Performance Measurement and Leisure Management

The issue of performance measurement in the leisure industry is increasingly important, from both theoretical (academic) and applied (practitioner) perspectives. Managers need accurate indications of how their organisations are performing, to inform their decisions. Policymakers need an evidence base for their decisions regarding public leisure services. Students and researchers in leisure management are increasingly turning their attention to the principles and evidence of performance measurement, as an aid to management decision-making. The chapters in this text each present a different case study of performance measurement. They cover a wide range of sectors in the leisure industry including public recreation centres, theme parks, play facilities, sport organisations, hospitality, and the Olympic Games. The evidence from these cases covers examples from three different continents and five different countries. All the chapters report empirical research and all the cases explore managerial implications. However, results are presented with clearly explained statistical analysis, which can be easily understood by a non-academic audience. The book will be useful for leisure management students, researchers and practitioners. The chapters provide both reviews of the relevant literature and propose new measurement models based on original data. This book was previously published as a special issue of Managing Leisure.

Konstantinos Alexandris is an Assistant Professor in Leisure Management at Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and a part-time Faculty Member at the Open University, Greece. He also holds an Adjunct Faculty Member status at the University of Illinois, Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism, USA. He conducts research in the area of service quality and consumer behavior in relation to sport and leisure services.

1. Performance measurement and leisure management Konstantinos Alexandris 2. A focused service quality, benefits, overall satisfaction and loyalty model for public aquatic centres Gary Howat, Gary Crilley and Richard McGrath 3. Can service quality predict spectators' behavioral intentions in professional soccer? Nicholas D. Theodorakis and Konstantinos Alexandris 4. An application of importance-performance analysis (IPA) to the management of sport centres Antonio Rial, Javial Rial, Jesus Varela and Eulogio Real 5. Utilizing importance data to identify customer segments for English public sport facilities Yi-De Liu, Peter Taylor and Simon Shibli 6. Testing the feasibility of performance indicators for play facilities in England Peter Taylor, Ashley Godfrey, Phil Back, Lynn Bennett, Pete Sinclair and Haki Kapasi 7. Work process knowledge and customer service excellence: lessons from the Scottish visitor attraction industry Shuna Marr 8. Theme park employee satisfaction and customer orientation Matt Wagenheim and Stephen Anderson 9. Employees' motivation in the luxury hotel industry: the perceived effectiveness of human-resource practices Leonidas Maroudas, Olivia Kyriakidou and Artemis Vacharis 10. A forecast of the performance of China in the Beijing Olympic Games 2008 and the underlying performance management issues Simon Shibli and Jerry Bingham