THE BUSINESS OF TOURISM MANAGEMENT John Beech and Simon Chadwick (eds.)

GLOSSARY

ABTA: Association of British Travel Agents. Represents the interests of the larger UK tour operators and travel agents (with around 670 members as of 2000), and operates a bonding scheme whereby customers booking with ABTA members have their holidays protected should the operator/agent in question collapse.

Accommodation capacity: The measure of accommodation stock at a defined destination. May be given by various different measures: e.g. number of establishments; number of main units within an establishment (e.g. rooms, caravan stances); capacity in terms of residents (e.g. bedspaces).

Accounting period: Normally one year, the period for which accounts are drawn up

AITO: Association of Independent Tour Operators. Performs a similar function to ABTA, although its membership (and therefore its agenda) differs in comprising some 160 of the smaller UK tour operators.

All-inclusive hotels: Resort facilities that offer all meals, activities and entertainments on site. All holiday expenses at these hotels are covered by one pre-paid price. Caribbean destinations are noted for their high profile brands of all- inclusive hotels which offer unlimited alcoholic drinks, snacks between meals and motorised sports all included in one price.

All-inclusive: A form of package holiday where the majority of services offered at the destination are included in the price paid prior to departure (e.g. refreshments, excursions, amenities, gratuities, etc).

Allocentric: Of a minority of tourists - adventurous, outgoing, self-confident, independent, needing little tourist infrastructure. Enjoys high contact with locals.

Alternative tourism: In essence, tourism activities or development that are viewed as non-traditional. It is often defined in opposition to large-scale mass tourism to represent small-scale sustainable tourism developments. AT is also presented as an 'ideal type', that is, an improved model of tourism development that redresses the ills of traditional, mass tourism

Artefact: An object; an item of material culture.

Assets: Something of value that will provide future benefit or utility, can be used to generate revenue. Usually owned, so simply described as 'things we own'.

ATOL: Air Travel Organiser's License. A requirement of the Civil Aviation Authority for all UK tour operators wishing to sell air seats on chartered or scheduled services. Necessitates a financial 'health check' and the putting up of a bond to cover the expense of reimbursing/repatriating tourists in the event of operator failure.

Average Room Rate Achieved: The average of the room rates resulting in room sales which a hotel has experienced for a given time period

Balance of payments: Record of one country's financial transactions with the rest of the world.

Benchmarking: Measuring your performance against that of best in class companies, determining how the best-in-class achieve those performance levels and using this information as a basis for your own company's targets, strategies and implementation (Pryor, 1989).

Benchmarks: Points of reference or comparison, which may include standards, critical success factors, indicators, metrics.

Bureaucracy: An organisation typified by formal processes, standardisation, hierarchic procedures, and written communication

Business travel: Travel for a purpose and to a destination determined by a business, and where all costs are met by that business.

Capacity management: A process that seeks to ensure that their organisations operate at optimum capacity whilst maintaining customer satisfaction levels.

Capital expenditure: The cost of long-term assets; such as computer equipment, vehicles and premises. Importantly these are bought to use over several years and not to resell.

Carrying-capacity analysis: Originally a term applied in ecology referring to the maximum number of animals of a given species that a particular habitat could support. In the context of tourism, it refers to the maximum number of tourists a destination can support.

Case: A case describes a dispute taken to court, and specific cases set legal precedents - a legal principle, created by a court decision, which provides an example or authority for judges deciding similar issues later

Chain of distribution: The means by which products (package holidays in this instance) are distributed from producers (principals) to consumers (tourists), often via wholesalers and retailers (tour operators and travel agents).

Chaos theory: Views organisations/businesses as complex, dynamic, non-linear, co-creative and far-from-equilibrium systems the future performance of which cannot be decided alone by past and present events and actions. In a state of chaos, organisations behave in ways which are simultaneously both unpredictable (chaotic) and patterned (orderly).

Charter: A legal contract between an owner and an organisation for the hire of a means of transport for a particular purpose. An individual traveller will use an intermediary to arrange to be carried on the transport. Often applied to a flight which is the result of a charter.

Class action: A lawsuit filed by a number of people in a similar situation, e.g. participants in a particular package holiday might file a class action against the tour operator rather than take action individually..

