Careers in the tourism industry are relatively new phenomena and have not been the subject of extensive research. Yet, it is clear from the little research that is available that high levels of mobility and unclear career paths stigmatise tourism careers. These issues focus highly in the new ‘boundaryless’ career that has received much attention in human resources research recently. Mentoring has been portrayed as a useful tool to help employees cope with this new career environment. To test this premise, 23 managers in the industry were interviewed and told their own ‘career story’. Respondents reported frequent intra-company, inter-company, and inter-industry career moves and rated mentoring programs as a powerful career management tool. These findings have implications for policy development within the industry and for those seeking a career in tourism. Those involved with other new and emerging professions with find this article of interest.

This article addresses the nature of skills in international hospitality. Frequently characterised as ‘low skills’, it is increasingly recognised that skills bundling in services such as hospitality cannot be solely seen in terms of the technical attributes of work. Emotional and aesthetic dimensions have been added to the services skills bundle. The added dimension of Pine and Gilmore's ‘experience economy’ suggest a further component within this bundle, namely that of experience skills. This article explores the role of experiential factors in helping to equip those entering work in the international hospitality industry. The learning demands of the sector for those brought up in a western, developed world environment are relatively small, primarily reflecting the strongly Americanised operating culture of hospitality. In addition, those working in hospitality in most developed countries have experience of the sector as both consumers and employees. By contrast, employees in international hospitality in less developed countries do not have similar benefits of experience, either though general acculturation or as consumers of hospitality services. This divergent experience profile has significant implications for the skills demands of hospitality work and leads to the proposition that experience is an important factor in determining the skills demands of hospitality work. This, in turn, leads to this article's proposal that Experiential Intelligence (ExQ) is an indicator of this difference in terms of workplace skills

This article examines the relationships between heritage tourism and shopping. It considers two towns — Castlemaine and Maldon — which were established in the Australian Gold Rushes of the 1850s. Both towns feature relatively intact 19th century streetscapes and mining areas. They are also vibrant tourist shopping areas, including restaurants, cafes, antiques shops, galleries and craft shops. Drawing on evidence from a 2-year study of visitors, it is argued the combination of shopping and heritage is attractive to tourists and that many tourists engage in both. Furthermore, it is argued that while heritage attracts visitors, the economic benefits are captured by restaurants, cafes and shops.

Given the increasing arrivals of international tourists to Malaysia, this research assessed the expectations and perceptions of service quality in Malaysia's hotels by applying a modified version of the SERVQUAL model. Comparisons among Malaysian hotel guests, hotel guests from other Asian countries, and non-Asian hotel guests were undertaken. The findings indicated, as a whole, that the hotel guests' perceptions of service quality provided by the hotel industry were lower than their expectations. The lowest expectations and perceptions were given by Malaysian hotel guests towards the hotels in Malaysia. Between Malaysian hotel guests and hotel guests from other Asian countries, there was no significant difference in the overall satisfaction levels for the sample as a whole. However, between Malaysian hotel guests and non-Asian hotel guests, the results showed that the overall customer satisfaction levels towards the hotel stay was significantly different for the sample as a whole.

This article investigates how in-flight service, reservation and ticketing, airport service, reliability, employee service, flight availability, passenger satisfaction, pricing (value), and airline image determine passengers' future behavioural intentions. For this testing, structural equation modelling was applied to data collected from Australian domestic air passengers. It was found that there were significant relationships between the variables, except in four paths. In-flight service and employee service were found as significant drivers of passenger satisfaction, which was directly related to pricing (value), airline image, and passengers' future behavioural intentions.

Tertiary providers of hospitality management degree programs must fulfil the needs of student, industry and academic stakeholder groups. The students attracted to this type of program tend to be motivated primarily by the anticipated vocational outcomes. As a result, hospitality management curriculum needs to meet both industry and student expectations by delivering the skill sets needed in the workplace and the institutional demands for academic rigour. This article reports on research that aimed to compare hospitality managers' expectations of graduate skills with student perceptions of the skills that hospitality managers valued. In contrast to previous research on this topic, this study adopted a generic skills framework and managers rated skills associated with interpersonal, problem-solving, and self-management skill domains as most important. Although students tended to rate conceptual and analytical skills more highly than did managers, overall their perceptions of the skills that hospitality managers valued when recruiting graduates were realistic. The results of this, and similar studies, can contribute to curriculum design and the internal and external communications strategies adopted by faculty offering hospitality management programs.

As many hotels have started implementing wireless networks to support a wide variety of business processes, others have followed suit in order to match the competitor's service offerings. Thus, although the adoption of wireless technologies is in many instances based on a bandwagon effect (Wolff, 2003), there are a number of factors potentially influencing the decision of whether or not to implement wireless technologies in hotel properties. This article provides an overview of the use of this technology in the hotel industry, identifies social, technical, and organisational factors influencing adoption decisions, and establishes a cost-theoretic model to analyse adoption decisions. The cost-analytic framework extends the theoretical underpinnings by creating a decision schedule to map the direct and indirect (non-linear) effects surrounding the evolving trend towards introducing wireless Internet access in hotels. The framework allows managers to objectively trace the economic net-present-value of their technology investment decisions. The cost-analytic model implicates adoption thresholds related to technology costs and setup-indirect effects that can mar direct positive effects of technical, organisational, and social antecedents.

This article unpacks the content of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) in the hospitality industry and makes a comparison with collective agreements that have been negotiated in the industry. The article reveals that, in the hospitality industry, AWAs are minimal documents when compared to collective agreements, with AWA employers achieving wages and hours flexibility at the expense of employee entitlements. The lack of innovative provisions in AWAs suggests that, in an industry where low labour costs have a significant impact on the organisation's bottom line, there is a temptation for employers to use AWAs to decrease these costs as much as possible. There is little evidence of AWAs being used for alternate purposes — to foster positive employee relations, or to encourage and reward employees for good performance. Whether this approach will benefit the industry in the longer term is questionable. However, with the simplified agreement making process that was introduced through the Work Choices amendments to the Workplace Relations Act 1996, it is suggested that AWAs will become an even more attractive form of employment for hospitality employers.