Alternative Energy Vehicles Essay example -- Exploratory Essays Resear

Alternative Energy Vehicles Interested in alternative-energy driven cars? Here is a brief synopsis of the existing technologies, some of the problems surrounding each of them, and suggestions for further reading. There is no question that pollution from automobiles is a major problem in industrialized countries and is increasing in developing nations. And the number of cars is increasingly rapidly: in the United States, the automobile population has increased 6X faster than the human population and 2X faster than the number of new drivers (Motavelli, 2000). At the same time, the average fuel economy of the 2001 fleet decreased to 20.4 miles per gallon, the same it was in 1980. This decrease is fueled by the growing trend in inefficient SUVs. As over 50% of the USA’s oil comes from overseas, the dangerous level of waste promoted by inefficient vehicles makes this more than simply an environmental issue. What are some of the long-term renewable solutions to the political and environmental dangers that pollution and inefficiency pose? Battery-powered vehicles. There are several electric car models on the market in the making. As of now, their economic viability is restrained by the relatively short distance that can be traveled between recharging and their lower-than-average maximum speeds. Considering the advantages that standard cars have over battery-powered cars, there is little economic incentive to buy battery-powered cars, but their environmental benefits are enormous. Although it requires factory pollution to create the electricity necessary to charge the vehicles, it would take 13 electrical cars to equal the emissions produced by one standard car (Motavelli, 2000). Research is continuing to make battery-pow... ...t cars. Suggestions for further readings: Borroni-Bird, Christopher E. Designing AUTOnomy. http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=00034FE5-BA99-1D80-90FB809EC580000. 2002. California Air Resources Board. Major Automotive Fuel Cell Programs http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/zevprog/fuelcell/kalhammer/techreport/sec3_3.pdf. 2002 Fantes, Francisco. Solar Hydrogen Energy: Mining the Oceans for the Holy Grail. Harvard Science Review, winter 2002. Hubler, Shawn, Chalk One Up for Hybrids. Http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl_et_hubler26mar26.story. 2002. Motavelli, Jim. Forward Drive : The Race to Build â€Å"Clean† Cars for the Future. San Francisco : Sierra Club Books, 2000 Nice, Karim. How Hybrid Cars Work. http://auto.howstuffworks.com/hybrid_car.htm 2002. Sierra Club, Energy Fact Sheet. Http://www.sieraclub.org/energy/factsheet.asp 2001

A modern version of Shakespeare’s original play Essay

Baz Luhzmans â€Å"Romeo and Juliet† was produced in 1997 the film is a modern version of Shakespeare’s original play. This essay will analyse the techniques used, the effect the opening and its successes on a modern audience. The film opens in an unconventional, modern way in order to catch the attention of the audience, for example in the starting scene a T. V screen moves towards us (the audience) and at the same time it expands till it actually covers the whole screen. The effect this has on audience is into a serious and concerning mood. I was also very impressed how the director modernized the scene. I believe what the director was trying to do was to stay faithful to the Shakespeare original play, so in other words he didn’t change the scene or the play but he showed every aspect of the play in a way so that the audience could relate to this scene, for example the director uses a News caster to read out the prologue, while Shakespeare original play used a narrator to read out the prologue. The director headlines in magazines, newspapers and forecast to show key words in the prologue, for example in the News forecast they have a caption which is â€Å"Star crossed lovers†. The Characters are portrayed in an interesting and contrasting manner. For example the Montague’s are portrayed as childish, humorous, unorganized and this characteristics is believed to be a stereotype of adolescents, so that the audience can relate to this characters and the lifestyles of the characters, what the director also does is he makes the addressees relate to the Montague’s in order to gain the audience sympathy for the Montague’s. While the Capulet’s are shown as mature, more organized, they are dressed in suits and also the Capulet’s characters display consistent behavior, they are always enraged, always ready to do battle and always out for blood, and this characteristics is also another typical stereotype but only this time this characters are portrayed as the Mafia. The director portrays them as evil and insincerity because they wear religious items while they live Sinful lives. The effect that the contradiction of the Montagues and Capulets has on the audience is it makes the audience realise that there will be conflict. The director portrays Montague’s as humorous so this makes the audience laugh and he shows the Capulet’s as powerful evil hypocrites so this makes the audience more or less despite them, as they are the villains of the play. The setting is carefully chosen to show rage and anger for example the scene at the petrol station conflict happens, petrol station symbolises fire and fire symbolises rage, danger and conflict. What the director once again does is he stays loyal to the Shakespeare’s original play but once again modernises for example, the original play was set in Verona while Baz Luhzmans â€Å"Romeo and Juliet† is set in U. S. A Verona beach. The effect on audience is the scene is set in L. A to attract a young audience so that they can associate to the familiar setting. The language used in the film helps create a successful opening, in the Shakespeare’s original play he used a narrator to read out the prologue, the prologue is basically a summery of the play, there is few key words in the prologue which are the following † New mutiny†, â€Å"Take their lives†, â€Å"Star crossed lovers†, â€Å"Ancient grudge†, â€Å"Fair Verona†, the director uses this key words from the Shakespeare’s originals plays prologue and uses this words as headlines, and he also uses this key words as captions in several different scene for example the starting scene at the news cast the headline is â€Å"Star crossed lovers†, The effect this had on audience was it attract the audience attention to important aspects of the play. And I believe what the director was trying to do was to reinforce the spoken prologue in the captions he used instead of reciting it as Shakespeare’s did once again he modernized a scene in Shakespeare’s original play but still stays faithful to it. There was a scene in a petrol station, in the petrol station there was a sign which was â€Å"Phoenix, add more fuel to your fire†, the language used here draws our attention further to the families conflict because we associate this words with anger and rage, because the first word Phoenix is associated with fire and hell. What the director does through out the film is he basically gives us the audience clues on what’s going to happen next.

