Online Pricing Practice for Hotel Room Rates in China: The Case of Shanghai

Travel websites that enable hotel room reservations have created unprecedented business opportunities. However, they have also overloaded hotel customers with information. This situation is particularly true of China, an emerging country with the largest population in the world and the most promising growth prospect in tourism. This study investigated the room-rate pricing practice of five online distribution channels, measured by the lowest available rates. These online channels priced hotels of different categories in Shanghai, China’s largest city. Empirical findings indicated that local websites offered lower room rates than international websites for the selected hotels in different categories. Specifically, Chinatravel consistently offered the lowest room rates for the selected hotels.

NBFO (National Black Feminist Organization) Black Caucus meeting in hotel room during NOW conference

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Fungal contamination in one hotel room: does carpet coating in the floor enhance fungal contamination?

Interest in bioaerosol exposure has increased significantly because it is now recognized that exposure to fungal agents is associated with a wide range of adverse health effects with a major impact on public health. Fungi are able to grow on almost all natural and synthetic materials, especially if they are hygroscopic or wet. Aim of the study: Several materials used indoors can contribute to enhance fungal contamination indoors. This study intended to understand the carpet influence on fungal contamination when used in the floor of a hotel room.

Fungal contamination in one hotel room: Does carpet coating in the floor enhance fungal contamination?

Study developed in order to know the carpet influence when used in the floor of a hotel room. Twelve air samples of 250L (six in a room with carpet and six more in a room with wood floor) were collected through an impaction method with a flow rate of 140 L/min onto malt extract agar (MEA) supplemented with chloramphenicol (0.05%), using the Millipore air Tester (Millipore), during cleaning activities. Outdoor sample was also performed to be used as a reference. Surface samples from floor and desks, taken at the same time, were collected by the swabbing method. to 7 days. Besides fungal contamination, we also assessed particulate matter contamination in both rooms during the same cleaning tasks. In the analyzed sur- faces, isolates belonging to Aspergillus fumigatus complex were the only fungi found in the carpeted room, whereas in the other room we found Penicllium sp. (63.6%) and Aspergillus sp. (13.6%) as the most frequent genera. In the case of particles the room with carpet obtained significant higher values for both metrics (PMC and PNC), showing that carpet may has influence on particles’ contamination of the room.

Bacterial contamination in hotel rooms during the cleaning activity

Introduction - Some studies point to human activities as one of the responsible for most bacterial concentration. However, there is no information regarding bacteria contamination in hotel room during the cleaning activity. Aim of the study - This study aims to assess and characterize the occupational exposure of bacterial contamination in hotel rooms, more precisely in a room with carpet floor and another room without carpet, during the cheaning activity.

Comedy hints at the tragedy beneath [REVIEW]

THE Little Dog Laughed. By Douglas Carter Beane. Queensland Theatre Company. Cremorne Theatre, Brisbane. February 11. DOUGLAS Carter Beane's The Little Dog Laughed is a comedy about truth and its consequences. Set mainly in New York, the story follows film star Mitchell Green's developing relationship with Alex, a rentboy he calls one night while drunk and lonely in a hotel room. Scenes in which Mitchell and Alex test the strength of something they seem to have found together are punctuated by monologues from Mitchell's agent Diane and Alex's ex-girlfriend Ellen. We start to see glimpses of their separate lives, what their shared life might look like and, eventually, a crisis that brings all four characters together in the pursuit of a somewhat conflicted set of ideas about what happiness is and what it takes to be happy.

Public Economics and the Assessment of Tourism Developments and Policies

Public economics covers both topics in welfare economic of social (as opposed to private) interest and aspects of public finance. This chapter considers the application of two methods of social economic evaluation of tourist developments, namely, social cost-benefit analysis and economic impact analysis. The role of social cost-benefit analysis in the assessment of tourism is illustrated by its application to the evaluation of inbound tourism. This is followed by a discussion of taxes on tourism and subsidies to promote it. The principle focus is on hotel room taxes. The analysis of taxes on tourism involves both public finance and welfare economics issues. The scope for and desirability of applying the user-pays principle to tourism is then examined.