Code of conduct: Guidelines advising a tourism stakeholder, including tourists, on how to behave in an environmentally responsible manner.

Collaboration: The process of working together in pursuit of common objectives.

Competitive strategies: Offensive or defensive strategies that aim at providing strategic competitive advantage and at increasing the competitiveness of an organisation.

Computer reservation systems (CRS): Computerised Reservation Systems used for inventory management by airlines, hotels and other facilities. CRSs can allow direct access through terminals for intermediaries to check availability, make reservations and print tickets.

Conservation: Can be broadly interpreted as action taken to protect and preserve the natural world from harmful features of tourism, including pollution and overexploitation of resources.

Contract: A legal agreement entered into by two or more parties.

Control: Monitoring and if necessary adjusting the performance of the organisation and its members

Cost-benefit analysis: Full analysis of public and private costs and benefits of project.

Cost-plus pricing: A method of pricing where an amount, to cover profit, is added to costs to establish the selling price, this is an internally orientated pricing method.

Critical incident point (CIP): A critical incident point or 'moment of truth' is any event which occurs when the customer has (or even perceives that he has) contact with a service organisation.

Cultural: See 'culture'

Culture: A set of shared norms and values which establish a sense of identity for those who share them. Typically applied at the level of nation and/or race.

Customer: "An organization or a person that receives a product" (ISO, 2000a: 10).

Decision-making unit (DMU): The combination of inputs to a purchasing decision

Delegation: The assignment to others of the authority for particular functions, tasks, and decisions.

Dependency theory: This theory maintains that developing countries are kept in a position of dependency and underdevelopment due to existing economic and institutional power structures sustained by leading Western nations. Dependency theorists argue that the policies and activities of multinational corporations, national bilateral and multinational aid agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) tend to widen the gap between rich and poor countries and perpetuate the dependency of developing nations.

Designation: The act of conferring a legal status on a building which requires compliance with specific legislation on conservation and preservation.

Discretionary income: Money received from employment or other sources which can be freely spent on leisure pursuits (such as travel and tourism) after general living costs, taxation etc. are taken into consideration.

Discrimination: Unequal treatment of persons on grounds which are not justifiable in law, e.g. in the UK, discrimination on the grounds of sex or race.

Disintermediation: A process by which the consumer 'bypasses' the services of an intermediary or intermediaries in the chain of distribution, in order to purchase products direct from those who supply them. In the travel industry, examples of disintermediation include airlines selling tickets direct to the public over the internet, thus cutting out the travel agent in the selling process.

Distribution: The process employed to provide customers access to the product. For travel products distribution focuses largely on the ways in which the customer can reserve or purchase the product.

Diversification: The process of developing new products for new markets, in order to achieve business growth.

Due diligence: Taking what is considered in law to be reasonable care.

eCommerce: Internet facilitated commerce, using electronic means for promoting, selling, distributing, and servicing products.

Economic growth: An increase in real output per capita.

e-mediaries: Electronic booking systems (usually web-based) which combine commerce and the traditional intermediary role of travel agents. Products and services are usually sourced from a range of other product providers allowing customers to book a range of different tourism and travel services from one website, and may enable price/product comparisons between competing suppliers.

Employee Relations: Covers communications, employee participation in management decisions, conflict and grievance resolution, trade unions and collective bargaining.

Environmental auditing: Inspection of a tourism organisation to assess the environmental impact of its activities.

Environmental management systems: Systems established by tourism organisations with the aim of mitigating negative environmental impacts.

Environmental scanning: The process of collecting information to carry out a systematic analysis of the forces effecting the organisation and identifying potential threats and opportunities with view to generating future strategies.

Evolutionary theories: Theories of tourism which see destinations evolving, in the sense that the types of tourists change, or evolve, over time.

Exclusion clause: This is a term in a contract that tries to exclude or limit the liability of one of the parties if there is a breach. Such clauses often take the form of "small print" in the standard terms and conditions of the dominant partner in the contract e.g. tour operators.

Externalities: Those costs or benefits arising from production or consumption of goods and services which are not reflected in market prices.

