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Identifying Online Professional Poker Players: A Revealed And Stated Analysis Approach, Kahlil Philander, Brett Ll Abarbanel

Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism

This two-part paper is intended to explore the task of differentiating a professional gambler from a leisure gambler, specifically, among online poker players. The first part of the study consists of a statistical analysis to identify the requisite number of hands of online poker required to identify winning players, that is, players who should expect to show a profit during a given year. The second part of the study involves administering a survey that assesses players’ perceptions of whether they consider their own play to be that of a winning player.

Once both parts have concluded, we will investigate whether …

Are Franchising Systems Beneficial For Lodging Industry In Terms Of Profitability And Intangible Value?, Joonho Moon

Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism

Franchising plays a significant role in the rapid growth of its retail sales. Franchising is a system in which the franchisor grants a license, trademark,and service mark, as well as advice, and assistance in organizing, merchandising, and managing the business as a long-term business relationship.This system is a major expansion strategy for the hotel industry because of its advantages. Actually, the annual retail sales of business-format franchising were about $246 billion in 1992 (Huber, 1993).In the lodging industry, franchising has contributed so significantly to the growth of major hotelchains since the 1960s that it has made lodging one of the …

Forecasting Revpar In A Declining Market: An Application Of Time Series Forecasting Techniques To U.S. Weekly Revpar Data, Barry A.N. Bloom, Elsa Correa, Sung Hun "Shawn" Kim, Barbara Koukol

Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism

This study utilizes common time series forecasting methods to determine which of several simple, popular time series forecasting techniques was the best predictor of the decline in United States weekly RevPAR as the lodging industry entered its severe downturn in 2009. This study identifies the strong seasonality and trend components contained in historic U.S. weekly RevPAR data and utilized that data to test various moving average, exponential, and seasonal forecasting methods. The study clearly identified that seasonal forecasting methods such as Holt-Winters are far superior for use with this dataset than other methods and that among the various seasonal forecasting …

Executive Compensation And Firm Performance In The U.S. Restaurant Industry: An Agency Theory Approach, Ilhan Demirer, Jingxue (Jessica) Yuan

Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism

Executive compensation is increasingly becoming a target by media, shareholders, and government regulators. Excessive or poorly structured compensation arrangements have been blamed for the U.S. financial crisis of 2008 and it has been questioned why executives were being paid out the bonuses and other benefits even though their companies were losing shareholder value. Agency theory explains part of the problem is due to the separation of management from ownership. This study investigated the relationship between executive compensation and firm performance in the restaurant industry.

Do Promotional Allowances Actually Increase Profits For Casinos?, Toni Repetti

Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism

Casinos often give free items to customers to attract new guests to the property or to reward their loyal guests. These free items are classified as promotional allowances or complimentaries. Casino management and marketing personnel believe that these expenses are necessary to maintain customers and to also increase the property's net income. Two OLS regression models are run to determine if promotional allowances do increase earnings before income, taxes and depreciation. The results will help management better understand the effect of offering complimentaries to their customers.

Quantifying The Impacts Of The Recent Economic Crisis On A Local Tourism Industry And Economy System, Yun Ying Zhong

Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism

The purpose of this study is to explore the accuracy issue of the Input-Output model in quantifying the impacts of the 2007 economic crisis on a local tourism industry and economy. Though the model has been extensively used in the tourism impact analysis, its estimation accuracy is rarely verified empirically. The Metro Orlando area in Florida is investigated as a case study, and the visitor expenditure change between 2007 and 2008 is taken as the direct shock. The total impacts are assessed in terms of output and employment, and are compared with the actual data. This study finds that there …

Cash Holdings Of Hotel Firms: The Financial Constraints Perspective, Jung Hwan Koh, Soocheong (Shawn) Jang

Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism

Financial literature of cash or liquidity management has recently focused on the role of financial constraints on firms’ liquidity decision. Even though the accessibility to capital market is considered as one of major topics in hotel firms’ financial management considering high usage of debt financing, litter effort has been made. Considering the extent of hotel firms’ financial constraints, this study examines the precautionary motive of cash holding toward external financing (debt) and internal financing (cash flow). Using two financial constraint measurements, bond rating and dividend payment, the study tests the relation of cash to debt and cash flow. Regardless of …

Examining The Potential Impact Of Proposed Leasing Rules In Lodging Industry, Lan Jiang

Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism

The current paper reviews the history of lease accounting and will assess the perceived impact that proposed changes in lease accounting will have on the lodging industry. A questionnaire is distributed to 500 members of the lodging section of the Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals association (HFTP); and a model will be proposed to examine the relationship between property characteristics and the perceived impact that proposed changes in lease accounting will have on the lodging industry.

From the results, this study can make valuable contributions to both industry and academia. First, management can not only get a sense of what …

Corporate Investment And Cash Flow In The U.S. Restaurant Industry, Bo-Bae Min, Yeojin Shin

Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism

This study investigates the relationship between internally generated cash flow and firm investment in the restaurant industry. Our focus is particularly on the difference of the investment-cash flow sensitivity between franchise and non-franchise restaurant companies.

