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See also: cross-cultural management; culture
change; culture shock; globalisation
expectation
RAY PINE, CHINA
People have certain expectations from their trips,
especially those which are pleasure oriented �see
pleasure tourist). These are influenced by
promotion �advertisements, brochures), prior experience
and even myths �see also promotion,
place). This is further conditioned by the desire for
a certain level of service or quality from a given
tourism product/business or destination at large.
As these expectations are related to the nonordinary
aspects of life, satisfying them is a
challenge in tourism.
expenses estimation
TOM SELANNIEMI, FINLAND
Expenses estimation is the projection of the outflow
of assets or increase in liabilities occurring in the
production and provision of goods and services. In
the budget process, it is the step undertaken
immediately after forecasting revenues. In order
to properly estimate expenses, expected cost
increases for supplies, food, labour and other
expenses need to be known. Expenses are either
fixed, variable or mixed. Therefore, the development
of their estimations cannot be based solely on
historical relationships between revenues and
expenses for those other than the variable ones.
Once revenues have been established, the expenses
that are variable can be estimated based on the
historical relationships to sales, provided the
revenue was developed in a manner to pass along
cost increases to the consumer.
Expenses estimation for fixed costs is accomplished
by identifying the precise costs that are
fixed, and applying the appropriate dollar amount
to each one of them. Fixed costs will remain
constant over the relevant range of activity, and
thus changes in revenue projections will not have
an effect on the estimates of fixed costs. The most
difficult category of expenses to estimate is mixed
costs. Mixed costs have a fixed component and a
variable component. Therefore, relationships to
sales will not necessarily hold true, nor will the cost
remain the same at different levels of activity. An
exercise can be undertaken to break these costs into
their fixed and variable components through
regression analysis. Once this exercise is completed,
expenses estimation for these types of costs
can be computed as explained above for variable
costs and fixed costs.
There are other ways to study expenses estimation.
One of these methods is to base this on
standard amounts. Since revenues are estimated by
using some form of logic, such as number of hotel
rooms sold, room attendant wages could be
estimated by applying a productivity standard
quantifying the number of rooms an attendant can
change in a day. This information would generate
the number of room attendants and number of
hours worked or needed to generate the sales
expected. With this information and information
about wage rates and increases, the wage expense
for attendants could be estimated. For departments
without revenue, expenses estimation is often based
on past experience and known cost changes. This
methodology can be applied to many other job
efforts in a full service hotel and some other
tourism businesses.
Further reading
Schmidgall, R. �1997) Hospitality Industry Managerial
Accounting, 4th edn, East Lansing, MI: Educational
Institute of the American Hotel and Motel
Association.
experience
experience 215
STEPHEN M. LEBRUTO, USA
Experience is the inner state of the individual,
brought about by something which is personally
encountered, undergone or lived through. Tourist
experiences are such states engendered in the
course of a journey, especially a sightseeing tour
or a vacation. The principal sociopsychological
problem in the study of tourist experiences is their