An in-depth analysis of the nursing home industry in America -- its past, present, and future. It focuses on the business aspects of the industry, and provides a detailed examination of the main issues concerning all nursing homes -- trends in health care expenditures; the legislative history of the industry; growing demand for care and how to measure it; the present structure of the industry; funding and financing concerns; government regulation; inter-industry competition and opportunities for growth; global comparisons; and public policy considerations.

An in-depth analysis of the nursing home industry in America -- its past, present, and future. It focuses on the business aspects of the industry, and provides a detailed examination of the main issues concerning all nursing homes -- trends in health care expenditures; the legislative history of the industry; growing demand for care and how to measure it; the present structure of the industry; funding and financing concerns; government regulation; inter-industry competition and opportunities for growth; global comparisons; and public policy considerations.

This book presents the latest knowledge on the still under-researched field of academic tourism, which over the past decade has gained in importance at local and national economic levels as a result of increasing international mobility of students and academic staff in higher education. A wide range of themes are explored from various perspectives, with the focus on Europe. Particular attention is paid to academic tourism demand, expenditure, and economic impact; the relationships between academic tourism and local and regional development, sustainable development, and environmental sustainability; and the importance of academic tourism for the internationalization of higher education and international cooperation and development. Further topics to be considered include the significance of academic tourism for the dynamics of tourism destinations and insights from experimental tourism research. In addition to theoretical chapters and state of the art reviews, readers will find insightful empirical and case studies. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers, students, and practitioners, including policy makers.

The word 'batik' is possibly of Malay origin from the word 'tik' meaning 'to drip' or 'to drop.' The term is applied to a resist dye technique invented independently in locations as diverse as Ancient Egypt, Japan and Turkestan. Batik is a remarkably flexible textile technique and is suited to small-scale methods of production, but demand from the fashion and tourism industries is increasing. This volume brings together the experiences and concerns of the international community of batik producers. It gives voice to their suggestions for ensuring that the producers of this traditional craft are integrated into its increasingly global production rather than excluded from it. Building on the work of batik designers and producers the book discusses the emergence of a global craft consciousness. Batik producers report on innovative measures taken both individually and collectively to hold their market position while commercial producers frequently annex and mass-produce traditional batik design. The book concludes with a discussion of marketing and production innovations and tourism which enable the producers of batik to maintain the integrity of their designs whilst harnessing the benefits of new commercial forms.

An examination of the complex process of transformation in work organization, technology and labour and product markets that has occurred. The analysis moves between a broad appreciation of structural developments within the economies of the advanced industrial nations, and an in-depth study of enterprise and workplace. It is divided into four parts. The first part reviews the theoretical issues and debates raised by the growth of service industries and employment in the advanced industrial countries. Parts Two and Three are case studies of two service sectors - financial services and the National Health Service. Part Four relates the evidence to a broader appreciation of developments in management/workforce relations occurring in the service sector.

Target your business strategies to fit specific tourist cultures!Since Thomas Cook packaged the first tour in 1841, hospitality and tourism enterprises have forged long-term alliances with one another. Yet research suggests that most such alliances will fail. What goes wrong? How can tourism professionals take advantage of all the benefits of international cooperation while minimizing the potentially disastrous risks of failure? Global Alliances in Tourism and Hospitality Management provides empirical research, case studies, and theory to help you make the right decisions about this potentially high-profit strategy.To compete in the world travel market, a firm must increase its ability to reach, serve, and satisfy its target markets, while lowering costs. Making an alliance is often the most efficient and effective way to reach these twin goals. However, many firms make alliances without sufficient planning and end up paying the price in failed tours, dissatisfied customers, and damaged reputation. The five critical questions that must be answered before creating a partnership include: Do we want to partner? Do we have an ability to partner? With whom do we partner? How do we partner? How do we sustain and renew a partnership over time?Global Alliances in Tourism and Hospitality Management offers specific, detailed ideas and research on vital topics, including: deciding how and when to form alliances handling multicultural management issues identifying the basic elements of successful--and not so successful--partnerships discovering the effects of culture on purchasing decisions dealing with conflicts within alliances ensuring cross-agency cooperationThe development and management of alliances is a critical skill. Global Alliances in Tourism and Hospitality Management provides you with the strategies you need to build successful alliances. International in scope, this informative guide will help marketers, managers, and other professionals in the hospitality industry to lower company costs, raise profits, and gain strategic advantages in diversified markets.