Familiarisation trips: (Fam trips) Visits to tourism destinations made in order to experience and learn more about the destination. Such trips are usually organised either by tour operators or by destination managers to improve knowledge of the destination. When travel agents are taken on such trips it is expected that their increased knowledge will lead to greater level of sales of holidays to that destination.

Force majeure: This is an unforeseeable or uncontrollable situation or train of events that would excuse a breach of contract.

Global Distribution System (GDS): The reservation network which links bookers such as travel agencies to travel suppliers' booking systems.

Globalisation: Generally defined as the network of connections of organisations and peoples are across national, geographic and cultural borders and boundaries. These global networks are creating a shrinking world where local differences and national boundaries are being subsumed into global identities. Within the field of tourism, globalisation is also viewed in terms of the revolutions in telecommunications, finance and transport that are key factors currently influencing the nature and pace of growth of tourism in developing nations.

Group norms: Informal standards of behaviour and performance that develop from the interaction of the group

Heritage: Today's perception of a pattern of events in the past.

History: A pattern of events in the past.

HRM: Human Resource Management, concerned with the strategic management of human resources to achieve a competitive advantage.

Impacts: Effects, which may be either positive or negative, felt as a result of tourism-associated activity. Tourists have at least three kinds of impacts on a destination: economic, sociocultural and environmental. Tourism also has effects on tourists, in terms of possible attitude and behaviour changes.

Industry structure: An explanation of the functions, form and interrelationships of individual elements, organisations and activities within a defined industrial sector (such as tourism).

info-mediaries: Organisations which provide websites/electronic guides as an information resource, sharing other resources such as web links to organisations that sell tourism/travel. The infomediary may be an organisation or company in its own right, or may form part of an individual company's or organisation's customer service

Information systems: Systems that use information technology to capture, transmit, store, retrieve, manipulate, or display information.

Infrastructure: Construction needed to support economic development.

Inseparability: The characteristic of service consumption being inseparable from its production, meaning that any errors made in production are seen by the consumer

Institutions: Institutions are 'an established law, custom, usage, practice, organisation, or other element in the political or social life of a people; a regulative principle or convention subservient to the needs of an organized community or the general needs of civilization' (Scrutton 1982: 225, in Hall and Jenkins 1995).

Intangibility: The characteristic of not being touchable - a good is tangible whereas a service is intangible

Integration: The linking (through changes of ownership such as mergers, acquisitions and takeovers) of different stages of the chain of distribution to form larger, more powerful organisations. Integration can be vertical (where links are developed with suppliers and distributors) or horizontal (where links are at the same stage of the distribution chain).

Intermediary: An organisation within the chain of distribution whose function is to facilitate the supply of a given product from producers to consumers. In the travel industry examples are travel agencies and tourism information offices.

Interpretation: An educational process that is intended to stimulate and facilitate people's understanding of place, so that empathy towards, conservation, heritage, culture and landscape is developed.

Invisible trade: Trade in services.

Labour market: The pool of employees from which an employer can fill vacancies.

Leadership: Influencing and directing the performance of group members towards the achievement of organisational goals

Leisure travel: Travel undertaken for pleasure and unrelated to paid work time.

Liabilities: An obligation to pay money or provide service in the future. Simply described as 'things we owe'.

Lifecycle: The particular pattern through which a destination evolves.

Limits of acceptable change: Environmental indicators that can monitor changes over time as a consequence of tourism.

Litigation: Legal action to resolve an issue before a court.

Luxury sports tourism: Active or passive sports tourism serviced by high quality facilities and luxuriant accommodation and attendant services.

Marginal or contribution pricing: A method of cost plus pricing which focuses on the variable or marginal cost only and thus establishes the lowest possible selling price.

Market orientated pricing: A method of pricing that benchmarks prices against competitors when deciding on price.

Market segmentation: Market segmentation is a marketing approach that encompasses the identification of different groups of customers with different needs or responses to marketing activity. The market segmentation process also considers which of these segments to target.

Mass tourism: Traditional, large scale tourism commonly, but loosely used to refer to popular forms of leisure tourism pioneered in southern Europe, the Caribbean, and North America in the 1960s and 1970s.

Mature market: A market in which a wide range of substitutable products or services are available to consumers who exhibit a sophisticated approach to consumer decision making.

