Millions of dollars have been invested in Website development, often without much thought of how to evaluate the effectiveness of sites. This paper reports on the past, present, and likely future of one of the recommended approaches for evaluating tourism and hospitality Websites, the modified Balanced Scorecard approach. It traces the use of the approach from its beginning in 1999 to the present time. A thorough review of other approaches to Website evaluation is also provided. The article suggests that Website evaluation approaches can be classified into four groups based upon why and when the evaluation is done (formative vs. summative evaluation) and whether efficiency or effectiveness is being measured. It concludes with a call to action for industry leaders, academics, and consultants to develop a unified procedure for Website evaluation in tourism and hospitality.

Seeks to examine the extent to which management contracts used by international hotel firms in Thailand mirror those used in the USA

Management contracts are widely used throughout the world as a mechanism for separating the ownership of hotel properties and their management. The research reported here concerns how Thai hotel owners seek to control the international hotel chains where properties are operated under hotel management contracts (HMCs). Adopting agency theory, the research findings reported here suggest that restraints against agent opportunism tend to focus on two key aspects: contractual controls and operational controls. Additionally, the findings also suggest that the outcome control needs to be viewed as a priority for effectively controlling hotel management companies when using HMCs.

Meeting planners are now frequently using the Web as a resource for finding site information, while the Internet has also become increasingly important on the supply side of the convention and exhibition business as a marketing tool. Meeting planners are increasing their productivity by utilizing the Internet. However, the fast growth in the popularity of the Web has resulted in a fragmented approach to digital destination marketing, particularly in the convention and exhibition sector. The purpose of this study was to investigate the existing situation in digital destination marketing and identify the overall performance and effectiveness of convention and visitors bureau (CVB)/tourist board and convention/ exhibition (CE) centre Websites based on the modified Balanced Scorecard (BSC) approach. Even though leading destinations, such as the US and the UK strategize through internet marketing applications, findings showed that the websites of CVB and CE of both these countries had relative strengths and weaknesses. The CE centre and CVB/tourist board websites tend to be loosely integrated. Additionally, the websites provided by CVB/tourist board contains more information for visitors and may often contribute more to confusing rather than informing and educating meeting planners. Marketing implications for destination and convention/exhibition management is presented and a future scenario for convention/ exhibition marketing is discussed.

Given the importance of well-designed and well-executed training programs, it is important to learn more about the content and design of effective training programs for new employees, particularly those that have been implemented in the hospitality industry. Through a field study assessment of pre-opening training programs that have been implemented by fifteen hotel firms and sixteen restaurant companies, we found that hotels and restaurants spend approximately the same time on pre-opening training for new staff, with the exception of restaurant managers, who receive significantly more days of training than do their hotel counterparts. In addition, there were substantive differences in the amount of pre-opening training based on firm size and whether the company was publicly traded or privately held. We also found that the majority of pre-opening training is designed and delivered by corporate staff, and a balance of active and passive training methods are used for facilitation. Finally, although our survey methodology did not allow us to determine the costs associated with pre-opening training (and therefore the return on these efforts), we noted that the firms used guest satisfaction measures and measured the employees’ content mastery, among other metrics.