AMO: Ateliê Móvel Oficial

Este texto é uma fabulação que cumpre papel de revelar um processo de trabalho em arte ao longo de dois anos. Trata-se de um percurso teórico-poético percorrido a partir da descoberta/invenção de um ateliê de criação em meio a minha residência. Um quadrado de 2x2 metros demarcado por sobreposição = fita amarela. Instaurado em divergentes contextos paisagísticos = casa, quarto de hotel, estúdio de dança, galeria de arte, palco, cidade. Trata de habitar os mesmos friccionando esfera de vivência pessoal e sítio específico de acontecimento. No texto, tem lugar reflexões pessoais a partir do trabalho, articulada a outros artistas (como Lygia Clark, Angel e Klauss Vianna, Antonin Artaud, Yves Klein, Min Tanaka, Tadashi Endo) e teóricos (dentre eles Hannah Arendt e Michel Foucault), compondo diferentes tons de fala produzidos ao longo desse período de trabalho

“How Can a Woman Who Has Been Raped Be Believed?”: Andrea Dworkin, Sexual Violence and the Ethics of Belief

In June 2000, Andrea Dworkin, an American feminist activist and author, published an account of being raped in a Paris hotel room a year earlier. The story was met with widespread disbelief, including from feminist readers. This article explores the reasons for this disbelief, asking how and why narratives of rape are granted – or denied – truth status by their readers. The article argues for understanding the conferral of belief as a narrative transaction involving the actions of both narrator and reader. It posits that Dworkin was widely seen as an unreliable narrator but argues that for ideologically charged narratives such as rape narratives judgements of reliability and belief inevitably draw upon the normative standpoint of the reader. I suggest that there are opposing criteria for establishing the truth of rape narratives; a ‘factual’ or legal model, which sees rape narratives as requiring scrutiny, and an ‘experiential’ model, located within certain strands of feminist politics, which emphasises the ethical importance of believing women’s narratives. The article finishes with a consideration of the place of belief within an ethics of reading and reception of rape narratives.

Mortuaires suivi de La mort-vivance comme motif d'écriture dans Aurélia de Gérard de Nerval

Dans Mortuaires, une pièce de théâtre en fragments, deux soeurs se rencontrent dans une chambre d'hôtel; Jiji, la plus vieille, vient de retrouver les cendres de leur mère, morte dix ans auparavant; elle voudrait enterrer l'urne définitivement, alors que la plus jeune, Ge, tient à la garder près d'elle. Ce sera l'occasion pour les soeurs de faire valoir leur propre désir et de célébrer la morte, de reprendre contact avec ce qui reste d'elle dans leur mémoire. Le texte se présente sous forme de mini-scènes sans continuité, bien qu’étant toutes reliées, comme un dialogue interrompu, une cérémonie rejouant la mise en pièces du corps. La fragmentation de la mémoire constitue le projet esthétique de la pièce, dont le ressort dramatique tourne autour du souvenir endeuillé et du corps mort. La mort-vivance comme motif d'écriture dans « Aurélia » de Gérard de Nerval est un essai portant sur le rapport qu'entretient Nerval avec les morts dans le récit, ceux-ci constituant son moteur d'écriture. Au moyen de théories telles que la psychanalyse (Freud, Jackson), la sociologie (Muray) et la théorie de la lecture (Picard), il sera démontré que Nerval, dans Aurélia, se fait spirite en faisant revenir les morts au moyen du rêve. L'écriture se pose comme un lieu de rencontre entre les vivants et les morts, un espace dans lequel chacun doit se faire mort-vivant pour aller retrouver l'autre. Les frontières se brouillent et il devient difficile pour Nerval, ainsi que pour le lecteur, de distinguer le rêve de la réalité.

