Travel Marketing: Industry Relationships and Benefits

In the discussion - Travel Marketing: Industry Relationships and Benefits - by Andrew Vladimir, Visiting Assistant Professor, School of Hospitality Management at Florida International University, the author initially states: “A symbiotic relationship exists among the various segments of the travel and tourism industry. The author has solicited the thinking of 37experts and leaders in the field in a book dealing with these relationships and how they can be developed to benefit the industry. This article provides some salient points from those contributors.” This article could be considered a primer on networking for the hospitality industry. It has everything to do with marketing and the relationships between varied systems in the field of travel and tourism. Vladimir points to instances of success and failure in marketing for the industry at large. And there are points of view from thirty-seven contributing sources here. “Miami Beach remains a fitting example of a leisure product that has been unable to get its act together,” Vladimir shares a view. “There are some first class hotels, a few good restaurants, alluring beaches, and a splendid convention center, but there is no synergism between them, no real affinity, and so while visitors admire the Fontainebleau Hilton and enjoy the food at Joe's Stone Crabs, the reputation of Miami Beach as a resort remains sullied,” the author makes a point. In describing cohesiveness between exclusive systems, Vladimir says, “If each system can get a better understanding of the inner workings of neighboring related systems, each will ultimately be more successful in achieving its goals.” The article is suggesting that exclusive systems aren’t really exclusive at all; or at least they shouldn’t be. In a word – competition – drives the market, and in order for a property to stay afloat, aggressive marketing integrated with all attendant resources is crucial. “Tisch [Preston Robert Tisch, currently – at the time of this writing - the Postmaster General of the United States and formerly president of Lowe’s Hotels and the New York Visitors and Convention Bureau], in talking about the need for aggressive marketing says: “Never...ever...take anything for granted. Never...not for a moment...think that any product or any place will survive strictly on its own merits.” Vladimir not only sources several knowledgeable representatives in the field of hospitality and tourism, but he also links elements as disparate as real estate, car rental, cruise and airlines, travel agencies and traveler profiles to illustrate his points on marketing integration. In closing, Vladimir quotes the Honorable Donna Tuttle, Undersecretary of Commerce for Travel and Tourism, “Uniting the components of this industry in an effective marketing coalition that can compete on an equal footing with often publicly-owned foreign tourism conglomerates and multi-national consortia must be a high priority as the United States struggles to maintain and expand its share of a rapidly changing global market.”

Timeshare Owner Preferences - An Analysis of Program and Service Relationships during Recessionary Times

Since the 1970s various industry studies have indicated that the vacation ownership industry has enjoyed unprecedented growth in unit sales, resort growth, and the number of owners (American Resort Devleopment Association [ARDA], 2007; ARDA, 2009a; ARDA, 2009b). However, due to the recent economic downturn these growth metrics are no longer obtainable. This external impact has caused developers to retrench and therefore reflect upon their existing product and service offerings, financial metrics, and consumer markets (ARDA, 2010a; ARDA 2010b). The crux of these findings indicates that the industry has shifted to maintaining and enhancing product and service offerings as a reaction to changing economic conditions. The findings reported in the body of this manuscript represent product and service preferences as collected from a random data pull of their existing ownership base. The study also revealed current preferences of timeshare owners with relation to services provided and products/amenities offered. Management implications and limitations of the current study are discussed.

The Proletarian Gourmet

Many managers are concerned about the loss of the American work ethic. The author shows that, in spite of alienating work conditions and poos management practice, the work ethic is very strong in the garde manager department of a major five diamond resort hotel.

The Influence of Purchase Confidence on Information Source Selection: Implications for Hospitality Industry

Whether the product of choice is a restaurant, vacation resort or hotel, it is important for hospitality marketers to understand how consumers treat purchase decisions and the influence purchase confidence and situation play on that decision. This study investigated the role purchase confidence plays with knowledge in the selection of sources of information during purchase decisions. The results indicate sources of information are perceived differently by consumers and depending on the purchase situation, subjective knowledge is influenced by purchase confidence affecting the source of information considered when making a purchase decision. The results also indicated that those with high purchase confidence and subjective knowledge will rely on themselves as a source when making a purchase rather than a retail clerk or published material.