MAVERICS: Characterisation of tourists of the future as multi-holidaying, autonomous, variegated, energised, restless, irresponsible, constrained and segmented.

Mediation: An attempt to settle a dispute using a neutral third party

Merit good: One with public as well as private benefits

Midcentric: Of the majority of tourists - displaying a mix of allocentric and psychcentric characteristics. Prefers to be cushioned from contact with locals.

Mode of travel: The type of transport used to make a journey between an origin and a destination, and can include walking and cycling as well as all forms of mechanical transport.

Modernisation theory: The socioeconomic development and process that evolves from a traditional society to modern economies such as the United States and Western Europe. Harrison (1992) argues that modernisation is a process of westernisation where developing countries emulate Western development patterns.

Motivation: Internal and external forces and influences that drive an individual to achieving certain goals.

Mystery shoppers: These researchers investigate companies through using their services, whilst pretending to be customers (or potential customers). They usually monitor such areas as the level of customer service and product knowledge.

National income: A measure of the total level of economic activity which takes place in an economy over a year.

Negligence: Failing to exercise what is legally considered to be reasonable care.

Net worth / Total net assets: The net value of all operational assets and liabilities, shows the amount of money invested in operational capacity of the business. Calculated by deducting current and long-term liabilities from the value of Fixed assets and Current assets

Niche tourism: Small specialised sector of tourism which appeals to a correspondingly tightly-defined market segment

No-frills: A low-cost scheduled travel package based on minimising operator service and costs, which are passed to the consumer as a low price.

Non-profit: Non-profit organisations are those which are driven by non-financial organisational objectives, i.e. other than for profit or shareholder return.

Occupancy rate: The measure of capacity utilised within an accommodation unit for a given time period (e.g. day, week, month or year)

Online agency: Travel agencies who operate using the World Wide Web to provide information to potential customers as well as allowing the customer to book travel and related products without the necessity of speaking to a salesperson.

Operations management: "The ongoing activities of designing, reviewing and using the operating system, to achieve service outputs as determined by the organization for customers" (Wright, 1999).

OPODO: A web based booking site linking the reservation systems of co-operating airlines, allowing bookers to compare times and prices for particular journeys

Organisation: A deliberate arrangement of people to achieve a particular purpose

Other recruitment difficulties: Includes poor recruitment/retention practices, poor image, low remuneration, poor employment conditions which arise despite sufficient skilled individuals.

Owners' equity: Combines the original investment and any retained profit to show the total value of the owners' interest in the business.

Package holiday: Also known as an inclusive tour. Defined in law as 'the pre-arranged combination of at least two of the following components when sold or offered for sale at an inclusive price and when the service covers a period of more than 24 hours or includes overnight accommodation: (a) transport; (b) accommodation; and (c) other tourist services not ancillary to transport or accommodation', as set out in Section 2(1) of the European Union's Package Travel Regulations, 1992 (cited in Sharpley 2002: 72-3).

Perishability: The characteristic of being perishable. In tourism the term is used to describe, for example, a particular hotel room on a specific night or a particular seat on a specific flight - they cannot be 'stored' and sold later, so they are perishable.

Personal disposable income: The amount an individual has left over for personal expenditure on goods and services, after payment of personal direct taxes, national insurance and pension contributions.

Personnel: Concerned with the practical management and administration of people at work.

PESTEL analysis: Examines the political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, (physical) environmental and legal forces within which businesses operate and which act on them

Physical evidence: The tangible evidence of a service, including everything which can be seen, touched, smelt and heard.

Politics: Politics has been defined in many ways. According to Heywood, politics is 'The activity through which people make, preserve and amend the general rules under which they live' (Heywood 1997: 410). According to Davis et al., 'Politics is the process by which the structure, process and institutions are brought to a decision [including non-decisions] or outcome. It is an endless activity; while politics operates, all decisions [and non-decisions and actions] are provisional' (Davis et al., 1988: 61). So politics means no decision or action is final. All decisions and actions of a government or institution of the state is open to question and is up for debate and argument and is, ultimately, subject to change.

Pollution: Harmful effects on the environment as a by-product of tourism activity. Types include: air; noise; water; and aesthetic.

