《Routledge酒店连锁管理手册》评介

2017-08-15 00:56刘赵平
文景 2017年3期
关键词:手册连锁内容

刘赵平

(新加坡理工大学 新加坡 138683)

对于专业书籍,我根据喜欢程度把它们分为4类:第一类书籍是值得自己花钱买来阅读并长期收藏的。比如1994年出版的、何建民所著的《现代宾馆管理原理与实务》,它是我在南开大学旅游系读研究生时和同学们一致认为当时最好的中文酒店管理教材。再如,由康奈尔酒店管理学院的哈里森(Jeffrey S Harrison)和恩兹(Cathy A Enz)合著、由秦宇2007年组织翻译为中文的《旅游接待业战略管理:概念与案例》(

Hospitality Strategic Management

Concepts and Cases

),我在2012—2017年的6年中,一直用它作为香港理工大学酒店及旅游业管理学院与浙江大学旅游学院合办的双语硕士班“接待业战略管理”课的教材。它的基础理论框架部分简洁清晰,虽然已经出版10年了,仍不过时。第二类书是我会想方设法通过各种渠道借来阅读的。对这类书,我虽舍不得自费购买,但会向学校图书馆推荐购买。在教学研究中需要短期用到的、有一定参考价值的英文原版书,多属于这一类。第三类是根据书评或摘要来作出简单判断,能借到就看,借不到就算的。最后一类是觉得不值得在上面花任何时间的书。这本《Routledge酒店连锁管理手册》(以下简称《手册》),在我的分类体系中属于第二类。

这是一本手册类的书。我认为一本质量高的手册类书应该是这样的:它能提供有关某个主题的定义、分类、适用理论等基础知识,并勾画出相关研究的整体框架,包括构成版块、每个版块下的子课题及其相互关系;每个章节的具体内容都包含全面系统的历史文献综述和有启发性、指导性的未来研究方向指南;对每个题目从理论角度深入挖掘,且文字上通俗易懂。换句话说,手册类书应该是一本指导专题学术研究的入门类读物,是适合本科高年级学生、硕士研究生或者跨界的博士研究生在论文选题时使用的重要参考文献,其多数章节也可以用作研究生课程的专题阅读材料。之前我曾很认真地读过3本手册:《Blackwell战略管理手册》《Oxford创新管理手册》和《Blackwell创业学手册》,这3本书都基本符合以上特点。

这本《Routledge酒店连锁管理手册》具有以下几个优点:

第一,涉及的话题广泛、内容丰富。这本书分为酒店连锁的理论问题、酒店连锁的扩张、酒店连锁的战略与经营管理、单体酒店视角的相关问题、酒店连锁管理当前问题和未来展望等五大部分,共46章。读者从这本书中几乎可以找到关于酒店连锁管理方面的所有话题。

以《手册》中酒店连锁的战略与经营管理部分为例,其14章分别涉及酒店连锁的品牌管理、顾客体验管理、分销系统管理、定价策略及收益管理、服务质量管理、人力资源管理、信息系统管理、连锁经营的法律问题等内容。

第二,它从不同的角度探索性地讨论了有关酒店连锁经营的理论问题。例如,第1章是关于酒店连锁的定义。作者通过回顾以往具有代表性的几个定义,总结出这些定义中有关酒店连锁的共同特征,并以此为基础给出了自己关于酒店连锁的定义。《手册》中这个定义特别强调了“辨识度高的品牌”和“具有共同特征的产品”这两个核心要素,并特别指出,由同一家公司管理但使用不同品牌的酒店,属于同一业主但在产品、市场定位和目标客户等方面存在差异且使用不同品牌的酒店,都不属于酒店连锁的范畴。

再如,第3章对酒店业发展历史的回顾部分中把酒店业发展史划分为3个重要阶段,而以希尔顿酒店集团和假日酒店集团为代表的酒店连锁化经营,是第二阶段的一个典型特征。书中还重点强调了企业家在酒店业发展过程中的特殊作用,并介绍了Conrad Hilton、Cesar Ritz、William Waldorf Astor、John Jacob Astor IV、Kemmons Wilson、J Willard Marriott、Ernest Henderson、Robert Moore、Ray Schultz等一批西方酒店业发展史上的传奇人物。