Our particular interest in the difference of the investment-cash flow sensitivity between franchise and non-franchise restaurant companies is based on the resource scarcity theory of franchise, which is one of the two major theories explaining reasons to franchise; the other is based on agency theory. The resource scarcity theory proposes that firms franchise in order to access scarce resources, particularly capital and managerial resources, when …

Cross-State Substitution: Estimating The Effect Of The 2003 Illinois Gaming Tax Restructuring On Indiana Riverboat Gaming Volume In The Chicagoland Region, Mike Ahlgren, Dipendra Singh

Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism

This paper analyzes the effect of the 2003 Illinois gaming tax increase on Indiana riverboat gaming demand. The four riverboats located in Indiana’s Northeast corner are examined. Slot machine coin-in from January 2000 to December 2006 is chosen to represent gaming demand. Multiple regression analysis is used to model both the tax increase and account for seasonality in the data. The findings reveal that a segment of Indiana riverboat operators experienced an increase in gaming demand when the tax increases took effect. The findings suggest that legislators should acknowledge and evaluate the negative economic pressures that tax increases have on …

Why Casinos Are Not Recession Proof: An Business Cycle Econometric Case Study Of The Las Vegas Region, Mark P. Legg, Hugo Tang

Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism

The gaming industry has long been considered recession proof. However, as the gaming industry has expanded it has increased its exposure to the lodging and convention industries. This is evidenced by the fact that the gaming industry is struggling alongside these industries. This study uses the Las Vegas region to investigate gaming revenues’ exposures to the economy from the most recent recession (2007/2010) in comparison to the previous recession (2001) and the sources of the change in the exposure to the economy. Through logarithmic OLS-HAC regressions and rolling-correlations, the findings show that casinos were more exposed to economic conditions in …

Assets Sales And Earnings Management In The U.S. Hotel Industry, Jayoung Sohn, Chun-Hung (Hugo) Tang, Soocheong (Shawn) Jang

Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism

In this article we investigate the behavior in asset sales of publicly traded U.S. hotel firms in relation to earnings management. Asset disposition has been regarded as one of the most efficient methods for controlling accounting income. Given a heavy weight of fixed assets in the asset composition of hotel firms, it is sensible to presume that it would be easier for hotel managers to manage earnings by tuning the timing of asset sales if they decide to do so. In view of the unique characteristics of the hotel business –high vulnerability to economic circumstances and substantial fluctuations in property …

Simpler And Better? Revisit Of A Time-Series Model Of Forecasting In The Lodging Industry, Elizabeth A. Yost

Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism

The average hotel manager recognizes the criticality of forecasting. However, most managers are either frustrated by complex models researchers constructed or appalled by the amount of time and efforts to master the nuances of statistical theories. As hotel competition intensifies, managers require an effective method to forecast financial performance (Chon & Singh, 1993). Luckily, lodging industry data has underlying patterns and trends that repeat themselves daily, weekly, monthly and yearly (Wheaton & Rossof, 1998). This provides an opportunity for a time-series forecasting model for revenue managers, considering time-series models’ intuitive nature of assuming that the history is useful in predicting …

Overconfident Managers And Capital Structure In The Hospitality Firms, Kwanglim Seo, Sharma Amit

Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism

This study examines capital structure of hospitality firms from a behavioral perspective based on the hubris theory that emphasizes the effect of managerial overconfidence on corporate decisions. Specifically, we investigate the relationship between manager overconfidence and financing decisions. We also examine patterns of capital structure in the hospitality firms by characterizing them relative to manager overconfidence. We use a sample of U.S. lodging and restaurant firms between 1999 and 2009. This study contributes to the literature in two important ways: 1) we control for agency cost to estimate the pure effect of overconfidence, and 2) we characterize managerial overconfidence by …

Customer Satisfaction, Profitability, And Firm Value In The Hospitality And Tourism, Kyung-A Sun, Dae-Young Kim

Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism

Customer satisfaction has been considered one of the most prominent factors in the measurement of marketing strategies and performances. On the other hand, profitability and value of firm are important indicators of companies’ financial performance. Considering the unique differences from other industries (e.g., intangibility, variability, etc.), this study assumes that the hospitality industry will be more vulnerable to customer satisfaction than any other industry in terms of the firm’s profitability and value. Based upon this presumption, this study empirically examines whether the customer satisfaction index (CSI) influences the companies’ financial performance in the hospitality and tourism industry (i.e., hotels, restaurants, …

Determining The Optimal Capacity For The Mice Industry In Las Vegas, Li-Ting ( Grace) Yang, Zheng Gu

Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism

The meetings, incentive travel, conventions and exhibitions (MICE) industry is a comparatively young industry and there has been limited research conducted in this field, especially from the financial performance and capacity management perspective. The purpose of this study is to fill the gap by analyzing the financial performance of the Las Vegas MICE industry and identifying its optimal capacity in the years to come. The findings and results of this study should help researchers and practitioners determine the current status of the Las Vegas MICE industry in terms of operational efficiency and profitability. The findings will also reveal whether the …