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This paper aims to analyze how a real-time COVID-19 pandemic is impacting Macao’s hospitality industry, and illustrates why lessons from COVID-19 are an opportunity for further development for the city.

This case study highlights local government and hospitality industry responses to a real-time crisis. Academic studies, media news and reports have been collected to illustrate why the Macao’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic could be taken as a city case study example. Previous crisis experience provided guidance to Macao’s success in this pandemic.

Macao has succeeded in managing the adverse effects of COVID-19, illustrating the coexistence of challenges and opportunities from experiencing the epidemic. With no COVID-19 cases in the city, cross-border tourism with China resumed in September. Macao is undeniably over reliant on the gambling industry to provide tax income and employment, creating an unbalanced industrial structure. However, the Chinese and Macao Governments, the hospitality industry and other stakeholders, have presented high levels of engagement, unity and rational courses of action during the pandemic. This paper examines Macao’s two orientations – intra and post-coronavirus – which are shown to be instrumental in the city’s future tourism development.

As the paper is Macao-specific, some generalization may not be applicable. The lessons and strategies proposed in the paper may only be theoretically and temporarily workable in this real-time situation. However, as COVID-19 will remain for some time globally, the efficacy of the findings justifies further ongoing analysis and application beyond Macao.

The case offers a first-hand analysis on the governance of Macao to negate the impacts of COVID-19, enabling a comprehensive review on the practices and policies that were effective during the virus outbreak. There is reference for researchers and practitioners in the public policy domain, and particularly in the area of crisis management and destination resilience. The result is worthy of future exploration on how the mechanism of centralized government facilitates risk management, and the rebuilding of a tourism economy in a crisis context, comparing this to other national systems.

This study aims to introduce a conceptual framework for service robot (SR) acceptance by customers, employees and policymakers – a framework to help determine corporate decision-making on SR workplace integration.

This study reviews SR adoption literature within the tourism and hospitality industry. These SRs may have some level of artificial intelligence capability and possibly anthropomorphic (e.g. humanoid) or zoomorphic (e.g. animal-like) features, contingent on task and design choices. The study then identifies factors that potentially influence employee and consumer acceptance and experiences of SR, as well as policy and compliance factors and all elements of the corporate decision-making process concerning SR adoption in the hospitality setting.

This paper reviews the obstacles and benefits of SR adoption in the hospitality industry based on employee, consumer and public policy considerations.

SRs are increasingly deployed within hospitality and tourism settings. Future studies should further explore the value-adding functions of SRs implemented in existing hospitality operations.

Hospitality and tourism industry practitioners should integrate the dimensions in the conceptual framework to make fully informed decisions on SR adoption.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to provide a holistic SR adoption framework offering theoretical and practical implications for ongoing SR research and implementation.

Restaurants are challenged to secure attraction attributes that provide motives, satisfaction and experiences for guests. The social interaction between server and guest can provide. Our case study aims to examine the perspectives of hospitality executives towards showmanship and server performances in restaurants to enhance servicescape and elevate guest experiences.

A literature review examined employee showmanship as part of the cocreation of gastronomic experiences and servicescape. Additional data were obtained from semi-structured interviews with 15 hospitality executives affiliated with Macao’s integrated resorts (IRs), and the information was examined using thematic analysis.

The study outcomes showed management support for showmanship performed by servers or chefs in cocreating immersive memorable dining experiences and social media and user-generated content (UGC). This was perceived to distinguish a restaurant from the competition. However, server talent and showmanship interaction with guests must be well managed, and bundled with additional restaurant servicescape attributes.

The comments from hospitality management provide key insights towards implementing and maintaining showmanship which will involve resource challenges including server artisan talent and restaurant design.

Server showmanship social interaction and value cocreation with guests are rarely discussed, although a key part of guest restaurant motivation and in creating an immersive experience. We address the limited understanding of hospitality management assessment towards developing showmanship, providing practical perspectives to assist restaurant and bar management to integrate and develop showmanship to enhance customer dining experiences.

This study aims to examine effects of the COVID-19-induced lockdown on turnover intentions (TI) for the hospitality retail sector.

This study reviews employee TI literature before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data for the present study were derived from a sample of 301 hospitality retail workers employed within the integrated resorts on The Cotai Strip, Macao. Data were analysed using structural equation modelling.

This study showed a significant positive relationship between job satisfaction (JS) and the two variables of workload and pay (WP) and company support (CS). Co-worker relationship did not influence JS. Furthermore, JS had a significant negative effect on employee TI. WP had the greatest influence on whether to leave the sector or not.

The suggested framework can assist hospitality retail management in developing an employee-retention strategy as the sector recovers from pandemic restrictions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to develop a TI framework for the hospitality retail sector during the pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is primarily to examine the impact of cultural background on image formation by looking at Macao's regional tourism destination image perceptions by its main tourist markets of China (PRC), Hong Kong and Taiwan. Other image formation components are explored within this context, such as the impact of travel behaviors, travel motives and sources of information on Macao's image.

