Heli Tooman

The aim of the article is to analyse the theoretical aspects, meaning and essence of service culture and its importance in understanding and developing service systems, incl. tourism quality management systems. The other aim of the article is to present some of the results ...

It is widely recognised that hotels, as important members of the global tourism value chain, have negative impacts on the environment. Many hoteliers feel the adoption of environmental measures is expensive, with little commercial benefit. A further obstacle to improving hotels' green ...

On April 2, 2009, participants of 150 countries at the UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development adopted the Bonn Declaration. The declaration reinforces the concept that sustainable development can only be achieved through education and lifelong learning (UNESCO, 2009). The role of educators is to prepare young people to manage the sustainability challenges and to spur them into creating new, entrepreneurial responses for people and communities around the planet. The dual objective of this research is to gauge the extent to which educational institutes is integrating sustainability in tourism and hospitality curriculums and to analyze the effect of cultural diversity on attitudes toward sustainability.

This paper studies the use of humour in Estonian accommodation establishments. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of how humour is used in the marketing communication and service processes in accommodation establishments. A range of methods were used to answer the research aim, including desktop research on how humour is currently used in accommodation settings, a focus group consisting of international participants, and two online surveys with both accommodation providers and accommodation guest. The results indicate that overall humour is beneficial for accommodation establishments. Respondents mentioned the multiple ways in which humour was used to inform guests about certain accommodation features. This study proposes a decision support model to guide accommodation establishments in how humour could be applied more effectively in their marketing communication and service processes.

It is widely recognised that hotels, as important members of the global tourism value chain, have negative impacts on the environment. Many hoteliers feel the adoption of environmental measures is expensive and produce little commercial benefit. A further obstacle to improving hotels’ green credentials is the perception that adapting staff attitudes and management operations to become more environmentally friendly is too complicated and produces only negligible results. The study aims to create a snapshot of best practices in sustainability in the Hospitality Industry adopted by eleven hotels in Germany and Estonia. It also aims to contrast the development of sustainable management systems in these two European countries that have different economies and cultures.