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The literature investigating the role emotions play on patrons' casino gambling behavior within the theory of planned behavior (TPB) framework have primarily focused on anticipated emotions. However, anticipated emotions are more unstable compared to experienced emotions with predicting responses to behaviors that have a high degree of uncertainty in the outcomes such as casino gambling. This study investigates the role of experienced emotions within the TPB framework for predicting casino visitation intentions and attitudes via covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM). The results show that positive experienced emotions along with subjective norms and attitudes significantly influenced the casino visitation intentions. Additionally, while positive emotions significantly influenced casino visitation attitudes, negative emotions did not. Alternatively, negative emotions were positively correlated with casino visitation intentions. Moreover, the analysis also revealed that respondents from diverse backgrounds varied greatly in their responses of how their experienced emotions and cognitive determinants influenced their casino visitation intentions. Casino marketers can utilize the results to fine-tune their marketing initiatives for eliciting increased visitation among their patron databases.

Little is known on how turnover and senior leadership attributes affect the long-term performance of a casino resort. The ability to longitudinally measure the turnover effect on market share has been problematic due to most gaming markets exhibiting dynamic conditions with exogenous factors that provide competitive advantages. This study analyzed the effect the turnover rate and successor attributes of the CEO and Chairman of Tribal Council positions have on their casinos’ market share within a balanced oligopolistic market of Connecticut. Additionally, this study investigated which attributes amplify the sensitivity of the CEO tenure status to market share growth. The results suggest increased CEO turnover and CEO hires who already had prior CEO casino experience hinder long-term market share. Moreover, the tenures of more experienced CEOs were less susceptible to market share performance. The results can be leveraged for improved hiring practices at the senior levels of Native American casinos.

Purpose This study aims to predict hotel demand through text analysis by investigating keyword series to increase demand predictions’ precision. To do so, this paper presents a framework for modeling hotel demand that incorporates machine learning techniques. Design/methodology/approach The empirical forecasting is conducted by introducing a segmented machine learning approach of leveraging hierarchical clustering tied to machine learning and deep learning techniques. These features allow the model to yield more precise estimates. This study evaluates an extensive range of social media–derived words with the most significant probability of gradually establishing an understanding of an optimal outcome. Analyzes were performed on a major hotel chain in an urban market setting within the USA. Findings The findings indicate that while traditional methods, being the naïve approach and ARIMA models, struggled with forecasting accuracy, segmented boosting methods (XGBoost) leveraging social media predict hotel occupancy with greater precision for all examined time horizons. Additionally, the segmented learning approach improved the forecasts’ stability and robustness while mitigating common overfitting issues within a highly dimensional data set. Research limitations/implications Incorporating social media into a segmented learning framework can augment the current generation of forecasting methods’ accuracy. Moreover, the segmented learning approach mitigates the negative effects of market shifts (e.g. COVID-19) that can reduce in-production forecasts’ life-cycles. The ability to be more robust to market deviations will allow hospitality firms to minimize development time. Originality/value The results are expected to generate insights by providing revenue managers with an instrument for predicting demand.

Casinos rely extensively on free slot play (FSP) offers for incentivizing patron visitation. However, there has been a lack of understanding its influence on driving patron visitation and patrons’ valuation of FSP compared to other casino promotional offers. This study conducted a conjoint analysis on patrons’ valuations of FSP compared to other promotional offerings at a casino resort. Moreover, this study investigated the roles inter-casino competition and visitation frequency have on patrons’ perceived valuation of FSP through a hierarchical Bayes model. The results show that competition plays a significant negative role on patrons’ valuation of FSP, while competition held insignificant influence on patrons’ valuation of food and beverage (F&B) comp offers. Additionally, patrons who visited the casino more frequently valued FSP greater, while less active patrons valued F&B comp offers more. Using the study’s results, casinos can increase their margins through increased efficiencies with their promotional offering mix.