The introduction of sports and recreational facilities into natural environments calls for reflection on their impact on fragile ecosystems. This book is unique in providing an interdisciplinary approach to the ecological restoration of urban and industrial degraded habitats and their use by nearby city-dwellers. For the first time ecologists, sociologists and anthropologists have worked together on particularly sensitive ecosystems such as rivers and estuaries to propose recovery strategies that allow their basic ecological functions to be restored, and which can benefit local populations through nature activities. Nonetheless, the use of natural spaces calls for the building of sustainable towns. This is why this book is distinctive in considering quality of life and well-being as stated objectives of modern river towns. Recently, leisure time has become a part of urban rhythms. In order to favour personal development, an extensive palette of leisure activities is considered by the authors: bird watching entertainment sports culture Many aspects including physical and psychological attributes in relation to the contemporary socio-political fabric are dealt with. While creating areas of freedom, landscaping also induces certain forms of practice and encourages certain social skills. Conversely, the book questions certain types of management based on mass consumption. Don't they, in the end, aim to satisfy needs that are impermanent and shallow? The image of the contemporary town relies on urban planning projects which, in a global economy, seek to capture the interest of tourists and local populations. How can suitable, diligent planning be successfully combined with both creative design and ecological care? This book demonstrates how biology and sociology can (and should) work in harmony in order to promote an ecosystem approach to environmental management.

Examining one of the world's most important and fastest growing economic sectors, this guide explains the complex tourism phenomenon in its various manifestations. Exploring the subject from a variety of disciplines -- such as economics, psychology, sociology, and geography -- the study also analyses new facets of tourism, including marketing and management, special-interest tourism, travel legislation, and business travel. Featured case studies also provide a global perspective of the tourism industry.

This important book provides a systematic and quantitative analysis of the development of the software industry: the major growth industry in advanced economies of the world. It presents the results of a comprehensive set of industry surveys to shed light on the differences in specialization and performance of US and European software firms. Salvatore Torrisi analyses the development of the software industry within the context of theories of technical change. He interprets exhaustive surveys of firms participating in software industries conducted between 1990 and 1997. These reveal the main characteristics of innovation activities in software, including the characteristics of product and process innovations, the sources of technological change within firms, the instruments for the protection of innovation and the nature of innovative skills. The author also compares the historical evolution of software activities in Europe and in the United States and explains the differences in specialization and performance in terms of the geographical proximity to leading hardware manufacturers, the size of the domestic market, regulation and public policies, including property rights and anti-trust. This unparalleled book will be required reading for academics interested in industrial organisation and the economics of innovation.

This book covers a wide spectrum of topics, service contexts and methodologies and reflects the broad range of current services research. Its aim is to provide an eclectic overview of services marketing by including papers that demonstrate the breadth and depth of research in this area, and it reflects the international scope and the strength of the discipline as we enter the new millennium.

Although there is significant research on large events that take place within athletics, small-scale events are largely ignored, in part due to the lack of press that they generate. However, these events require planning and preparation in the same way that larger sporting events do. This disparity between the effort that goes into the event and the attention the event draws allows for a gap in strategy or information available to those planning smaller scale athletic events. Principles and Practices of Small-Scale Sport Event Management is a cutting-edge reference publication that examines the successful organization and planning of small-scale sporting events. Featuring a wide range of topics such as community engagement, event planning, and sports management, this book is ideal for event planners, sports managers, marketers, academicians, practitioners, industry professionals, researchers, event organizers/coordinators, and students.

For managers, students and conference professionals this timely new book will provide a firm foundation for understanding and operating in one of the UK's fastest growing business areas. Conferencing forms a large and expanding part of the UK economy and is now attracting serious analysis as the key techniques and principles of good practice become established. This unique book, one of the first written by an expert educator and consultant in the field, considers the background and nature of the UK conference industry and looks at the management issues involved in professional and competitive conferencing.Providing clear, up to date and detailed information on every aspect of the management and organization of conferences and conference centres it will be an essential text for students on hospitality and tourism courses- from GNVQ to undergraduate level. It will also be a vital reference for practitioners in any part of the conference business who want to grasp the key elements for success in the future.