A face‐to‐face survey (random sampling) was conducted in the departure areas of the international airports in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Taiwan (Kaohsiung). This uncovered perceptions of actual visitors and potential visitors to Macao, and allowed for only those with the ability to travel to be interviewed.

Multivariate analysis conducted on the data revealed significant differences between the Chinese travelers from the various cities on leading image perception attributes, travel behaviors, travel motives and influences of sources of information.

Cultural background, while recognized in the image research as an important component in destination image formation, has been rarely examined in tourism destination image studies with research conducted on one nationality or group of people based on specific demographic indicators (such as student, leisure or business traveler). The research reveals important implications for the successful positioning and branding of a destination targeting at various markets even within one nation or culture, and questioning overall effectiveness of future image research that proposes national marketing and promotional strategy based on one source group.

As competition continues to intensify within cities and regions for domestic and international travel, the paper shows that there is a need to design tailored marketing, promotion and public relations programs in order to optimize influence on specific travel segments.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the level of ethics and codes of responsible behaviour in Macao’s casino tourism industry given its global leadership position in gaming, with suggestions on a way forward toward ethical tourism integration.

The research examined the corporate mission statements of Macao’s casino concessionaires with regards to social message content as well as social outcomes to date within Macao’s various tourism stakeholders. Relevant literature on cross-sector social partnership was examined as a possible consideration for Macao’s tourism industry.

Despite generating the world’s largest gaming revenues and tourism revenue contribution to gross domestic product, there are limited codes of ethics and an agreed level of acceptable behaviour and responsibility throughout Macao’s tourism and hospitality industry. This is further amplified by Macao’s small landmass, limited workforce pool, increasing tourism arrivals and a vast dependency on imports, creating a constant battle for resources and added pressure on its community and natural environment.

There are possible conflicts between Western casino compliance issues within those of Chinese business cultural practices. It is suggested that greater appreciation of this cultural and community setting is required to realistically adopt ethical codes.

There has been limited discussion within Macao’s tourism industry on establishing a definition and scope for a code of ethics. Given the numbers participating and financial liquidity in Macao’s tourism system, the paper highlights the need for codes of ethics adoption, suggesting a cross-sector social partnership mechanism.

The case study outlines the strategic, marketing, and branding challenges faced by Gap, a brand within the Gap Inc. house of brands. The case contains a summary of Gap's history, which illustrates the driving forces behind Gap's previous growth, its status as an American iconic brand, and its struggle to stay relevant. This sets the stage for Gap's rebranding exercise, which included an attempt at changing their iconic logo. This case provides students with the opportunity to learn about brand life cycles and the implications of a logo change for brand equity, brand associations, and brand positioning.

This research is based on published sources.

The case can be used in courses in strategic brand management, retailing, fashion marketing, marketing communication, or corporate communication at the graduate or advanced undergraduate level. The case will be particularly useful for those who already understand branding and consumer behavior, but who may not have learned anything about rebranding or strategic brand management. It is not suitable for undergraduates who have not studied branding at all.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the precipitants of physical and psychological abuse of individuals with intellectual disabilities in order to understand why mistreatment continues to be prevalent. In particular, the importance of contributing factors were explored such as challenging behaviour and lack of staff training, in an attempt to prevent another “Winterbourne”.

A literature search using the search terms “Intellectual disability”, “learning disability”, “abuse”, “challenging behaviour” and “residential” was conducted. Articles were included using the criteria: adults with intellectual disabilities, concentration on neglect and physical abuse, abuse by staff members and articles written within the last 15 years. Using these criteria, a total of 19 articles were isolated. Additional articles were located through reference to citation lists. In total, 31 relevant articles were identified.

The majority of research agrees that a meaningful increase in risk of abuse does exist for individuals with intellectual disabilities. There is a lack of recent empirical evidence discussing the incidence of abuse, potential causes and the long-term impact of staff training in reducing the incidence of abuse. These gaps may be due to the subjective definition of abuse, the current “reactive” approach to abuse, the ability of perpetrators to hide mistreatment and difficulty in quantifying the difference that increased staff training has on performance. More research is required to adequately protect individuals with intellectual disabilities in the residential setting.

The paper highlights gaps in the current literature and identifies potential areas that could be improved in order to reduce the prevalence of abuse in residential care.

The reliance on teams in today’s work environment underscores the importance of understanding how teams function. To better understand teams, one must be able to measure team dynamics or interaction. The purpose of this chapter is to outline an unobtrusive approach to measuring team dynamics from verbal communications.

The basic premise of this approach is that the words we use provide insight into how we feel and think at any given time. The methodology described in this chapter employs a lexical analytic approach to examining team dynamics. To best accomplish this, we first identify the principal features or dimensions of teamwork and then we propose lexical measures that may map to these processes.

This approach can be employed to track team functioning over time “at a distance” without interrupting task performance.

This chapter describes an approach to measuring relevant teamwork dimensions through verbal content. This approach has the potential to give us direct, unobtrusive insight into the emotional and cognitive states of teams. It is original in its examination of how team dynamics can be indexed in speech.