Environmental impacts and certification: evidence from the Milan World Expo 2015

Purpose This study aims to examine residents’ perceptions of environmental impacts and certification for the Milan World Expo 2015 as well as their overall attitude toward the mega-event. Design/methodology/approach A survey of Milan residents based on a convenience sample led to 221 useable questionnaires. Findings Residents perceived that the Expo will have minimal negative and positive environmental impacts. A minority of residents were aware of the environmental certification of the event. The less agreeable residents were with the perceived negative environmental impacts of the event, the more agreeable they were that a certification of event sustainability should limit the damage to the natural environment. Residents’ perceptions of the certification were positively related to their overall attitude toward the event. Research limitations/implications The findings cannot be generalized to other mega-events but have several managerial implications in relation to the need for information provision to residents and better communication of the certification by event organizers and planners. Originality/value Despite rising concerns about environmental issues related to hosting mega-events, there is no research on perceptions of a certification of event sustainability by residents

Human resource development in the hotel industry of Mauritius:myth or reality?

The purpose of this study is to identify the role, importance and outcomes attributed to human resource development (HRD) by line managers in the Mauritian hotel industry. Data were collected through in-depth interviews from a purposive sample of 135 hotel line managers. A two-step procedure was followed to analyse data. First, thematic analysis identified key themes in the textual data. Second, the artificial neural software CATPAC was used to generate interrelationships among the themes. Results show that HRD is related to organisational success, service quality improvements, sharing of knowledge and improvements in operational efficiency. Four key outcomes of HRD were identified: improvements in staff attitude, better teamwork, enhanced productivity and better service delivery. The findings indicate the prevalence of a need-driven approach to HRD and the link between HRD and corporate strategy is not clear. Results have implications for organisational and destination competitiveness

Hemicrania continua with contralateral cranial autonomic features: a case report

BACKGROUND: Hemicrania continua is characterized by continuous strictly unilateral head pain with episodic exacerbations. Episodic exacerbations are associated with ipsilateral cranial autonomic features. CASE DESCRIPTION: We report a 24-year female with a 2-year history of continuous right-sided headache with superimposed exacerbations. Episodic exacerbations were associated with marked agitation and contralateral cranial autonomic features. The patient showed a complete response to indomethacin within 8 hours. DISCUSSION: The dichotomy of pain and autonomic features is in accordance with the concept about the possibility of two separate pathways for pain and autonomic features in trigeminal autonomic cephalalgias

TWITTER-BASED OPINION MINING FOR FLIGHT SERVICE UTILIZING MACHINE LEARNING

Twitter is one of the most prominent social networking platforms so far. Millions of users utilize Twitter to share their thoughts and views on various topics of interest every day resulting a huge amount of data. This data could be considered to have a rich source of useful information hidden inside. Using machine learning to this data may give rise to effective recommender frameworks for individuals to manage their lives in a much more convenient way. In this paper, we propose a machine learning approach to classify the passenger’s tweets regarding the airplane services to understand the pattern of emotions. We adopt Random Forest (RF) and Logistic Regression (LR) to classify each tweet into positive, negative and neutral sentiment. The evaluation of the collected real data demonstrates that these two methods are able to achieve an accuracy ≈80%

Modus Operandi of Crowd Workers : The Invisible Role of Microtask Work Environments

The ubiquity of the Internet and the widespread proliferation of electronic devices has resulted in flourishing microtask crowdsourcing marketplaces, such as Amazon MTurk. An aspect that has remained largely invisible in microtask crowdsourcing is that of work environments; defined as the hardware and software affordances at the disposal of crowd workers which are used to complete microtasks on crowdsourcing platforms. In this paper, we reveal the significant role of work environments in the shaping of crowd work. First, through a pilot study surveying the good and bad experiences workers had with UI elements in crowd work, we revealed the typical issues workers face. Based on these findings, we then deployed over 100 distinct microtasks on CrowdFlower, addressing workers in India and USA in two identical batches. These tasks emulate the good and bad UI element designs that characterize crowdsourcing microtasks. We recorded hardware specifics such as CPU speed and device type, apart from software specifics including the browsers used to complete tasks, operating systems on the device, and other properties that define the work environments of crowd workers. Our findings indicate that crowd workers are embedded in a variety of work environments which influence the quality of work produced. To confirm and validate our data-driven findings we then carried out semi-structured interviews with a sample of Indian and American crowd workers from this platform. Depending on the design of UI elements in microtasks, we found that some work environments are more suitable than others to support crowd workers. Based on our overall findings resulting from all the three studies, we introduce ModOp, a tool that helps to design crowdsourcing microtasks that are suitable for diverse crowd work environments. We empirically show that the use of ModOp results in reducing the cognitive load of workers, thereby improving their user experience without effecting the accuracy or task completion time

Positioning the city product as an international tourist destination: Evidence from South Africa

Increased competition among international tourism destinations has turned many countries to seek growth from destination branding and positioning strategies. The most popular type of destination of interest for positioning studies has been countries, followed by states and very few studies have focused on city products. This study aims at contributing to city marketing and positioning literature. The objectives of this study are two-fold: firstly to identify whether cognitive images of Cape Town are perceived differently from that of Johannesburg, Durban and Pretoria, and secondly, whether demographic and travelling characteristics have an impact on image perceptions. A systematic sample of international visitors was interviewed using the face-to-face method, which led to a response rate of 199 completed questionnaires. Correspondence analysis revealed that Cape Town was perceived to be similar to the other three cities on attributes such as service levels, variety of accommodation, and transport and infrastructure. The other three cities were rated worse than Cape Town in terms of variety of activities, attractions and scenery, and to some extent safety. Additional analyses showed that demographic and travelling characteristics had a significant influence on perceived image of the various cities. The results of the study therefore suggest that attributes such as nightlife, friendly people and culture could be used more effectively to differentiate Cape Town. Thereof, the marketing implications are highlighted

An investigation into international tourists' perceptions of Cape Town as a holiday destination : one destination - an unforgettable experience

Bibliography: leaves 283-291.The fundamental product in tourism is the destination experience. Despite Cape Town offering a unique experience, the destination lacks a dear and positive brand images that persuade international tourists to visit. Currently, it cannot be ascertained how international travellers perceive brand Cape Town. As such it is felt that a significant number of tourists are being forsaken. Thus, it is imperative that research be conducted in order to gain a greater understanding of the brand, thereby enabling Cape Town to be positioned in a manner that lives up to tourists' expectations. In April 2001, the Joint Marketing Initiative was created to align the marketing efforts of the various destination-marketing organisations responsible for marketing the province of Western Cape and the city of cape Town both internationally and domestically. This is necessary to achieve consistency in image and message communication. This investigation is one of many commissioned by the Cape Metropolitan Tourism to improve stakeholders' understanding of brand Cape Town