这段内容很容易让我们联想到1991年出版的《世界旅馆•旅馆世界》和2001年出版的《世界著名饭店集团管理精要》两本书。张广瑞撰写的《世界旅馆•旅馆世界》一书,是当年在国内旅游和酒店管理专业学生中最流行的启蒙读物,很多酒店行业的高管都回忆过这本书对他们选择学习酒店管理专业和从事酒店管理工作所产生的巨大影响。事过多年,我依然清晰地记得第一次读到这本书时,对书中描写的各大国际酒店集团的向往和对酒店业几位传奇人物的崇拜之情。谷慧敏教授带领北京第二外国语学院的一批青年骨干教师撰著的《世界著名饭店集团管理精要》一书,提供了更新后的国内外18家著名饭店集团的管理案例资料,并增加了对饭店集团化趋势的探讨和预测以及对中国饭店集团的跨世纪发展的回顾与展望,影响了新一批的酒店管理专业的学生。

《手册》理论部分的其他章节还从经济收益和市场营销的角度强调了品牌对酒店连锁经营的重要作用和价值,总结了酒店连锁的战略环境和有关酒店连锁经营的理论模型,并分析了酒店连锁集团对目的地经济和社会文化的影响。这些内容为后面的部分章节提供了基本的理论支撑。

第三,对于个别主题的研究非常深入。《手册》的第二部分用了9章的篇幅对有关酒店连锁扩张的话题进行深入挖掘,内容分别涉及酒店连锁的国际化扩张、区位选择、扩张模式等。其中对扩张模式的主题研究尤其透彻,有关对外直接投资、管理合同、特许经营、营销联盟等几种扩张模式,都分别用独立的一章来讨论。其中第11章中关于指导扩张模式选择的交易成本理论和代理理论的分析、第12章中关于不同特许经营模式的比较、第13章中有关管理合同谈判要点的列举与解释、第14章中对营销联盟模式的利弊分析等内容,都值得我们认真阅读、深入学习。

第四,这本书的一些章节非常有新意,抓住了当前的部分热点问题。如第38章是关于酒店连锁集团和高等教育机构之间相互关系的主题。常见的高校和酒店连锁集团之间的合作形式包括酒店接受高校学生实习、赴高校开展校园招聘、设立奖学金、资助学校成立酒店管理学院、送员工去高校进修培训或使用高校提供的网络课程等。双方的友好合作可以促进高水平酒店管理人才的培养并推动形成共赢的局面:和高校维持良好关系的酒店集团可以较便利地招聘到高质量的员工,而酒店管理院校则可以通过和酒店连锁集团的合作给学生提供更多的就业机会,进而提升学校和专业的排名。

再如第45章,重点讨论了酒店行业如何应对新兴的商务休闲游(Bleisure)市场。商务休闲游,指商务旅游(business trips)和休闲旅游(leisure trips)相结合的新的旅游方式。随着可支配收入高、休闲时间短、出行频繁的千禧一代逐步成为旅游消费市场的主体,在商务旅行过程中同时加入短期的家庭度假渐渐成为一种消费时尚。这章内容重点讨论了“Bleisure”一族的消费特点,并列举出酒店业中较早关注这一市场的一些品牌。如提倡“Work hard,play hard”的雅高集团铂尔曼(Pullman)品牌;推出“提醒关机服务”(shut down calls)的詹姆斯酒店(James Hotel,位于美国芝加哥)鼓励商务客人从傍晚起关掉手机和电脑进入休闲状态;还有Q酒店(Qhotel),它允许商务出差人士带配偶和小孩共享其房间而不额外收费等。

第五,《手册》的其中两位主编来自保加利亚的一所大学,且此书的多数作者来自欧洲大陆非英语母语的国家,如匈牙利、意大利、土耳其、葡萄牙、瑞士、波兰、西班牙、荷兰、瑞典、奥地利等。以往我们接触的酒店管理类书籍,作者多来自以英语为母语的国家和地区(如美国、英国、加拿大、澳大利亚等),而这本《手册》为读者提供了非常规的新视角。

然而,这本书内容有46章之多,且由来自五大洲18个国家的68名学者共同完成,因为涉及话题较广、参与编写的人数较多,因此也存在一些缺点。

首先,选题和结构不够简洁、稍显杂乱。例如,基于单体酒店视角的第四部分似乎可以取消,其中的5章内容可以并入其他部分。第34章有关单体酒店如何选择连锁品牌的内容,可以和第二部分的第17章中连锁集团如何选取单体酒店的内容放在一起,以方便读者对照阅读。《手册》第一部分中的第7、第8两章讨论了连锁酒店对目的地经济社会文化的影响,但在内容上,和以往看到的这方面研究内容类似,并没有太多的新意。第二部分中有关酒店连锁的不同扩张模式部分,分别由来自北美洲、大洋洲、欧洲和南美洲等地的不同作者完成,各占一章,自成体系,虽涉及同一话题,但相互之间少了对话和呼应。另外这部分的每一章中都有关于影响扩张模式选择的经济、社会、文化和环境要素的内容,难免重复。

