Teaching, working, exploring: Dr. David Cárdenas is keeping busy in Aruba



Dr. Cardenas facilitating an evening session with industry leaders in Aruba

Dr.  Cárdenas is spending two months in Aruba as part a student/teacher international  exchange collaborative between the University of South Carolina and the University of Aruba. This great opportunity allows Dr.  Cárdenas to share his expertise with young and promising hospitality students. Dr.  Cárdenas teaches class every day from 9am-4pm, Monday through Friday. Classes are going well. The students are working hard and currently working with four companies on the island, helping them improve their tourism product and hopefully making their products more sustainable. This week,  Dr.  Cárdenas began evening seminar sessions with the tourism industry and began collecting industry data on knowledge, trust and power for a research project.  He is also helping one student with her thesis  focused on  the importance-performance of the road signage on the island. While his schedule is extremely rigorous, he still has time to engage in outdoor activities such as snorkeling, swimming, biking, and cheering on the gamecocks!

Upcoming Publications

 

In the of world of ‘publish or perish’ it is always nice to be able to announce upcoming publications, and I have three coming out soon that are particularly important to me for different reasons. Firstly, I have just had a paper accepted in Tourism Management, one of our top journals. The paper examines the influence of social media on customer relationships at music festivals. I am particularly proud of this paper, as it was co-authored with my son Rupert, a recent graduate of the Moore School of Business, who is now working in the music industry in New York. In addition, the paper will serve as a tribute to Tom Madden (former Moore School of Business Professor of Marketing), another co-author on the paper, who sadly passed away a few months ago.

A second paper of mine that will be published shortly in Anatolia: An International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research is a called ‘A Portrait to Brent Ritchie’. Brent was my Chair at the University of Calgary, and is undoubtedly one of tourism’s most eminent scholars. He retired this year, and so to be asked to write a portrait of Brent for a journal was a real honor, and is a small way of saying thank you to the best mentor a tourism academic could ever have. Brent has had a huge influence on my career.

Finally, I have just started writing a new book on the ski industry, nearly 15 year after publishing my first book on the subject called Snow Business. The industry has changed significantly in the last few decades: technology has had a huge impact on the sport and how it is enjoyed and marketed; demographic shifts have severely affected the customer profile; and climate change is impacting hills all over the world. Such dramatic changes require a fresh look at this exciting and dynamic industry, and I am really looking forward to working on this project over the next 12 months or so. The book, to be co-authored by my wife Louise, will be published by Goodfellow Publishers at the end of 2015.

 

‘Preying’ for tourists in the southeast? Not this year.

I was visiting Sea Island Resort in Georgia this weekend, where it has been a bumper summer for this classy resort that boasts four Forbes Five-Star experiences: The Cloister at Sea Island; The Lodge at Sea Island Golf Club; The Spa at Sea Island; and the Georgian Room restaurant. Service is really slick here, due in part to the charismatic leadership skills of James Gibson, a fellow Brit, and Director of Operations. Attention to detail is applied to every service encounter and even raptors are employed to enhance the dining experience for guests. Staff can often be seen (see picture above) walking around with a bird of prey on a gloved fist, the bird’s presence being a natural, and non-lethal means of disrupting the aggressive behavior of blackbirds who can be a nuisance while guest enjoy dining outside.

But Sea Island is not the only destination to enjoy record numbers of guests this year. Tourism has been buoyant elsewhere in the southeast, with hotel occupancy and average room rates up on last year in most resorts and hotels. A recovering economy and low gas prices have contributed to this increase, but of course we do offer excellent value for money and guaranteed sunshine! If you would like to hear more about tourism in this part of the world (from my point of view anyway), click on the Podcast link below:

http://www.hrsm.sc.edu/CoEETourismandED/podcasts/In_Focus_August_31_Summer_Tourism_and_Sun_City_Veterans_3.mp3

The World Tourism Cities: Market and Cooperation

Dr. Fang Meng: World Tourism Summit in Beijing, China

Dr. Fang Meng, is among one of distinguished guests participating in the 2014 World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF) Beijing Fragrant Hills Tourism Summit being held in Beijing, China from September 4th and 5th, 2014. The focus of the summit is to promote cooperation between tourism cities and tourism operators around the world. These experts will exchange views and explore  challenges and opportunities for global tourism in the future. Dr. Meng is among one of the top leaders in this global tourism group and on the forefront of new and innovative ideas for the future of tourism!

South Carolina moves up the rankings of business-friendly states.

According to Chief Executive Magazine, South Carolina is now the fifth best state in the U.S. to run a business, moving up from its 2013 ranking of eighth. In their 10th annual survey, the magazine questioned over 500 CEOs across the U.S. asking them to grade states with which they were familiar on measures including tax and regulatory regime, the quality of the workforce, and the quality of the living environment. Texas continues its 10-year historical position as the best state overall; but Florida, which ranks No. 2, is edging up and even overtaking Texas in its quality of living environment. Tennessee edged out North Carolina to take third place with North and South Carolina respectively capturing 4th and 5th place.

 

 

 

Responding to ‘Think Aiken Think’

Dr. Hudson was a guest of Aiken South Carolina’s Chamber of Commerce yesterday, where he was acting as a ‘responder’ to a community leader’s think-tank called “Think Aiken Think”. The Chamber was looking for someone from outside the community but with a background in economic development and planning to come in and sum up the planning session. “My job was to listen to all the various group discussions and then give a summary based on what I had heard, reacting to the level of creativity and identifying common themes” said Hudson. Participants were asked to debate various topics including how to create a more progressive and future-oriented leadership, how to attract more investment and create jobs in Aiken, and how to improve and promote the quality of life in the city. “It is just great to see these rural communities in the state realizing that inaction is not a viable option if they genuinely want to improve local prosperity. So they are bringing leaders of the community together to create a vision for the future – such stakeholder engagement is a crucial step in the community development process.” Last year, Hudson’s team in the Center of Economic Excellence in Tourism conducted a similar project for the Town of Bluffton. Their report can be found at: http://www.hrsm.sc.edu/CoEETourismandED/PDFs/BlufftonReport.pdf

Great customer service should be delivered with a compliment or two (or five).

Dr. Hudson was a guest of the Members Club at Woodcreek and WildeWood in Columbia this week delivering a customer service seminar to employees. As part of a general training day, Dr. Hudson was giving some tips on how to provide superior customer service. “It’s actually not that complex,” he said “But few organizations really get it right.” One of the problems, he says, is that many companies think they are providing good customer service, when, in actual fact, their customers are saying otherwise. Hudson refers to a recent study that found 80 percent of companies believe they deliver superior service to their customers, but only eight percent of their customers actually agreed! “It is refreshing to see an organization like Woodcreek & Wildewood recognizing the significance of customer service, and investing in their employees. Customer service training is often viewed as a cost rather than an investment, and even if companies recognize the importance of customer service, they don’t know how to deliver consistent, high quality customer service on an on-going basis.” One of Hudson’s tips on how to wow your customers: pay them a compliment. He refers to one study where hairstylists compared the tips they got when they complimented their customers versus when they did not compliment them. In the study, tips were significantly higher when the hairstylists used compliments. “Did you know the key to a successful relationship is to pay your partner a compliment five times a day?” says Hudson. There’s food for thought.