The hospitality industry in recent years has become intensely competitive. Better communication between industry professionals and educators is important for university programs to provide relevant learning experiences for students. The purpose of this study was to determine competencies that hotel and restaurant professionals deem necessary for the success of graduates in the industry. Thirty supervisors of hotel and restaurant management majors who graduated from the University of North Texas from 1990 through 1992 responded to the research questionnaire. The supervisors were given 36 competencies and asked to rate their level of importance. Percentages were used to identify the most important competencies. The skills most frequently identified as important by the industry professionals surveyed were leadership skills, professional ethics, personnel management, and understanding the different laws that affect hospitality operations and management.

The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a difference in opinion between chain and franchise restaurant managers and independent owner/operators toward the effects of a smoking ordinance. Results of this study showed a significant statistical difference between restaurateur groups toward the perception of economic effects.

This study investigated significant influences including Hispanicness, traditionalism and demographic characteristics on Hispanic women's purchase behavior when selecting work and social activity apparel. A sample of 114 Hispanic women from a Hispanic professional organization or businesses in the Dallas and El Paso, Texas areas. Surveys were collected by mail or administered to subjects. Analyses included frequencies, percentages, t-tests, and Pearson's product-moment correlations. For both situations, mean scores indicated the most influential information sources were: clothing displays, friends, and female family members, while the most used acquisition sources were: department and specialty stores. In both situations, these women had very feminine appearance attributes and very feminine and fashionable clothing style. Hispanicness, traditionalism, and demographic characteristics made some difference when selecting work and social activity apparel.

This study investigated college student's image of apparel retail stores associated with shopping environment, price, and fashion innovativeness and their self-perception of appearance and fashion innovativeness. These served as the dependent and independent variables, respectively. University of North Texas students residing in on-campus housing completed a self-administered questionnaire measuring each variable. Repeated measure ANOVAs determined differences in self-perceptions and store images across four stores varied by fashion (innovative/mass) and price (high/low). Results indicated that perceptions for shopping environment, price, and fashion innovativeness differed by store. Students' appearance and fashion innovativeness had no significant effect on their perceptions of apparel retail store image. Students perceive stores differently based on shopping environment, price, and fashion innovativeness.

The research questions of this study were to determine the specific hotel, restaurant and institutional management courses offered as required and elective courses, to determine which hospitality management courses were taught by faculty members in the hospitality management program versus being taught by faculty in other programs, to determine the teaching methods used to present hospitality curriculum, and to determine the distance learning methods currently used.

This study investigated demographic characteristics of 240 Chamber of Commerce members in terms of their expectations for customer service in hotels. Subjects reported their age, gender, marital status, race, educational level, income level and ethnicity, and completed a 26-item questionnaire which measured expectations for customer service. Principal components analysis was used to reduce the 26 items to five dimensions of service quality, and multivariate analysis of variance was used to evaluate the effect of the demographic variables on those dimensions. Gender of the customer was found to have a significant effect on the combined dimensions of service quality; other variables were not significant.

One hundred forty-nine hospitality and culinary programs located in the U.S. and 49 hospitality and culinary programs located in other countries were examined to identify the differences of nutrition topics taught and teaching methods/resources used in undergraduate hospitality management and culinary programs.