This pioneering book on food study pursues an interdisciplinary approach to service science and the service engineering field. Further, it highlights a range of experiments conducted at actual business sites to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methodologies and theories. In modern society, food study has become more complex, as it involves multiple fields of science. For instance, a long-lived society entails a number of problems for human beings. A balanced intake of nutrients is important for a healthy life, but in many cases, healthy food is not the most enjoyable. As such, it is important for the food industry to provide foods that are both tasty and wholesome, based on the sciences of gastronomy and nutrition. Conventional food study proceeds along the lines of a specific field such as nutrition, agriculture, or gastronomy, though it should be conducted in an interdisciplinary manner. This book covers multifaceted research on food study to respond to today's societal demands, based mainly on the natural and social sciences. It addresses a wide range of topics, including: food production management using mathematical modeling, operations research, and production engineering; evaluation of food products based on big data analysis; psychological experiments and ethnography; food products based on consumer behavior; organoleptic assessment and health improvement; design of physical dining environments using virtual reality, pedestrian debt recognition (human indoor position measuring), and observation of behavior. Reporting on and assessing many studies conducted at actual business locations, the book offers a unique and highly practical resource.

The Evolution of the British Funeral Industry in the 20th Century examines the shifts that have taken place in the funeral industry since 1900, focusing on the figure of the undertaker and exploring how organisational change and attempts to gain recognition as a professional service provider saw the role morph into that of 'funeral director'. As the disposal of the dead increased in complexity during the twentieth century, the role of the undertaker/funeral director has mirrored this change. Whilst the undertaker of 1900 primarily encoffined and transported the body, today's funeral director provides other services, such as taking responsibility for the body of the deceased and embalming, and has overseen changes such as the increasing preference for cremation, the impact of technology on the production of coffins and the shift to motorised transport. These factors, together with the problem of succession for some family-run funeral businesses, have led large organisations to make acquisitions and manage funerals on a centralised basis, achieving economies of scale. This book examines how the occupation has sought to reposition itself and how the 'funeral director' has become an essential functionary in funerary practices. However, despite striving for new-found status the role is hindered by two key issues: the stigma of handling the dead, and the perception of making a profit from loss.

This book identifies and describes five megatrends that will define the landscape of the Travel, Tourism & Hospitality industry, with a particular focus on the European context. Humans began travelling on the same day that Homo Sapiens first realized he could walk upright. No boundaries, mountains or cliffs have managed to stop or diminish our insatiable desire to find out what lies beyond the visible horizon. Tourism has enjoyed virtually uninterrupted growth for the past several decades, and the sector has now become the third-largest source of export revenue, after chemicals and fuel, and ahead of the automotive and food sectors. And yet, in its current globalised format, it is exposed to sudden shocks that can swiftly shake up the status quo accelerating the deployment of some megatrends here described. We have all witnessed the Covid-19 pandemic and its devastating consequences for the industry. While the number of international tourism arrivals to Europe has soared to over 700 million a year, at the same time we are experiencing a period of deep transformation. Bauman couldn't have been more accurate or insightful when he coined the word 'liquid' in this regard. As an exquisite expression of a civilized, rich and discerning first-world society, travel and tourism are now changing shape and meaning, requiring our business models to adapt. What are the megatrends that will dictate the future shape of our industry's landscape? Who is the new tourist, if there is one, and what is she looking for? Is the new post-technological era transforming the depth and the very essence of travelling? This book offers a number of visionary insights, as well as operational takeaways.

Unarguably, preserving the ecosystem, securing sustainability and understanding the dynamics of agro-food chains have all become vital policy objectives with several interlinked dimensions. The main objectives of this book are to draw the attention of researchers, policymakers and businesspeople to the relation between agro-food chains and the ecosystem, and to demonstrate the importance of building resilient agro-food chains that take into account climate change and environmental challenges. Agro-food chains as they function today can serve as powerful tools for promoting sustainable forms of agriculture, consumption and production that are embedded in a viable ecosystem. The book addresses a range of environmental, methodological and societal issues from a transaction perspective, while also providing extensive background information on the topic, and outlining future applications and research directions.

This book reviews empirical and theoretical research on sustainable development in the context of leisure management for communities. Although leading research centers are pursuing interdisciplinary research on leisure in the context of sustainable development, there are still few papers that holistically address the current challenges in this area. In addition, demographic changes have made the promotion of a healthy lifestyle essential. Doing so requires responsible behavior on the part of various stakeholders in this market.This book fills an important gap in the literature and gathers contributions from an interdisciplinary and international team of authors, whose fields of expertise include human geography, management, intersections of sustainability and leisure, behavioral psychology and tourism.