Dr Bora Kim

Political conflicts between countries can disrupt normal functioning of the airline industry, leading to uncertainty and affecting airline demand (Dwyer et al., 2013). Empirical evidence shows that political conflicts have a dampening effect on airline demand (Zhang & Zhang, 2017; Laufer, 2018), and can results in a significant decrease in passenger traffic (Fernandes & Pacheco, 2017). Airlines respond to political conflicts by implementing various coping strategies, such as route diversification, code-sharing agreements, and fleet renewal (Zuidberg & de Wit, 2020). For example, airlines may shift their focus to alternative destinations or establish partnerships with other carriers to expand their route options when facing reduced demand due to political instability (Button et al., 2016; Corbet et al., 2019). Understanding the impact of growing political conflicts on airline demand and management strategies is crucial as airlines serve as the primary transportation mode for domestic and international tourists. However, research has largely overlooked the differential impact on distinct airline business models, such as full-service carriers (FSCs) and low-cost carriers (LCCs). This research note aims to address this gap by examining the effects of the China-Korea political conflict, specifically the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), on FSCs and LCCs operating in South Korea in terms of flight numbers and seat capacity.

Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) are receiving considerable attention in the travel and tourism workplace and the overall sector. At a global level, a wide range of agreements and pledges exist to ensure the advancement towards EDI in the sector (Ferguson, 2018) (i.e., 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development). Despite global commitments, there is a substantive disconnection between global policy and practices of equality, and its absence across the tourism sector (Ferguson, 2018). Consequently, progress is primarily gradual and inconsistent across the travel and tourism industry. There are several societal, cultural and industry barriers that contribute to the continued inequality and inequity across the industry. An overarching barrier or challenge is the variation across the travel and tourism sector about how to define the terms and address EDI issues. While there are examples of good industry practices, there has been a general lack of successful and sustainable implementation of EDI initiatives, agendas and programmes. The aim of the ESRC IAA Project was to identify key challenges and barriers inhibiting our understanding of EDI in travel and tourism to foster inclusive organisational cultures, achieve representation and progression of diverse groups (i.e., ethnicity, gender, age, sexuality etc.) across all areas of management in the industry. The EDI impact workshops (co-moderated by the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, University of Surrey, & the Travel Foundation) in London held on October 14th and 21st 2022 explored the issues through three tasks (See Fig. 1). Collectively, the tasks contributed to building a greater understanding of different dimensions of EDI and create a flexible and usable toolkit that meets the different contexts and needs of stakeholders. The findings of the workshops contributed to the design of the EDI toolkit of strategies and interventions may be used to support and guide organisations and policy makers toward achieving the EDI agenda across the sector.

In response to the unprecedented pandemic in recent history, COVID-19 vaccination mandates in the U.S. caused significant changes and disruption in hospitality operations and customer experiences. The primary goal of this study is to examine whether and how customer incivility induced by the COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the U.S. affects employees’ behavioral outcomes (i.e., stress spread between employees and turnover intention) via psychological mechanisms (i.e., stress and negative emotion) and when the relationship is moderated by personal (employee prosocial motivation) and organizational (supervisor support) characteristics. Findings show that customer incivility increases employee turnover intention as well as interpersonal conflicts at work via increased stress and negative emotions. These relationships are weakened when prosocial motivation of employees and the level of supervisor support is high. Findings expand the occupational stress model by specifically incorporating the context of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate and further provide implications for restaurant managers and policy makers. •Customer incivility increases both employee stress and negative emotions•Customer incivility indirectly increases employee turnover intention and stress spread at work•Employee prosocial motivation attenuates the impact of customer incivility on employee emotions and behavior•Supervisor support mitigates the impact of customer incivility on employee emotions and behavior