Within the competitive foodservice industry, the ability to accurately measure the meal process known as turn-time is critical to the success of the firms in the industry. This is traditionally done through linear techniques such as multiple least squares (aka linear regression) or analysis of variance (ANOVA). However, linear techniques have theoretical properties that can potentially lead to bias in measurements of time duration variables, while survival models were designed for that purpose. This study utilized simulated data of a dine-in restaurant to test and compare the ability of linear regression to five survival models (proportional hazard models) for predicting the duration of turn-time. The results from the simulated trials show that while some of the survival models held incremental improvements, linear regression performed adequately for predicting the duration of turn-time even when taking the biased predictions into account. For operators who are in their infancy of developing resta...

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the newspaper press was the leading public forum in the protracted debate over the supposed climatological effects of forests. Journalists acted as key intermediaries in the dispute between parliament, science and the public. The press was also a powerful pressure group in its own right. Newspaper reports contextualised the forest influence issue by linking it to three interrelated concerns: the cause of climate variability and change, the environmental impact of humans, and the need for forest conservation. This paper examines the role of the Australasian press in the debate along with the changing nature of the arguments and some aspects of its historical geography. Results are summarised from a systematic longitudinal survey that analysed over 1400 articles relevant to the forest influence debate published in 141 Australian and New Zealand newspapers between the years 1827 and 1956. The study concludes that the press was instrumental in p...

The 2018 Annual Meeting marked the largest near-surface geophysics technical program in the history of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists. In Anaheim, attendees could participate in nine near-surface oral presentations, six poster sessions, one preconference short course, two postconference workshops, and for the first time, three panel discussions. These panels add a new platform to the Annual Meeting to help diversify the technical program and facilitate discussions on geophysical hot topics among professionals from varying but complementary fields.

Abstract Two new Free Water Knockout (FWKO) vessels were installed on an FPSO facility operating offshore Cabinda, Angola. They were installed to accommodate larger slugs and to debottleneck downstream facilities to cope with increasing water production. The paper describes process design and CFD work for placement of internal baffles to mitigate fluid sloshing in the new separators. Three CFD simulations were performed. First we demonstrated that the separator would not operate properly without custom-designed internal baffles. The second simulation demonstrated that customized baffles in the new vessel could suppress sloshing and prevent water spill over into the oil discharge stream. The final simulation showed that the advanced baffle arrangement would control the problems due to sloshing when fluid flow was introduced into the simulation. Field data is presented to confirm the validity of the simulation work and successful operation of the separators. The work gives confidence in the use of CFD to design separators with minimum weight and size. We show that for critical applications, the CFD design should be applied to the particular case - baffle designs are not "one-size-fits-all". Introduction The purpose of this CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) study was to evaluate the design and performance of internals installed in a horizontal Free Water Knockout separator (FWKO), located on SBMâ??s Kuito Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) facility in Kuito Field Block 14, offshore Cabinda, Angola. The new FWKO design included both a proprietary cyclonic inlet device and perforated baffles for flow distribution. The new internals were installed to accommodate larger slugs and to debottleneck downstream facilities to cope with increasing water production. The internal baffles were evaluated for suppression of fluid sloshing inside the vessel when it is subjected to acceleration wave motion under different sea states. Cyclonic inlet devices are industry proven separation technology for reducing or eliminating foam in a separator and for improving the efficiency of separation. Since the primary goal of the simulation work was to design perforated baffles that would allow the separator to operate effectively at the maximum wave-induced motion on the FPSO, the cyclonic inlet device was modeled in the CFD simulation as a simplified block component. The continued rapid improvement in the speed of computer hardware and increased size of available memory have led to the emergence of CFD since the 1960's, and the inception of the commercial CFD software industry started in the early 1980's. CFD complements theoretical and experimental fluid dynamics by providing a flexible and cost-effective means of testing theoretical advances or simulating the performance of alternative configurations for conditions that are very difficult to physically test in a complex flow system on n experimental basisand processes. Use of CFD simulation can lead to shorter design cycles and further compress the time between the conceptual stage of a project and field implementation and troubleshooting of existing equipment, evaluating retrofit designs, and minimizing equipment down time.