Alasdair Gray`s 1982 Janine (1984): a postmodernist scottish novel

Alasdair Gray is now an established figure in the Scottish literary scene and has numerous claims to be considered an important voice writing in English. First Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981) and then 1982 Janine (1984) contributed to the recognition of Gray as one of the founding fathers of the new Scottish writing and as a figure of importance in international contemporary fiction due to his innovative, experimental and postmodernist novels. As the title of this dissertation - “Alasdair Gray’s 1982 Janine (1984): A Postmodernist Scottish Novel” - suggests, it aims at analysing the author’s second novel, 1982 Janine (1984), in a thematic and formal perspective, in order to justify the choice of the terms - Postmodernist and Scottish - to classify this novel. 1982 Janine projects a world through Jock McLeish’s mind and is a powerful stream-of-consciousness narrative. Jock is an alcoholic who lives a personal crisis and, therefore, tries to escape from his depressing reality through sexual fantasies and political diatribes. During a single night in a Scottish hotel room, he drinks and dreams, and spends the whole night alone with his fantasies and fears, his memories and hopes. In Chapter 11, the most daring experimental section of the novel, Jock attempts to commit suicide by taking an overdose of tablets with alcohol but fails. Following this, he decides to review his life and make for a new beginning; the novel thus closing with an optimistic note. Also, the narrative is based on a constant interweaving of sex fantasy with political satire, that is, it is through his protagonist that Gray manages to convey the state of Scotland as well as the concerns and aspirations of the Scottish people and then, proceed to a political and social critique. This dissertation appears structured in three chapters. In Chapter I - “Alasdair Gray: A Postmodernist Scottish Writer” - I present Gray as a powerful postmodernist writer who also sees himself as a Scottish author, and more particularly as a Glaswegian, who concentrates on Scottish subject matter in his literary work. In a first section, I offer a brief survey of the Scottish literary scene from the fourteenth to the twentieth century, in order to understand Gray’s choice of setting and themes and to check his influence or indebtedness to previous Scottish authors. As 1982 Janine is also a good example of selfconscious experimental writing, in a second section, I present various seminal fictional works that introduced and developed experimentalism in British fiction, in order to evaluate the influence of modernist developments in form and technique on recent experimental writing. The third section consists of an introduction to Gray’s work for he is not only a novelist, but also an artist, a playwright, a poet, an activist and a scholar. Chapter II - “Postmodernist Features in 1982 Janine” - aims at listing and examining the postmodernist devices that the novel includes, in what content and form are concerned. On the one hand, the use of a developed type of the modernist stream of consciousness, the presence of a protagonist who feels entrapped in a specific system, the quest for freedom, the incoherence and fragmentation of time, the nonchronological order of the narrative, the blending of fantasy and “reality”, as well as the importance of the Scottish material are definitely current aspects within postmodernist literature that can be found in Gray’s novel. On the other hand, the handling of literary self-conscious devices, such as typographical experimentation, presence of metafiction and intertextuality, and inclusion of an Epilogue, are likewise among recurrent postmodernist features. As the title - “A Narratological Analysis of 1982 Janine” - evidences, Chapter III offers a description of the mechanics of the narrative and its functioning in order to better understand the narrative technique of postmodernist fiction. This study is based primarily on Gérard Genette’s theoretical framework and terminology, presented in Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, an analytical tool that allows me to provide a more objective and scientific analysis. Hence, I follow the Genettian division of narrative discourse in Time, Mood and Voice while examining the novel. Finally, I proceed to a description of the intertextual relationships 1982 Janine establishes with other texts.

GENIAL Design: A System for Improving Guest Satisfaction with Hospitality Design

Over the past decades, hospitality design has lost sight of its basic goals of providing the guest with safe, pleasant, convenient accommodations and providing the owner with a facility which can be operated efficiently and profitably over the life of the structure. The author offers the acronym GE- NIAL, Guest, Environment, Needs, Interiors, Accessibility, and Long-term, as a means of keeping owners, developers, managers, and designers aware of the desired goals of the facility throughout its design and development. The author believes that the use of this acronym will promulgate de- signs more attuned to guest and owner/operator needs, resulting in in- creased guest satisfaction and increased profitability.

Room for improvement : hotel giant resorts to Six Sigma to improve operations

Six Sigma provides a framework for quality improvement and business excellence. Introduced in the 1980s in manufacturing, the concept of Six Sigma has gained popularity in service organizations. After initial success in healthcare and banking, Six Sigma has gradually gained traction in other types of service industries, including hotels and lodging. Starwood Hotels and Resorts was the first hospitality giant to embrace Six Sigma. In 2001, Starwood adopted the method to develop innovative, customer-focused solutions and to transfer these solutions throughout the global organization. To analyze Starwood's use of Six Sigma, the authors collected data from articles, interviews, presentations and speeches published in magazines, newspapers and Web sites. This provided details to corroborate information, and they also made inferences from these sources. Financial metrics can explain the success of Six Sigma in any organization. There was no shortage of examples of Starwood's success resulting from Six Sigma project metrics uncovered during the research.

Bath : about and round about the "Queen City" : specially compiled for the Grand Pump Room Hotel, Bath.

Mode of access: Internet.