La Frustración como desesperanza

Following the pre-test procedure, the final survey was administered. This section begins with a discussion of the sampling frame related to the final survey.

4.6.1 Final Survey Sampling Frame

As mentioned earlier, this study aims to evaluate the proposed theoretical model summarised in Figure 3.1. The hospitality industry has recently become very interested in the employee perspective, especially in regard to employee commitment as studied here, under the three constructs of organisational commitment, career commitment and commitment to the customer.

132 This study is intended to provide a new model of the relationship between hotel employee commitment and cultural difference in both Thailand and Australia in a context not studied previously. Hotels are generally interested to develop their employees‘ productivity, and as such are willing to co-operate in the collection of data, although under a requirement that their specific involvement remain totally confidential. In consequence, and in association with the ethics provisions of Victoria University, the names of the hotels where surveying took place are not given.

4.6.1.1 Thailand

The World Travel & Tourism Council (2009) indicated that the contribution of travel and tourism to gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to rise from 14.7% in 2009 to 15.6% by 2019. Furthermore, Thailand‘s travel and tourism revenue ranks 24th in absolute size worldwide, 44th in relative contribution to the national economy and 25th in 10-year growth.

Thailand is located in the centre of the Southeast Asian region, with abundant natural resources, including a wide variety of flora and fauna, distinct ecological zones, beaches and islands (TAT 2012). According to Business Monitor International (2011), Thailand is known to tourists as the destination for an exotic, natural, friendly and attractive holiday with significant infrastructure consisting of a large number of four to five-star hotels, fine dining restaurants and famous Thai spas.

However, the Thai economy only receives around 7% of its GDP from international tourism revenue, a figure which is nonetheless a substantial 550 billion Baht (nearly USD 16 billion). Since the 1990s, Thailand has liberalised the regulations governing the hotel industry and allows foreigners to invest in the hospitality industry, which has resulted in a rapidly growing number of hotels in the country, including major tourism destination places such as Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket, Samui and Hua Hin. High competitiveness between hotels in Thailand has increased the demand for the more effective and efficient performance of employees in the organisations.

133 Hua Hin is one of Thailand‘s premier beach resort towns on the Gulf of Thailand, located less than 200 km south of Bangkok the capital city of Thailand. Hua Hin is a sub-district of Prachuap Khiri Khan Province. Accommodation provided along the beach and on the streets on the way from the sea range from simple guesthouses to luxury resorts. There are more than 200 hotels in Hua Hin, and more than 15 4-5 star- hotels with outstanding standards and high service quality, including international chain hotels such as Hilton, Six Senses, Marriott, and Intercontinental hotels.

Figure 2.4 shows a map of Hua Hin with all accommodation in several categories including hotel, condominium, resort, guesthouse and others. According to the Tourism Authority of Thailand organisation (2010), accommodation establishments in Hua Hin reported 1,043,907 guest arrivals, of which 714,605 are Thais. Among the foreigners, the top 10 arrivals are from Finland 14%, (44,480) Norway 12% (41,652), Sweden 11% (37,657), Germany 11% (34,947), United Kingdom 9% (28,613), Denmark 6 % (20,767), the Netherlands 5.5% (17,848), Australia 3.4% (11,133), Switzerland 3% (10,066) and Russia 2.8% (9,720).

This makes Thailand and Hua Hin an excellent choice of location for measuring hotel employee commitment, and an excellent example of Eastern cultural tradition.

4.6.1.2 Australia

Australia is still one of the most popular destinations in the world and consistently ranks highly for its natural beauty and as a place people would like to visit if money was no object. In 2010, Australia was ranked 9th overall in the Anholt Nations Brand Index, a ranking it has held since 2007 and 2nd overall in the Future Brand study of country brands, up from 4th position in 2009. The continuing challenge for Tourism Australia is to convert this strong interest into actual visits, and to ensure Australia‘s tourism products and services keep pace with global competition, including investment in the sector. From statistics of GDP in the tourism sector, tourism contributed $34 billion in GDP or 2.6% of Australia‘s total GDP in 2011 (Tourism Australia 2011).