World-Class Service

In the discussion - World-Class Service - by W. Gerald Glover, Associate Professor, Restaurant, Hotel and Resort Management at Appalachian State University and Germaine W. Shames, Hilton International, New York, Glover and Shames initially state: “Providing world-class service to today's traveler may be the key for hospitality managers in the current competitive market. Although an ideal, this type of service provides a mandate for culturally aware managers. The authors provide insight into several areas of cultures in collision.” Up to the time this essay is written, the authors point to a less-than-ideal level of service as being the standard in the hospitality industry and experience. “Let's face it - if we're ever to resurrect service, it will not be by going back to anything,” Glover and Shames exclaim. “Whatever it was we did back then has contributed to the dilemma in which we find ourselves today, handicapped by a reactive service culture in an age that calls for adaptiveness and global strategies,” the authors fortify that thought. In amplifying the concept of world-class service Glover and Shames elaborate: “World-class service is an ideal. Proactive and adaptive, world-class service feels equally right to the North American dignitary occupying the Presidential Suite, and the Japanese tourist staying in a standard room in the same hotel.” To bracket that model the authors offer: “At a minimum, it is service perceived by each customer as appropriate and adequate. At its best, it may also make the customer feel at home, among friends, or pampered. Finally, it is service as if culture matters,” Glover and Shames expand and capture the rule of world-class service. Glover and Shames consider the link between cultures and service an imperative one. They say it is a principle lost on most hospitality managers. “Most [managers] have received service management education in the people are people school that teaches us to disregard cultural differences and assume that everyone we manage or serve is pretty much like ourselves,” say Glover and Shames. “Is it any wonder that we persist in setting service standards, marketing services, and managing service staff not only as if culture didn't matter, but as if it didn't exist?!” To offer legitimacy to their effort Glover and Shames present the case of the Sun and Sea Hotel, a 500-room first class hotel located on the outskirts of the capital city of a small Caribbean island nation. It is a bit difficult to tell whether this is a dramatization or a reality. It does, however, serve to illustrate their point in regard to management’s cognizance, or lack thereof, of culture when it comes to cordial service and guest satisfaction. Even more apropos is the tale of the Palace Hotel, “…one of the grande dames of hospitality constructed in the boom years of the 1920s in a mid-sized Midwestern city in the United States.” The authors relate what transpired during its takeover in mid-1980 by a U.S.-based international hotel corporation. The story makes for an interesting and informative case study.

Ensemble Stream Model for Data-Cleaning in Sensor Networks

Ensemble Stream Modeling and Data-cleaning are sensor information processing systems have different training and testing methods by which their goals are cross-validated. This research examines a mechanism, which seeks to extract novel patterns by generating ensembles from data. The main goal of label-less stream processing is to process the sensed events to eliminate the noises that are uncorrelated, and choose the most likely model without over fitting thus obtaining higher model confidence. Higher quality streams can be realized by combining many short streams into an ensemble which has the desired quality. The framework for the investigation is an existing data mining tool. First, to accommodate feature extraction such as a bush or natural forest-fire event we make an assumption of the burnt area (BA*), sensed ground truth as our target variable obtained from logs. Even though this is an obvious model choice the results are disappointing. The reasons for this are two: One, the histogram of fire activity is highly skewed. Two, the measured sensor parameters are highly correlated. Since using non descriptive features does not yield good results, we resort to temporal features. By doing so we carefully eliminate the averaging effects; the resulting histogram is more satisfactory and conceptual knowledge is learned from sensor streams. Second is the process of feature induction by cross-validating attributes with single or multi-target variables to minimize training error. We use F-measure score, which combines precision and accuracy to determine the false alarm rate of fire events. The multi-target data-cleaning trees use information purity of the target leaf-nodes to learn higher order features. A sensitive variance measure such as ƒ-test is performed during each node's split to select the best attribute. Ensemble stream model approach proved to improve when using complicated features with a simpler tree classifier. The ensemble framework for data-cleaning and the enhancements to quantify quality of fitness (30% spatial, 10% temporal, and 90% mobility reduction) of sensor led to the formation of streams for sensor-enabled applications. Which further motivates the novelty of stream quality labeling and its importance in solving vast amounts of real-time mobile streams generated today.

