Employee turnover has been one of the most serious issues facing the hotel industry for many years. Both researchers and practitioners have devoted considerable time and effort to better understand and indentify ways to decrease employee turnover. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of individual differences focusing on career motivation and polychronicity on job satisfaction and its influence on employee turnover intention in the hotel industry. This study surveyed 609 non-supervisory employees working at two Dallas hotels. Respondents provided information regarding career motivations, polychronicity, job satisfaction, and turnover intention. Career motivations were significantly related to employee job satisfaction which impacted employee turnover intention. This finding can be useful to hotel companies and their managers when attempting to understand employee motivation.

The purpose of this study was to develop a test blue-print for a hospitality management capstone course to measure programmatic student learning outcomes. A total of 50 hospitality industry professionals and hospitality management faculty were interviewed through focus group discussions, and a post-focus group survey was conducted to determine a weighted percentage for each of the nine determined content domains. A test blueprint was developed from the weighted proportions determined by this study and a process by which other educational institutions could follow to establish a consistent and accurate evaluation method for a capstone course was described.

Childhood obesity in America is reaching epidemic proportions. This study explored whether daily online lunch menu information was sufficient to enable parents to advise their children about healthy and unhealthy menu choices in 350 Texas middle schools and whether online menu information strongly correlated with the descriptions of the offerings given by 52 school cafeteria managers in telephone interviews. Although schools are making efforts to describe their offerings, they are not vigorously taking advantage of the opportunity to aggressively inform or educate. They are not coding their descriptions in such a way as to explicitly brand food as healthy or unhealthy. They are also not labeling food as generally required by law for consumer services that provide food (except for the fresh produce that lines supermarket shelves). Instead, they only briefly describe what they are serving in the way of fruit in one or two word snippets. Finally, cafeteria managers’ online descriptions were inconsistent with what they described in interviews. Online and verbal descriptions were sometimes contradictory, raising questions about the accuracy of either type of description.

Dining out has become an important part of the American lifestyle, greater frequencies as well as increased portion sizes have led to concern. The number of Americans that are classified as overweight or obese has also increased considerably, and the foodservice industry has become a target. Mandatory labeling of menu items has been avoided to this point, but the subject has moved to the forefront and continues to be debated. This study surveyed 502 patrons at a student-run restaurant in Texas. Respondents provided information concerning their health and dining habits as well as their attitudes toward and intended usage of nutritional information (NI) on menus in full-service restaurants. Gender, education levels, age, and household income affect the attitudes toward and intended usage of NI. Exercise frequency, the current use of nutritional information on packaged foods, and the practice of healthy eating habits are all related to the intended use of NI while dining out.