134 Melbourne is the capital city of Victoria and the hub of the state in business, administration, cultural activity and recreation. Melbourne's population contains many diverse cultural groups of people which in turn contribute to the city‘s unique atmosphere.

Tourism is a major contributor to Melbourne‘s economy, and to national and international recognition of Melbourne as a great place to visit, live, work, invest, study and stage events. In August 2011, The Economist Intelligence Unit announced its rankings of liveability for 140 cities around the world with Melbourne ranked first. Tourism supports the local economy, provides employment, contributes to the city‘s cultural vibrancy and has a positive impact on residents and businesses. In 2008, a combination of international and domestic visitors spent $9.7 billion in the City of Melbourne. The City of Melbourneinvests in visitor infrastructure and tourism services to make Melbourne accessible and easy to navigate, and to provide information, signs and visitor services to meet tourists‘ needs.

From tourism statistics in 2008, 1.4 million international tourists and 18.2 million domestic visitors spent $9.7 billion in Melbourne. Moreover, there are more than 288 accommodation facilities including hotels, motels and serviced apartments with a total revenue in 2008 from accommodation of $1.1 billion, while the average annual room occupancy was 75.8%. The largest number of tourists to Melbourne is from Southern Asia (excluding China and Japan), with 24% of international overnight visitors in the region. Other markets included Europe (16%), New Zealand (15%), United Kingdom (14%), and China (12%).

More recent information from the International Visitor Survey (Tourism Research Australia 2010) has the number of foreign tourists in the top ten arrivals as New Zealand (208,000) UK (178,000) China (156,000) USA (123,000) Malaysia (74,000) Singapore (71,000) Germany (57,000) India (50,000) Hong Kong (42,000) and Indonesia (38,000).

135 This makes Australia and Melbourne an excellent location for measuring employee hotel commitment, and an excellent example of Western cultural tradition.

4.6.2 Final Survey Procedures

After the pre-test process, the questionnaire is improved for the final survey and research data collection. As mentioned in the pre-test section above, a letter of formal invitation enclosed with the instrument was mailed to 30 hotels from both countries, asking them to participate in this research. The information given to the hotel management included the aims of the study, its significance to them, intended use of data, time, confidentially of information and respondents voluntary participation. Moreover, in order to encourage hotel management to participate in this study, the researcher also offered to provide them with feedback once the results are determined, on a general basis, given that the individual hotels participating are to remain anonymous.

All the hotels contacted in Thailand were very willing to participate in this survey (15 hotels), and the fieldwork took place in Hua Hin, Thailand during October 2012. For Australia, fewer hotels (12 hotels) were interested in participating and the data collection was longer extending over the period November 2012 to January 2013. In order to select respondents, hotel management asked respondents to participate in a confidential process during work time. The surveys are stratified into the main areas of employment – (including House Keeping, Administration, Food and Beverage, Concierge and Service departments) with different numbers collected in each work area depend on willingness to participate in the study by respondents. Hotel management were not present during data collection and did not force workers to participate or offer any incentive to become involved.

The questionnaires were personally administered, with the researcher standing by to answer any questions related to the questionnaire instrument, and to ensure confidentiality to the participant. As such, the survey was collected as a self-selected stratified random sample. The questionnaire was provided in both Thai and English, and employees in Thailand were given the choice to fill out any version they liked as many

136 hotel staff are fluent in English. Participants were also not pressured to answer any question they were reluctant to answer.

In total, the researcher distributed 800 questionnaires to hotels in both samples. The objective was to obtain a minimum sample size of approximately 300 fully completed responses equally stratified for each country, with the large sample size reflective of the intention to use advanced multivariate techniques in the analysis, such as Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) (Hair et al. 1995). The collection resulted in 644 fully answered (in the presence of the researcher) questionnaires being collected comprising 342 questionnaires for Thailand, and 304 questionnaires for Australia.