Management Science in Hospitality and Tourism: Theory, Practice, and Applications

Management Science in Hospitality and Tourism is a timely and unique book focusing on management science applications. The first section of the book introduces the concept of management science application in hospitality and tourism and related issues to set the stage for subsequent sections. Section II focuses on management science applications with conceptual pieces, empirical applications, and best practices with examples coming from different parts of the world and settings. The last section ends with a chapter focusing on challenges and future research directions.

This book goes beyond revenue management topics and presents a broad range of topics in management science applications as they relate to hospitality and tourism cases. Researchers and students in hospitality and tourism will find this book very useful since it contains chapters on data analytics, e-commerce and technology, revenue and yield management, optimization methods, resource allocation, goal programming, dynamic programming, Markov chain models, trends analysis and detection, measuring potential and attractiveness in tourism development, performance measures and use of indices in hospitality and tourism, and more. There is a heightened interest in these areas of business applications in today’s data-driven business environment, and this book addresses that interest.

This book is the only comprehensive text on management science applications in hospitality and tourism. It will help managers and hospitality and tourism students as future managers to develop an in-depth understanding of the importance of data analysis, interpretation, and generating information, and intelligence for decision making. It covers a broad range of applications representing different geographic regions of the world.

Muzaffer Uysal, PhD, is a professor of tourism in the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, Virginia. He has extensive experience in the travel and tourism field, authoring or co-authoring a significant number of articles in tourism, hospitality, and recreation journals, proceedings, and book chapters. He has edited four monographs and four books related to tourism research methods, tourist service satisfaction, tourism and quality-of-life, and consumer psychology in tourism and hospitality settings. He also has conducted workshops and seminars on similar topics and field research in several countries. He is a member of International Academy for the Study of Tourism, the Academy of Leisure Sciences, and serves as co-editor of Tourism Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal. In addition, he sits on the editorial boards of several journals, including Journal of Travel Research and the Annals of Tourism Research. He received a number of awards for research and teaching. His current research interests center on tourism demand/supply interaction, tourism development, and QOL research in tourism.

Zvi Schwartz, Ph, is J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Senior Faculty Fellow for Hospitality Finance and Revenue ManagementAssociate Professor in the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA. He has published several articles in professional journals, has guest edited issues, and is on the editorial boards of several journals. His current research interests include revenue management, strategic pricing, decision theory, and advanced reservation environments.

Ercan (Sirakaya) Turk, PhD, is a Sloan Research Professor of tourism in the School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina. He received his PhD and MS from Clemson University, South Carolina. He is the 2006–2007 recipient of US State Department’s prestigious Fulbright scholarship to teach tourism and conduct destination development and branding studies in Russia. Before joining USC, Professor Dr. Turk was a faculty member at Texas A&M University (1998-2006) and the Pennsylvania State University (1996-1998). Dr. Turk has published a significant number of articles in the area of tourism destination marketing and developmental policy in prestigious tourism journals, such as the Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Travel Research, Tourism Management, and Tourism Analysis. He is the founding and current associate editor-in-chief for the online tourism research bulletin e-Review of Tourism Research. He also serves on editorial boards of several major journals, including the Journal of Travel Research and Tourism Analysis, and is a field reviewer for numerous academic journals. He serves as a member in an international Think Tank group (BEST-EN) that deals with issues of sustainable tourism development issues in developing countries. His dissertation work has received a prestigious TTRA’s William B. Keeling award. He served as a faculty senator and was a member of the Institutional Review Board (Ethics Board in Human Research Subjects) of Texas A&M University (2002-2005). He teaches tourism economics, marketing, and research methods classes. Currently, he is completing a research methods book and numerous publications pertaining to branding places and sustainability.