Wesley S. Roehl’s research while affiliated with Temple University and other places

As e-tourism scholars advance innovative research on the use and study of artificially intelligent systems, it is important to reflect on how well we are advancing transformative philosophies which ask that emerging fields consider issues of ethics, power, and bias. We conduct a scoping study of review papers published between 2015–2021 to understand the extent to which ethical and social bias issues are identified and treated in AI research in tourism. Results suggest that the potential for ethical and bias issues in AI in tourism is high, but identification and treatment of these issues by tourism researchers is weak. We summarize key implications of this trend and offer suggestions for pursuing a research agenda which increasingly identifies and treats issues of ethics and bias when advancing research on artificial intelligence (AI) in tourism.

This paper examines how conformity and differentiation impacts hotel performance. It evaluates strategic outcomes of hotel entrepreneurs’ choice of geographic location, capacity, and quality. Using instrumental variable (IV) estimation, we find that the distribution of similar competitors affects hotel performance and performance risk. Specifically, results show that choosing a similar capacity (conformity) to competitors may lead to higher and more stable performance. The results also reveal that locating geographically close to competitors or choosing a similar quality of product to competitors (both conformity strategies) can increase hotel performance but also increases performance risk. Additionally, when mixing conformity and differentiation strategies in terms of location, capacity, and quality selection, a higher dispersion of differentiation (i.e., highly differentiated in one product dimension while conforming to others in all remaining product dimensions) increases both performance and performance risk. Findings of this study can aid entrepreneurs in improving their strategic decisions and product positioning.

Hotels often must manage unexpected external shocks, such as crises, which can threaten the sustained profitability and viability of the firms. While the literature suggests that hotels’ crisis management capabilities can be improved by evaluating the efficacy of crisis-coping strategies used for a past crisis, a limited number of empirical studies have focused on such assessment. Anchored from crisis management perspectives, this study examines the effect of a hotels’ common crisis-coping strategy—room rate discounts—on alleviating cumulative performance loss and on accelerating the speed of performance recovery. By applying a fixed effects spatial panel to the property-level performance data in a U.S. lodging market, we find 1) that discounting room rates may alleviate cumulative occupancy loss precipitated by a crisis but do not reduce cumulative RevPAR loss, and 2)that discounting may delay both occupancy and RevPAR recovery times. Managerial implications and suggestions for future studies are discussed with the study’s findings.

It is generally expected that competitors do not react uniformly in response to a cut in price. Although the literature suggests that firms are heterogeneous in their price responses, little empirical research has examined how competitors actually respond. This study investigates how hotels strategically respond to competitors’ room rate decisions through the lens of the firm dyad. Through an empirical analysis using a fixed effect spatial panel, we find 1) that smaller hotels reduce their room rates following price cuts of larger hotels, while the larger hotels are unaffected by discounts of smaller hotels, 2) that chain and independent hotels are interdependent in their price decisions, and 3) that older hotels discount room rates when their newer competitors cut prices while price cuts by older hotels are not associated with price-cutting by newer properties. Implications for practitioners and suggestions for future research are discussed along with findings of the study.

Dual-branding is drawing interest in the industry because it offers cost and operational efficiencies. However, when two branded hotels are located on the same property, consumer evaluation toward one brand might be affected by the other brand. This study examines the brand anchoring effect on customers’ willingness-to-pay and booking intention and whether the disclosure of such information affects consumer evaluations. By analyzing responses from 309 US consumers collected from a web-based survey service, we find no anchoring effect at the booking stage regardless of the level of disclosure but information disclosure significantly affects consumers’ perceived fairness when consumers learn the dual-branding status. The results suggest that while dual-branding and disclosure of such information do not affect consumer evaluation at the booking stage, insufficient disclosure of the dual-branding status would negatively affect perceived fairness, which could negatively affect the company in the long term.

Purpose Few papers address innovation activities among tourism entities. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the extent to which the theoretical framework of network orchestration can explain the system of relations underlying roles and behaviors of tourism actors in collaborative innovation settings. Design/methodology/approach Using interview data collected from destination management organizations and their destination partners within two polar-sampled North American destinations, this study identifies relationships which underlie the behaviors of tourism and hospitality actors engaged in collaborative innovative activities. To understand these relationships, this study abductively imposes the emergent theoretical framework of network orchestration and offers practical implications for conducting successful innovation among tourism collaborators. Findings First, orchestration of knowledge mobility processes in collaborative innovation settings is associated with trust, perceived fairness and the search for experts within the network. Second, orchestration of innovation appropriability processes is associated with forging shared ownership and knowledge exchange with “dissimilar” partners. Third, orchestration of network stability processes is associated with enhancing the reputation of influential actors within the tourism destination, and shared visioning of future innovation outcomes. Originality/value This paper contributes to the collaborative innovation landscape by testing the emerging theoretical framework of network orchestration and proposing practical implications for hospitality and tourism actors engaged in innovative activities. The research further demonstrates the value of abductive reasoning for elucidating theory from interview evidence and proposes a model for future studies on collaborative innovation networks.

To better understand the location patterns of different types of restaurants across the United States, we investigate the relationship between neighborhood sociodemographic characteristics and restaurant location using a unique data set from 2013 covering 30,772 U.S. zip codes. The estimation results from negative binomial regression models confirm the significant impacts of various sociodemographic factors (e.g., population density, median age, median household income, average household size, educational attainment, gender distribution, housing tenure, neighborhood urbanization) on restaurant location. We also project future restaurant growth potential based on model estimates and projected changes in sociodemographic characteristics by 2020. The results are analyzed, and several metropolitan areas in Texas and Florida are identified as having high potential for growth. Lastly, implications are provided for restaurant real estate practitioners.

It is a common belief that businesses performance should not be evaluated by immediate fiscal returns, but rather based on an extended time horizon. While the literature implies that pricing decisions may exert lagged as well as contemporaneous effects on performance, a limited number of empirical studies have focused on such effects. The current study investigates effects of idiosyncratic price movements on short-run and long-run hotel performance, where idiosyncratic price movements refer to the changes in individual hotels’ room rates unexplained by price competition, product differentiation, and market conditions. By analyzing spatial panel data from the Houston lodging market between 2005 and 2014, we find that idiosyncratic price movements enhance hotel performance in the short-run and that adverse effects followed in the long-run. Findings of the study and implications for practitioners are discussed along with suggestions for future research.