Porter's forces: A model which suggests that the profit potential for companies is influenced by the interaction of five competitive forces: rivalry in the market place; the threat of substitutes; buyer power; supplier power; and barriers to entry into the market for new players.

Positioning: The process of ensuring potential customers have a desired perception of a product or service, relative to the competition.
Price elasticity of demand: A relationship between the changes in prices charged for a good or service (here taken as hotel rooms) and the change in the amount demanded.
Price elasticity of demand: A measure of the variability that can be expected in sales when prices are changed. Unity elasticity would see equal increase in sales to in reaction to a decrease in price. Inelastic demand would not change when prices went down or up.

Principal: A term that encompasses accommodation providers, carriers, ground handlers and any other provider of services to tourists, except for those whose primary function is to package and distribute tourism products (i.e. tour operators and travel agents).

Process control: A systematic use of tools to identify significant variations in operational performance and output quality, determine root causes, make corrections and verify results (Evans and Lindsay, 1999:345).

Process design: Involves specifying all practices needed, flowcharting, rationalisation and error prevention (Rao et. al., 1996:540-541).

Process improvement: A proactive task of management aimed at continual monitoring of a process and its outcome and developing ways to enhance its future performance (James, 1996:359).

Process management: Planning and administering the activities necessary to achieve a high level of performance in a process and identifying opportunities for improving quality, operational performance and ultimately customer satisfaction. It involves design, control and improvement of key business processes (Evans and Lindsay, 1999:340).

Process: "A set of interrelated or interacting activities which transforms inputs into outputs" (ISO, 2000a:7).
Product: "The result of a process" (i.e. output), which may be either a service, or a good (hardware or processed materials) or software (e.g. information) or their combination (ISO, 2000a:7)

Profit: The excess of revenue over expenses, if expenses exceed revenues in a given period the organisation will make a loss.

Psychocentric: Of a minority of tourists - preferring 'away' to be like 'home'; requiring appropriate tourism infrastructure.

Public policy: Is whatever governments choose to do or not to do (Thomas Dye 1992: 2). Such a definition covers government action, inaction, decisions and non-decisions as it implies a very deliberate choice between alternatives (see Hall and Jenkins 1995).

Quality: The degree to which a set of inherent characteristics of a product fulfils customer requirements (ISO, 2000a).

Regulation: Control through formalised processes.

Relationship marketing: Relationship marketing is a business philosophy which aims to develop strong relationships with a range of stakeholders, such as suppliers, media, intermediaries and public organisations, as well as with customers.

Requirements: Stated, generally implied (as a custom or common practice for the organisation, its customers and other interested parties) or obligatory needs (ISO, 2000a).

Responsible tourism: Type of tourism which is practised by tourists who make responsible choices when choosing their holidays. These choices reflect reponsible attitudes to the limiting of the extent of the sociological and environmental impacts their holiday may cause.

Retained profit: The profit left in the business at the end of the accounting period after all deductions and appropriations have been made.

Revenue expenditure: The cost of resources consumed or used up in the process of generating revenue, generally referred to as expenses.

Revenue management: Revenue management is a management approach to optimising revenue, often based on managing revenues around capacity and timing (yield management), for different market segments or from different sources of funding.

Sales: Revenue from ordinary activities - not necessarily cash.

Seasonality: A phenomenon created by either tourism supply or demand (or both) changing according to the time of the year.

Service encounter: The moments of interface between customer and supplier

Service marketing mix: The addition of People, Physical Evidence and Process to the four areas of activity more usually associated with marketing products, - Price, Place, Promotion and Product.

Servicescape: The location in which the service encounter takes place

Skills gaps: Employers perceive existing employees have lower skill levels than needed to achieve business objectives, or where new, apparently trained and qualified for specific occupations, entrants still lack requisite skills.

Skills shortages: Lack of adequately skilled individuals in the labour market due to low unemployment, sufficiently skilled people in the labour market but not easily geographically accessible or insufficient appropriately-skilled individuals.

Small business: A small business is one which has a small number of employees, profit and/or revenue. Often these are owner-managed, with few specialist managers. Some definitions of small businesses distinguish between businesses with under 10 employees, which are micro-businesses, and those with 10-49 employees, which are classified as small businesses.