While most businesses actively adopt a data-driven approach for revenue management decisions, understanding how air travellers perceive and behave differently to pricing strategies is essential for yielding optimal financial outcomes. This study analyses the loss aversion and diminishing sensitivity mechanisms of prospect theory in economy and business cabin classes. With rich longitudinal airfares, regression models and revenue data (15,868 observations from the top-10 aviation routes in the world) from 2014 to 2019, this study finds that lower-(higher-)than-expected airfares have a positive (negative) impact on revenue. When the effect of loss-coded and gain-coded tickets were compared, the extent to which passengers avoided losses (vs. welcomed gains) had a greater impact on revenue, supporting that loss aversion applies to the airline revenue, especially for business passengers. This study contributes to the further refinement of prospect theory by showing that the loss aversion and diminishing sensitivity mechanisms manifest differently in each cabin class.

The purpose of the study is to determine whether vaccination rates and the use of franchising have an impact on the volatility of stock returns in the restaurant industry. Based on the agency and resource scarcity theories, this study first examines the effect of vaccinations against COVID-19 on a restaurant firm’s stock return volatilities caused by uncertainty during a crisis. The study further investigates whether firm-specific vaccination rates more greatly reduce stock return volatilities as the degree of franchising increases. With a two-way fixed-effects model, the study finds that the firm-specific vaccination rate reduces volatilities of the firm’s stock returns. However, the study also finds an opposite direction to the moderating effect of franchising in that the more a restaurant firm franchises, the further the risk-reduction effect of its vaccination rate diminishes. Theoretical and practical implications along with limitations are discussed.

In today’s media-saturated world, intense media attention propels some CEOs to stardom. This social escalation of CEOs to celebrities inherently affects their actions and strategic choices, and thus the performance of their host organizations. Despite the importance of understanding upper echelons—especially celebrity CEOs in the tourism and hospitality industry—researchers have devoted little attention to the implications of CEO celebrity. As a result, whether CEO celebrity serves as a company asset or liability remained largely unknown. Based on the upper echelons theory and CEOs’ behavioral constraints, this study uncovers and provides initial empirical evidence on how a CEO’s celebrity affects firm performance, with a detailed examination of the restaurant industry. Further, we show that industry dynamism, an important external environmental factor, plays a positive moderating role such that the positive effect of CEO celebrity on firm performance becomes weaker as industry dynamism increases.

Cultural tightness-looseness represents the degree to which a particular culture possesses strong behavioral norms, and the degree to which members of that culture are likely to sanction individuals who deviate from those norms. While tightness-looseness has been quantified for a large and growing number of countries around the world, there are many countries where a tightness-looseness score has yet to be determined, thus impeding the inclusion of those countries in cross-cultural research with a tightness-looseness focus. There is a dearth of research on cultural tightness-looseness in South America in particular. We report results from a national survey of 1,265 Ecuadorian residents which provided quantification of the relatively tight culture of Ecuador.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and irresponsibility (CSI) can influence employee voice behavior in online review platforms. This study utilizes online employee review (OER), builds upon ethical climate theory, and hypothesizes the independent and joint effects of CSR and CSI on two aspects of employee voice – OER volume and OER valence. Using novel OER data of US tourism and hospitality firms, we perform a panel data regression with industry and year fixed effects. The results indicate that firm CSR engagement increases both the volume and valence of OER, whereas CSI accelerates (attenuates) the positive CSR effect on OER volume (valence). These findings can help tourism and hospitality firms implement CSR strategies for enhancing employees’ word of mouth from both volume and valence perspectives.

This article uses the dataset of tourist satisfaction index of Hong Kong to investigate the impact of culture difference on the gap between tourists’ expectations and their perceptions of actual service performance. When the demographic profile and travel experience are controlled, it is found that small culture difference (Hong Kong and China) has positive impact on Expectation-Performance Gap (EPG); whereas negative relationship with EPG is identified for large culture difference (Hong Kong and western countries). The practical implication for tourism managers in Hong Kong is that service providers should manage EPG in accordance with the aspects of the culture difference between the destination and the source markets.