其次,这本书尝试建立酒店连锁管理理论体系的目标没能完全实现。上文提到,本书对酒店连锁经营作了明确而特别的定义(就是专指品牌层面的连锁经营,而非针对多品牌的酒店集团),并尝试以此为基础来构建理论框架。但后面各章的作者并未完全采纳第1章中主编所给出的定义,导致前后内容不完全统一。另外,第一部分中理论章节的内容几乎完全适用于其他类型的连锁经营企业,并没有总结出酒店连锁经营的特别之处。再有,作为一本《手册》,这本书对过去和现状的总结部分较强,但对未来研究的指导部分较弱。

最后,从立意、内容和文字等方面看,各章节水平参差不齐,有个别章节甚至较差。如:第10章有关连锁酒店国际化扩张的目的地选择的主题研究,选用的葡萄牙案例不具有典型性和代表性,因为全球300家最大的酒店连锁品牌中只有22家进入了这个国家。《手册》中有一章内容用的是十多年前的数据,而在另外一章,作者几乎把一家咨询公司几年前公开发布的报告简单地照搬到书里。

总的来说,作为一本指导酒店连锁管理专题研究的入门读物,这本《手册》还是合格的,推荐大家阅读。

P The Road to Prosperity:Tourism Informal Employment of The Tibetan―Research on the Employment Situation of the Tibetan Surrounding Qinghai Lake

GUO Wei / HUANG Weidong / KOU Min / LIAO Shufeng

(School of Tourism & Geography Science, Qindao University, Qingdao 266071, China)

Abstract:

The Chinese government pays much more attention all the time to the development of the province of Tibet and Qinghai, trying to increase the native’s income. In order to achieve this target, the central government must appropriate great financial subsidies each year to the local government of Tibet and Qinghai. So this development way is unsustainable. The suitable way to solve the problem is to increase the employment of Tibetans. The traditional paid – wage employment is not fit for Tibetans because of its characteristics of geographical environment and economical conditions and way of life and educational level. The paper aims to find a new answer to the present questions. First, the paper uses the official data to estimate the number of informal employment and tourism informal employment of Tibetans in Qinghai, pointing out the features of informal employment of tourism. On this basis,the paper takes advantage of the investigation to the Tibetans around Qinghai Lake,describing the categories, features and general principle of informal employment of tourism of Tibetans. The paper puts forward three hypotheses: firstly, tourism informal employment of Tibetans is fit for the economic conditions, geographical environment of Qinghai, Tibetan education level, cultural tradition and way of life. Secondly,tourism informal employment is the effective way to increase Tibetan income.Thirdly, informal employment can be much more easily developed in tourism industry in Qinghai at low costs. In the end, the paper gives some policy suggestions in detail which can do great help to the local government.

Keywords:

Tibetans; tourism; informal employment

P51 Study on Cruise Lines’ Environmental Behavior and Differences Based on FoEI Credit Rating

SUN Ruihong/ YE Xinliang/ XU Hong/ FENG Yu

(1. School of Management, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Shanghai 201620,China; 2. Shanghai Wusongkou Cruise Terminal Development Co. Ltd, Shanghai 201999,China; 3. College of Tourism and Service Management, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350,China; 4.School of Tourism, University of Adelaide, Adeliaide SA5000, Australia)

Abstract:

