Establishing, developing and maintaining successful relationships constitutes a critical strategic skill for managers and marketers in hospitality and tourism industry. As the hospitality industry is in essence a "people business," it follows that effective interpersonal skills are essential to ensure a marketing manager's successful and positive working relationships with both customers and staff. Given the tourist product itself often involves the bundling of facilities and services of multiple firms, it is also essential to be able to create and stabilize relationships with other businesses. We argue that the evolution and management of stable relationships is a critical skill that too often is poorly understood among both large and small hospitality and tourism enterprises.
This special issue of Journal of International Hospitality, Leisure and Tourism Management invites papers that address and expand our knowledge in the areas of relationship and cooperative marketing, strategic and cooperative alliances in the hospitality and tourism industry. Topics of relevance include but are not limited to:
 BUYER- SUPPLIER RELATIONSHIPS |
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NETWORK RELATIONSHIPS |
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DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS |
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THE IMPACT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ON BUSINESS TO BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS |
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CONFLICT RELATIONSHIPS |
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CROSS-NATIONAL TOURISM |
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BUSINESS- TO BUSINESS MARKETING |
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INTRA AND INTER FIRM NEGOTIATIONS |
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SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING |
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POWER RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SMALL AND LARGE GLOBAL BUSINESSES |
Authors who are interested in submitting a paper are asked to submit a title and abstract of the proposed paper by March 20, 1998. Four (4) copies of the full papers will be due September 30, 1998. Each paper will go through a blind peer review process. Accepted (revised) papers will be due back to the guest journal editors by February 15, 1999.
Articles accepted will appear in the Journal of International Hospitality, Leisure and Tourism Management, Vol. 2 (2 ). The special issue will also be reissued as a book under Haworth Press's Travel and Tourism Marketing Series. For more information about the journal and book series, visit Haworth Press.
Authors in the Oceanic and Asian regions should submit their papers to Roger March at School of Marketing, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, NSW, Australia, E mail: r.march@unsw.edu.au. Authors from the Caribbean, North, Central and South America should submit their papers to John Crotts at the School of Business and Economics, College of Charleston, Charleston, S.C. 29424-0001, USA, E mail: crottsj@cofc.edu. Authors from Europe and Africa should submit their papers to Dimitrios Buhalis, University of Westminster, Department Tourism, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS, United Kingdom, E mail: buhalid@westminster.ac.uk.