Engineering access control for distributed enterprise applications

Access control (AC) is a necessary defense against a large variety of security attacks on the resources of distributed enterprise applications. However, to be effective, AC in some application domains has to be fine-grain, support the use of application-specific factors in authorization decisions, as well as consistently and reliably enforce organization-wide authorization policies across enterprise applications. Because the existing middleware technologies do not provide a complete solution, application developers resort to embedding AC functionality in application systems. This coupling of AC functionality with application logic causes significant problems including tremendously difficult, costly and error prone development, integration, and overall ownership of application software. The way AC for application systems is engineered needs to be changed. In this dissertation, we propose an architectural approach for engineering AC mechanisms to address the above problems. First, we develop a framework for implementing the role-based access control (RBAC) model using AC mechanisms provided by CORBA Security. For those application domains where the granularity of CORBA controls and the expressiveness of RBAC model suffice, our framework addresses the stated problem. In the second and main part of our approach, we propose an architecture for an authorization service, RAD, to address the problem of controlling access to distributed application resources, when the granularity and support for complex policies by middleware AC mechanisms are inadequate. Applying this architecture, we developed a CORBA-based application authorization service (CAAS). Using CAAS, we studied the main properties of the architecture and showed how they can be substantiated by employing CORBA and Java technologies. Our approach enables a wide-ranging solution for controlling the resources of distributed enterprise applications.

Reconcilable differences, a dark comedy

Reconcilable Differences is the story of Miami radio host Adam Painter. Confused about relationships, Adam cancels his wedding and, under the guidance of his bad-boy best friend, delves into the demi-monde inhabited by strippers and hookers. On the air he begins to examine how men and women interact. Adam explores the night world, moving from a connection with its denizens through his talk show to direct experience of its license and loneliness. He fails miserably in his clumsy efforts with women and is fired, sued and arrested. An unlikely, unwilling rebel, Adam confronts change and stumbles almost truculently toward self-discovery. This picaresque novel is told in the third person closely attached to the protagonist. The time scheme covers a thirteen-week radio ratings period. The story encompasses the worlds of radio and the sex industry, using South Florida settings to re-inforce character, plot and theme.

Açude do cais: uma proposta de aplicação de uma sequência de atividades didáticas em um contexto real

Currently it is expected that science education will enable a more comprehensive conception of the world and of the relationship between scientific knowledge, technology and society. Thus, we seek the science teaching attend around contexts related to science, technology and society (STS). According CTS approaches, the science education should promote learning in the scientific, technological and social fields, from experienced real contexts, generating motivation to students, offering them tools to work as scientifically literate citizens. For this, it becomes crucial to resort to innovative activities and the various methodologies and appropriate teaching materials, and there is a lack of this perspective in general basic education, which drives the practice of an STS approach. Therefore, the aim of this research is the production of an instructional sequence for the exploration of the theme: "The quality of the water in the municipality of Cuité-PB," according to focus CTS in the 2nd year of high school. The choice of this topic is due to the problem caused by the quality of water in this municipality, with the concern to address an issue that came to work the critical / reflective understanding of a real context, in order to sensitize students to the importance of scientific / technological knowledge. The selection criteria of STS subjects were also observed. In this research the materials were produced and applied by the teacher / researcher. For data collection we used the observation and analysis of student records. The results were encouraging in the sense of participation, motivation and skill acquisition. This research contributes to the teaching of science with a focus STS, as well as encourage the use of perspective in new contexts with real questioning

O corpo em Michel Onfray

This inquiry looks it to think of the body through Hedonistic Philosophy of Michel Onfray. To compose his written, the philosopher launches strong criticism to the asceticism (constituted by the philosophical tradition and by the monoteístas religions), accusing it of despise the body and the pleasure of his teachings, anchored by the Christian moral. However, his philosophy defends the hedonismo and emphasizes the pleasure as an ethical / moral beginning, which aims the other as much as the individual himself, elevating the body and his potentialities through five senses. The contemplated philosophy allowed us think on the Physical Education, area wich, traditionally, was tied to the execution of disciplinary tasks of the body, disregarding the sensibility of his pedagogic practice. In this scenery, there is an ideal of body that attacks us daily, intensified by this area, which turns in the ethical problem of the body. From then, we launch our questions: From Michel Onfray philosophy, how the body shapes between the asceticism and the hedonismo?, What are the possible implications for the Physical Education? Ruled in the method of the Hedonistic Materialism, proposed by Michel Onfray, we think about this inquiry on two central points that contemplate our categories of study to be known: Glorious body and Loose living Body. We resort to Michel Onfray´s books, as well as, interviews given by the author in magazines / newspapers to help in our inquiry intentions. For the approach ethics / esthetics in the Physical Education, we use the texts of Silvino Santin and Hugo Lovisolo. Besides, we brought the cinema dialog. We classify this inquiry as a true Odyssey that transported us to unknown places and as a return to other already visited. This travel provided teachings that will help our wisdom on how survive the life, alerting us for the worship to the body like the cultivation of ourselves, and not as search of reaching physical standards stipulated by the society in force.

