EFTI Hospitality Management Program Area

HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT

Program Focus

To advance current understanding of hospitality operations, service quality and training and their relationship to customer satisfaction, loyalty, and future behavioral intentions.
To conduct cutting-edge research that will lead to improvement in managerial decision-making in hospitality industry.
To provide research services for industry partners and contribute to the hospitality education.

Research Areas

Hospitality operations management
Hospitality training and education
Product/service design and revenue management
Quality of service and customer satisfaction, loyalty & behavioral intentions
Environmental management in hotels
Food and beverage service enhancement
Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Expositions
Information technology, virtual communities and hospitality marketing
Website usability, design, quality, performance and evaluation for hospitality operations
Online marketing, e-branding and brand integrity for hospitality operations

Research Projects

A Multilateral University Consortium to Strengthen Tourism Education, Research, and Industry Outreach: University of Florida, USA; Dokuz Eylul University, Turkey; Armenian State University of Economics, Armenia (2010-2013)
Capacity Building Partnership to Improve Tourism Education, Research, and Industry Outreach: University of Florida, USA and the State University of Nizhni Novgorod, Russian Federation (2010-2013)
Occupancy Study: Marion County, Florida (2005)
Hotel-Motel Survey of Alachua County, Florida (1995)
Graduate Student Research
Sample Reports

Program Coordinator: Svetlana Stepchenkova, Ph.D.

Dr. Svetlana Stepchenkova is interested in hospitality and tourism management, marketing and branding. She has conducted several studies on destination image based on quantitative and qualitative assessments. Her current research topic concerns evaluation of influence of advertisement and media materials on consumer perceptions and behavior. Svetlana also studies applications of information technologies in hospitality, travel and tourism, particularly virtual travel communities and destination websites, as a means of obtaining a competitive advantage in positioning. She was actively involved in industry-related projects that included customer profile studies, quality evaluations of Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) websites in the U.S. and Canada, as well as in the areas of digital identity management in virtual communities, Internet addictive behaviors, and online data security. Svetlana has published her research in the Journal of Travel Research, Tourism Management, Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, Cyber Psychology & Behavior and Computers in Human Behavior.

Graduate Student Research

Information-processing strategies in tourism and hospitality contexts: The moderating role of involvement and the offsetting roles of textual and pictorial information (Soo Hyun Jun, Ph.D. Research: 2009)
Environmental management in the accommodations sector in the Anglophone Caribbean (Mechelle Best, Ph.D. Research: 2008)
Nash equilibrium of hotel pricing strategies: A Bertrand model of information sharing (Sungsoo Kim, Ph.D. Research: 2008)
The intention of meeting professionals to incorporate voluntourism into conventions: Perceptions of meeting professionals (Tara Schickedanz, M.S. Research: 2008)
Timeshare owner’s perceptions of and preferences for participation in tourism planning (Chenchen Huang, Ph.D. Research: 2007)
Bed and breakfast websites: Marketing accommodations to people with disabilities (Felicia Rogers, M.S. Research: 2005)
Golf in meetings, incentives, conventions, exhibitions (MICE) tourism (Brandi Nice, M.S. Research: 2004)
Information technology adoptions in public assembly facilities: Benchmarking and strategic objectives (Renee Musson, M.S. Research: 2003)
Dimensions of consumers evaluation of lodging services (Cecilia Keller, M.S. Research: 1994)
Graduate Student Research (All Program Areas)

Sample Reports (Executive Summary)