Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research

The use of permanent serviceware is one way to lessen the total quantity of foodservice waste. Waste reduction also may be possible through the choice of disposable serviceware material. The purposes of this study were (1) to examine the relationship between the choice of serviceware as measured by the amount spent on permanent and disposable serviceware and the costs associated with that choice and (2) to examine waste reduction through the choice of serviceware material. A statewide survey of school foodservice directors was conducted. The data were used to analyze the cost effectiveness of using permanent serviceware.

The findings suggested that the use of disposable serviceware often may be more cost effective than the use of permanentware. Total costs associated with a serviceware mix, namely dishwashing-related costs and waste removal costs, tend to increase less with the use of disposable serviceware than with the use of permanent serviceware. One of the reasons may be the low cost of landfill space. The number of students enrolled is also an important factor in explaining costs. Paper-based disposable serviceware products use landfill space more effectively than similar plastic and polystyrene products.

The impact of earnings information on common stock returns is a subject of recurring interest in finance literature. A cross-sectional time series regression was conducted to analyze the relationship between earnings’ yield and common stock returns of 27 hotel and lodging firms, using monthly data for the 1963–1992 period. Findings showed that the earnings effect established in the conventional framework also applies to common stocks of hotel and lodging firms. As such, the nature of the earnings effect within hotel and lodging industry securities is better understood, and some significant anomalies in the relationship between earnings’ yield and the returns of hotel and lodging securities are revealed.

The objective of the study was to develop a naive expert system model to replicate the forecast process made by the forecast knowledge expert in a foodservice operation. An expert system for forecasting menu items was developed. The expert system then was tested by the forecast knowledge expert, researcher, and other users to evaluate its user-friendliness and accuracy. Error was computed using Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) and Mean Squared Error (MSE); MAD was reduced from 21.60 to 0.27, and MSE was reduced from 717.86 to 1.07. Percentage of acceptability was 81%. Results of this study indicated that expert systems can be used in the foodservice industry to assist both experts and nonexperts in the forecast process.

In order to promote a tourism destination, managers need to understand the sources of information most heavily used by foreign visitors in their search for information about overseas vacation destinations. This article examines the sources of information used by travelers from Japan and the former West Germany when they determine their top five overseas vacation destinations. This research discovered that both the Germans and Japanese relied heavily on multiple sources of information, with the travel agent being the number one information source for both groups. However, the Japanese relied more heavily on the print medium for their secondary information source. The Germans’ main secondary information source was word-of-mouth advice from family and friends.

Even though the number of women in hospitality management has achieved critical mass, women managers continue to encounter discrimination and earn less pay than their male cohorts. Forty-one percent of hospitality managers are women, but less than one-half of one percent of top corporate management are women. This article postulates that women's interactive leadership styles are especially suited for visionary hospitality companies of the 1990s and into the next decade. Suggestions are given for retaining both career-primary and career-and-family managers.

This article examines Schein's (1992) conceptualization of career anchors as explanatory variables among Australian hospitality industry employees. The career anchors of job satisfaction, job security, and continuing employment were identified as the more prominent anchors. Major work preference ideals to emerge included friendly co-workers and skill utilization, whereas major management values involved management fairness, management/worker communication, work recognition, and effective management communication. Management discipline emerged as the least esteemed value. It was also found that younger workers were more likely to be associated with the career anchors of job security and continuing employment whereas female workers were associated with the career anchor of job satisfaction. The career anchors of job security and job satisfaction were found to be associated with a high work preference for friendly and understanding coworkers, whereas the career anchors of job satisfaction and continuing employment were found to be associated with high levels of skill utilization as a prominent work preference. Professionals in hospitality management need to more actively foster the supervisory role among potential managers.

Recently, the Carnegie Foundation released its report on American higher education, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (Boyer, 1990). The Carnegie report addressed significant issues facing today's college and university faculty. This article synthesizes the implications of the report for hospitality higher education and, at the same time, questions the current perspective of what it means to be a scholar. This article also deals with the importance of developing a cultural climate that supports a broader view of scholarship for hospitality higher education. Implications are that hospitality faculty can, do and should focus on integration, application, and teaching for thier scholarly endeavors. The organizational culture of acadame framework developed by Bergquist (1992) which includes collegial, managerial, developmental, and negotiating, presets an opportunity to develop and enrich a supportive climate to reward these efforts. The hospitality professoriate is an emerging scholar, but we are not there yet.

This study of 33 hospitality industry work groups (177 employees) provides empirical evidence for the effects of organizational culture (normative beliefs and shared behavioral expectations) and Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) on empowerment. Constructive and aggressive-defensive normative beliefs were found to foster empowerment while controlling for the effects of LMX. The degree of consensus (“crystallization”) by which group members share norms and behavioral expectations was found to partially neutralize the effects of LMX on empowerment.

Delivery systems are as varied as the products being offered within quick service facilities. No longer are quick service facilities being configured solely as free-standing units; they are being incorporated into airports, shopping malls, and other challenging locations. This study examined four different delivery systems in a variety of locations. These four systems were located in a free standing building, airport, or mall locations. Each of the delivery systems was examined to determine the amount of customer volume, number of service employees, efficiency ratio, utilization of the customer flow, and strengths and weaknesses of each delivery system. In the era of rising labor costs, selecting the proper system for a restaurant facility is essential in meeting the customer's service expectations while minimizing a facility's labor costs.

This article examines two new approaches to menu engineering; a marginal and a cumulative analysis. These techniques, unlike the current mean (average)-based analysis, view menu item performance independently and are not subject to the constraints of a mean-based analysis. Marginal analysis looks at each item contribution indiviudally, while cumulative analysis looks at the total contribution of all items.

The purpose of this study was to determine the current usage of student outcome measures in hospitality education and the attitude of administrators toward their usefulness. The results of this study will be useful to those in higher education who are being pushed to provide assessment data from a variety of sources. A questionnaire was sent to 122 hospitality program chairs. Widespread usage was found among the 56 respondents who believed output measures were the most useful. Nearly all of the responding chairs (92.6%) believe that assessment will increase in the future with pressure coming primarily from accrediting bodies and university administrators. Key Words: assessment, student outcome, attitudes toward assessment.