource management has turned to gamification applications as an innovative strategy. Human resources can place the right person in the right job as a result of matching personality and gamification user types. In addition, with the personality results obtained, it can enable us to make gamification designs suitable for the employees. This research aims to determine the gamification user types and five-factor personality types of Gen Z tourism students, who are current and potential employees, and to examine the relationship between them. The research was carried out using the quantitative method. The population of the research consists of 953 tourism faculty students' and a total of 449 participants were reached with the convenience sampling method. The data was collected on the online Question Pro platform using the survey method. A total of 280 usable questionnaires were included in the analysis. The mean and percentage values of the data obtained from the participants enabled the determination of the highest and lowest gamification and personality types. Research hypotheses were tested by correlation analysis. According to the research findings, the disruptive gamification user type and the responsible personality type were highest score among tourism students. As a result of the hypothesis tests, a negative relationship was determined between gamification user types and personality types. The results of the research reveal that creating personas and gamification designs within the framework of personality and gamification user types of employees in tourism and other sectors will play a key role in the success of the application. It has been concluded that the Gen Z exists with different personality types in the physical and virtual worlds.
Öz: Dijital çağ, otel endüstrisinin yenilikçi insan kaynakları yönetimini benimsemesine neden olmuştur. İnsan kaynakları yönetiminde oyunlaştırma popüler olan teknolojik gelişmelerden biridir. Oyunlaştırma oyun öğelerinin gerçek hayata uyarlanmasıdır. 2009 yılından sonra oyunlaştırma kavramı iş hayatının birçok alanına uyarlanmıştır. My Marriott Hotel oyunlaştırma uygulaması, otelin insan kaynakları yönetiminde kullanılan ilk ve tek örnek olarak bilinmektedir. Oyun çok kısa bir süre sonra kullanımdan kaldırılmıştır. Diğer disiplinlerde oyunlaştırma popülerliğini sürdürse de otellerin insan kaynakları yönetiminde iyi oyunlaştırma örnekleri gelişmemiştir. Bu araştırmanın amacı, otel işletmeciliğinde uygulanan ilk oyunlaştırma örneğinin başarısızlık nedenlerini incelemek ve gelecekteki uygulamalar için kritik başarı faktörlerini belirlemektir. Turizm alanında ilk ve tek örnek hakkında ayrıntılı bilgi bulmak için örnek olay (vaka) yönteminden faydalanılmıştır. Otelin internet sitesi, diğer internet siteleri, tezler ve makaleler kullanılarak oyun ile ilgili on iki kaynağa ulaşılmıştır. Toplanan veriler içerik analizi ile kodlanarak başarısızlık nedenleri belirlenmiştir. Araştırma sonucunda ilk oyunların kötü ve eksik oyun tasarımı nedeniyle başarısız olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Otellerde uygulanacak oyunların tasarımında disiplinler arası çalışma, oyuncu etkileşimi, oyuncu tipleri, turizm değişkenliğine uyum, oyuncuların kuşak farklılıkları, oyunun net hedefler üzerine kurgulanması, oyuncu motivasyonu, oyunlaştırılmış oyunlardan beklentiler ve yönetimin desteği olmak üzere dokuz kritik başarı faktörü belirlenmiştir.
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