"Quem sou eu?": uma (re)construção do sujeito por meio da narrativa autobiográfica - proposta didática com um olhar nas interações em sala de aula

As we are aware, the classroom is emerging as a continuous build learning experiences and environment, however, for students also it functions as a place also to be due to socializing with friends. However, not always these elements complement each other, so as harmoniously as we are aware that there are many difficulties, both in the act of learning as in interpersonal relations between them. From this, we understand that it is for the school to seek ways to contemplate such issues so that they feel inserted both with regard to this learning as well as being able to interact with themselves and with others, in a participatory manner, to live well socially. Thus, we find ourselves facing a similar situation with a 9th grade class where the students had certain limitations to have a good relationship with one another, causing thus problems in learning. On the other hand, this difficulty as affectively interact with each other, also, was increased by the difficulty that some students had to speak for themselves and to show their feelings and emotions, getting even more difficult this interaction at school. Thus, we found ourselves obliged to act immediately and need to bring about change in this picture. So it came out the idea of the application of an intervening action which started taking shapefrom a pedagogical project that we developed in other classes in previous years, this time adapted to the situation experienced by the group. The project, framed in the qualitative research and characterized from the action research approach took shape, and elected as its main objective to seek possible alternatives to develop the communicative competence of students, which is why we invest in exercise oral communication (speaking and listening) in order to promote the use of language, the interpersonal involvement facilitating thus their participation both in the classroom and in social life. To fulfill this goal, we set out to develop a didactic book whose support materialized through the autobiographical narrative (molded in writing production) and worked along a structured instructional sequence in three distinctstages that dialogued with each other. Therefore, we base our study from the socio-historical conception and dialogue proposed by Bakhtin in line with the sociodiscursivo interactionism of Bronckart and resort to other scholars as Dolz and Schneuwly, Marcuschi among others. The development of all stages of the project not only has had an immediate effect on what we proposed ourselves as also yielded us very gratifying moments reinforcing to us that the classroom environment goes far beyond the fact ministering content. And that work with orality, with views on affective interaction of these students resulted in a project, so to speak, exciting.

O teatro de Elias Canetti em diálogo com a pós-modernidade

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyse the dramaturgic work of the Bulgarian author Elias Canetti, composed by the plays The Wedding, Comedy of Vanity and Their Days are Numbered, seeking to comprehend how the contemporary critic theories act on his trilogy, making a dialogue with theoretical references which may justify its approaching to the postmodernism. In this perspective, the theories by Jean-François Lyotard, Fredric Jameson and Jürgen Habermas contribute for a better comprehension of the postmodernity phenomenon. Undertaking Canetti’s notes and theatre with the philosophical concepts of Adorno’s negative aesthetics, we realise there is a space to reflect upon the theories which befell, like Foucault’s power relations in Micro-physics of Power and the discourses of resistance and deterritorialisation developed by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateau and Anti-Oedipus. Even though Canetti’s plays were written between 1932 and 1956, all of them show a strong critic against modernism, and their characteristics did not help their recognition by the critics, which resulted in a rediscovery of Canetti’s plays after the author won the Nobel Prize in 1981.

Luís da Câmara Cascudo prefaciador

Presenting a reading of prefaces written by Luís da Câmara Cascudo, related to literary and non-literary books from the early 20TH century (1921-1984), is the goal of this thesis. Considering the word in its meaning: "Latin praefatio, the action of speaking in the commencement. Synonym for 'prologue ', in the sense of text that precedes or introduces a work" (MOISÉS, 1999, p.416). In this research, a preface is understood as the text written and published with the intent to provide information to facilitate reading and/or understanding of the work to which it refers, regardless it is set at initial pages, when it is named as „prolog‟, „letter to the reader‟, „proem‟, „prelude‟, „preamble, forewords, summary, etc., or when only appears in the last pages of the book and turns to be named as „afterword‟. It is a qualitative research, with a bibliographic and interpretive feature, considering that part of the analysis of texts employs the inductive method, focuses on the depth of understanding that the researcher has on the researched object. For the study of this genre we recourse to Sales (2003), Teles (1986; 1989; 2010), Clemente (1986) and Candido (2005); as for the notion of tradition, we resort to Eliot (1997) and Candido (1997; 1980). The set of prefaces is a wide material for research that will allow scholars of Brazilian culture to continue work started by Luís da Câmara Cascudo, still in 1921, when he started his career as a prefacer.