Social: Relating to human society and interaction between its members.

Sports event tourism: Tourism where the prime purpose of the trip is to take part in sports events as either a participant or spectator

Sports participation tourism: Active participation in sports that is the prime purpose of the tourism trip

Sports tourism: A social, cultural and economic phenomenon arising from the unique interaction of activity, people and place.

Sports training tourism: Sports tourism trips where the prime purpose is sports instruction or training.

Sport-tourism link: Not just sports holidays, but all areas in which a link between sport and tourism might be of mutual benefit (e.g. joint facility development, marketing and information provision).

Stakeholder: Any person, group or organisation with an interest in, or who may be affected by, the activities of another organisation.

'The State': 'The state' is a set of officials with their own preferences and capacities to effect public policy, or in more structural terms a relatively permanent set of political institutions operating in relation to civil society' (Nordlinger 1981, in Hall and Jenkins 1995). The state includes elected politicians, interest or pressure groups, law enforcement agencies, the bureaucracy, and a plethora of rules, regulations, laws, conventions and policies.

Statute: The law as made by parliament, e.g. in the UK, the Disability Discrimination Act (1995). A statute is made up of many parts called 'sections' or 'provisions'.

Statutory instrument: The vast majority of delegated legislation in the UK is in the form of statutory instruments governed by the Statutory Instruments Act 1946

Strategic information systems: Systems designed to support the strategic management decision processes and implementation.

Strategy pyramid: A visual way of representing the different levels of the strategy conceptualisation and implementation process. The most general assumptions are shown at the apex and the practical, implementation actions are at the base.

Suppliers: Individuals, companies or other organisations which provide goods or services to a recognisable customer or consumer.

Sustainable tourism: Tourism that is economically, socioculturally and environmentally sustainable. With sustainable tourism, sociocultural and environmental impacts are neither permanent nor irreversible.

SWOT analysis: Brings together the internal and external environmental scanning to identify the business's internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats.

Tort: A civil wrong.

Tour operator: An individual or organisation in the business of (bulk) buying, and subsequently bundling, the various components that make up a package holiday (see above), for sale via a travel agent or direct to the consumer.

Tourism flows: The major movements of tourists from specific home areas to destinations.

Tourism income multiplier (TIM): Exaggerated effect of a change in tourism expenditure on an area's income.

Tourism satellite account: System of accounting at national or regional level which reveals the total direct impact of tourism on the economy.

Tourism System: A framework that identifies tourism as being made up of a number of components, often taken to include the tourist, the tourist generating region, the transit route region, the tourist destination and the tourism industry (Leiper, 1990)

Tourism with sports content: Tourism products that include participation in sport that is not the prime purpose of the trip.

Tourist attractions: Tourist attractions are defined as being destinations for visitors' excursions which are routinely accessible to visitors during opening hours. Visitors can include local residents, day-trippers or people who are travelling for business or leisure purposes. Formal definitions exclude shops, sports stadia, theatres and cinemas, as these meet a wider purpose, although in practice tourists may consider the excluded categories to be tourist attractions.

TOWS matrix: Uses a SWOT analysis to develop strategies by matching strengths with opportunities, using opportunities to reduce weaknesses, using strengths to overcome threats, and reducing weaknesses and avoiding threats.

Travel agent: The retailer of travel and related products. Whilst this refers to the sales person employed to sell travel products, the term is often applied in reference to the business that is established to sell travel products (the travel agency).

Variability: Because the production and the consumption of a tourism experience are inseparable and because differing circumstances and people will affect each experience, those experiences are prone to variance and create a challenge for tourism managers to achieve consistency of standards.

Virtual organisation: Organisation in which major processes are outsourced to partners.

Working Capital: Operational assets and liabilities needed for everyday operation, e.g. cash or bank overdraft, stock and trade creditors, known as net current assets/liabilities.

Yield Management: "A revenue maximization technique which aims to increase net yield through the predicted allocation of available … capacity to predetermined market segments at optimal price" (Donaghy et al., 1997a).

Zoning: Different eco-systems may be zoned in terms of their robustness to pressures from tourism in an attempt to mitigate environmental damage.