Cruise ships have generated lots of waste during their ocean sailing and daily operations and caused environmental pollutions, which will continue accumulating and increasing due to their long time operations in specifi c areas. Out of the external pressure and their own social responsibility, cruise lines have already adopted positive environmental behavior to reduce cruise pollution and impacts. In order to encourage and urge cruise lines to improve their operation, environmental behavior credit rating has been introduced into environmental management as an effective tool, in which the cruise environmental credit assessment carried out by international organizations "Friends of the Earth"( FoEI ) is of international influence. This article selectes the data of cruise environmental behavior credit rating from 2011-2016 Cruise Ship Report Card released and published by FoEI, analyzes cruise company's environmental performance, and finds that the environmental behavior of different cruise companies and typical cruise line’s environmental behavior in different regions were of great differences. The article notes the differences in business goals of cruise lines and the pursuit of shareholder value leads to differences in their environmental behavior, and differences in laws and regulations, ecological environment and economic development among countries and regions through which cruise ships sail has led to various environmental behavior of cruise ships in regional different regions. Finally, the paper suggestes that cruise lines should adapt themselves to improving their environment behavior and keep their efforts continuously and more consistently on the global scale. At the same time external forces such as the government's policy incentives, the broad participation of social organizations, the public's responsible consumption and fair commentary, will create a favorable atmosphere for cruise lines to improve their own environmental behavior and promote each other so as to establish a social governance structure geared towards environmental optimization.

Keywords:

business environmental behavior; environmental behavior credit rating; behavioral difference; cruise line

P65 China Outbound Tourism Research: A Literature Review

LIU Xiangyan/ JIANG Yiyi/ LYU Xingyang

(1. China Tourism Academy, Beijing 100005, China; 2. School of Business Administration,Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 611130, China)

Abstract:

The rapid development of China outbound tourism has attractedacademic attention in recent years. This article concludes the main streams of academic researcheson China outbound tourism. In the pool of academic articles published from 1994 to 2013,118 sample articles were eventually picked outaccording to their representativeness in research content. Altogether, these literatures are categorized into four research areas:China outbound tourism development overview, China outbound tourism market, China outbound travel industry, and government regulations & policy tendencies. Following this classification, articles in each area are studied respectively in detail, and then the main contents and under-studied issues are summarized. At last, theimplicationsfor future research are also put forward. Hopefully, it will shed some light to the related studies on China outbound tourism. As to the future studies, market studies will continue to be the largest branch. Since the government will maintain its important role in the development of China outbound tourism, studies on government regulations and policy tendencies will grow with the administrative practice. However, the development overview will be given less academic attention. The industry and enterprise studies are unlikely to thrive for its theoretical indistinctiveness.In general, the future research tends to be more specic through multidisciplinary approaches.

Keywords:

China outbound tourism; literature review; research discussions

P80 Retrospect and Prospect of the Research on Golden Week Holiday Tourism in China

Yang Man/ LIU Zehua/ Zhang Yu/ Zheng Yi/ Zhang Jinhe

(1. School of Geography & Ocean Science; 2. Human Geography Research Center,Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China)

Abstract:

In the past 15 years, Chinese scholars have made abundant achievements in the research of golden week holiday tourism. This study screened 1921 articles retrieved from CNKI and chose 61 high-level papers as research samples. Adopted bibliometric method, statistically analyzed the source of literature journals, research topics, annual trends,research methods, case studies and research contents, it was found that Chinese scholars’achievements in the research of golden week holiday tourism were mainly published on three kinds of periodicals: tourism, university journals and geography. “Tourism Tribune”,as an authority of China's tourism research journal, also paid the most attention on this field.Scholars mainly focused on three research fields: the sustainable development of holiday tourism, the influence of holiday system on tourism system, holiday tourism market and tourism flow research. The researches on sustainable development of golden week holiday tourism have had a decreasing trend and the influence of holiday system on tourism system,holiday tourism market and tourism flow researches have gradually increased in recent years. On the research methods, qualitative research papers inclined to reduce gradually while quantitative research papers increased gradually. Some of the qualitative research papers adopted normative analysis by establishing correlation index or theoretical model.In quantitative research, the main ways to collect data were the official channels and the questionnaire survey, and the Internet and the stock market also became the data source;the main analysis methods were index analysis, mathematical statistics analysis and model building. From the aspect of spatial scale, the case of empirical research was given priority to cities and scenic spots, followed by the national, provincial scale or multi-city regional scale;and the research emphasis also differed with different spatial scales. Overall, the results of this study can objectively reflect the current state of the research achievements of China’s golden week holiday tourism and has certain enlightening significance to such studies in China. In the future, it can be further explored from the following contents and points of view: the system design and improvement of holiday system; golden week holiday tourism research from the social, cultural and environmental aspects; strengthen the various types and all levels of tourism destination research; strengthen the research on the characteristics and prediction of holiday tourism flow; the research on outbound tourism flow in holiday,etc.

Keywords:

golden week; holiday tourism; review; enlightenment

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