Luís da Câmara Cascudo prefaciador

Presenting a reading of prefaces written by Luís da Câmara Cascudo, related to literary and non-literary books from the early 20TH century (1921-1984), is the goal of this thesis. Considering the word in its meaning: "Latin praefatio, the action of speaking in the commencement. Synonym for 'prologue ', in the sense of text that precedes or introduces a work" (MOISÉS, 1999, p.416). In this research, a preface is understood as the text written and published with the intent to provide information to facilitate reading and/or understanding of the work to which it refers, regardless it is set at initial pages, when it is named as „prolog‟, „letter to the reader‟, „proem‟, „prelude‟, „preamble, forewords, summary, etc., or when only appears in the last pages of the book and turns to be named as „afterword‟. It is a qualitative research, with a bibliographic and interpretive feature, considering that part of the analysis of texts employs the inductive method, focuses on the depth of understanding that the researcher has on the researched object. For the study of this genre we recourse to Sales (2003), Teles (1986; 1989; 2010), Clemente (1986) and Candido (2005); as for the notion of tradition, we resort to Eliot (1997) and Candido (1997; 1980). The set of prefaces is a wide material for research that will allow scholars of Brazilian culture to continue work started by Luís da Câmara Cascudo, still in 1921, when he started his career as a prefacer.

As relações de interação e integração entre cérebro, corpo-propriamente-dito e meio-ambiente na constituição da mente consciente

This dissertation will be marked by our proposal to hold a theoretical perspective to the classical mind-body problem, and more precisely for the defense of the idea that consciousness (or conscious mind) emerges from the interaction and integration relationships between body proper, brain and environment. This purpose will lead us to assume an alternative position with respect to the more traditional perspectives to the mind-body problem, ie an alternative perspective not only in relation to the dualistics forms of mind-body, but also in regards to the reductive physicalists, which usually reduces mind to brain. Aiming to support a position that both avoid the idea that mind and body are distinct substances and the theory that the brain explains the consciousness in its totality, we will dedicate an important part of this work to explain how the structure of consciousness depends significantly of the body proper and the bodily information mechanisms as well as the environment and the physiological mechanisms through which we place ourselves in space, in front of us and the other bodies (organic and inorganic). Given that the relationship between brain, body and environment involves different mental levels — from the most primitive and unconscious mental mechanisms until conscious and sophisticated levels — we will proceed to the task of assuming a model to explain in what sense these levels contribute to that our instincts and the most sophisticated dimensions of our mental life are part of the one and the same process, which is why we will structure our argument from the ideia that mind, self, and consciousness are the different hierarchical levels which make up the totality of our psychic life and therefore organic one. Imbued with this conceptual approach, we will advance to the focus of this work, namely the reasons that will lead us to give a prominent role to the body proper and the environment in the constitution of the conscious mind, or even the reasons that will lead us to defend the thesis according to which we are embodied and situated, as well as the reasons that will lead us to reject the theoretical positions that dichotomize man and world. In order to support the thesis that we are embodied and situated, and therefore with the purpose of overcoming the theoretical paradigms that dichotomize consciousness and world, we will turn out to the authors and the perspectives we believe to be more successful in this endeavor, including the phenomenological approaches to bodily self-consciousness, the enactivists perspectives and the researches dedicated to mapping the interaction and integration relationships between brain, body and environment. To achieve our goals, the dissertation will be divided into two chapters: the first chapter will emphasize in what way the structuring of consciousness depends on the body proper and the environment, while in the second chapter we will resort to the phenomenological dimensions of bodily self-consciousness, emphasizing the bodily information channels that provide us the immediate certainty, in a first person perspective, that the self is bodily in a non-metaphorical sense.