Hotel Performance Evaluation - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 4 Words: 1293 Downloads: 1 Date added: 2017/09/15 Category Advertising Essay Did you like this example? RESEARCH NOTES AND REPORTS This Department publishes research notes, conference reports, reports on the work of public agencies and associations, ? eld (industry) reports, and other relevant topics and timely issues. Contributions to this department are submitted to its two Associate Editors: Research Notes to Juergen Gnoth (Department of Marketing, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. Email ) and Conference Reports to Russell Smith (Hospitality and Tourism, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Rep. of Singapore. Email ). Unsolicited conference and agency reports will not be accepted. RESEARCH NOTES www. elsevier. com/locate/atoures Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 712–715, 2004 # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain 0160-7383/$30. 00 A DEA Evaluation of Taipei Hotels Wan-Erh Chiang Ming-Hone Tsai Li Shau-Mei Wang National Central University, Taiwan It is always a major concern for top management to measure ef? ciency. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is an excellent tool for assessing the relative ef? ciency of decision-making units. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Hotel Performance Evaluation" essay for you Create order This research is aimed at measuring hotel performance by DEA under three operational styles of International Tourist Hotels (ITHs) commonly seen in Taiwan since 2000: Independently owned and operated, franchise licensed, and managed by international hotel operators. The results are expected to provide hoteliers with a basis for constructing strategies and promotion plans. With carefully selected indicators (input/output variables), DEA is able to locate and diagnose inef? ciencies, and to provide information for improvements. Several in-depth interviews were conducted with top managers of some Taipei ITHs for critical indicators. Therefore, this study explored the operational ef? ciency of ITHs not only from a theoretical standpoint but also according to ideas and practical experiences of hoteliers. The data were obtained from the Annual Operation Report of the ITHs 2000, published by the Tourism Bureau of Taiwan. On the basis of market segmentation and geographical location variation 712 RESEARCH NOTES AND REPORTS 713 Table 1. Estimated Overall, Pure Technical, and Scale Ef? ciency Scores DMU Overall Ef? ciency Pure Technical Ef? ciency Scale Ef? ciency A. Franchise Licensed Hotel 16 0. 878 Hotel 18 1 Hotel 21 1 B. Internationally Managed Hotel 6 1 Hotel 11 1 Hotel 12 0. 978 Hotel 15 0. 730 Hotel 25 1 C. Independently Hotel 1 Hotel 2 Hotel 3 Hotel 4 Hotel 5 Hotel 7 Hotel 8 Hotel 9 Hotel 10 Hotel 13 Hotel 14 Hotel 17 Hotel 19 Hotel 20 Hotel 22 Hotel 23 Hotel 24 0. 885 1 1 1 1 0. 984 0. 838 1 0. 992 1 1 1 1 0. 994 0. 872 1 0. 989 1 1 1 1 0. 885 1 0. 986 1 1 0. 985 0. 943 1 0. 887 0. 996 1 0. 942 Owned and Operated 0. 877 0. 886 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0. 677 0. 765 1 1 0. 716 0. 726 1 1 1 1 0. 727 0. 738 0. 65 0. 69 1 1 0. 887 1 0. 711 0. 714 1 1 0. 942 1 (Ismail, Dalbor and Mills 2002), 25 four or ? e star hotels in Taipei were selected for evaluation. The four input variables chosen by the hoteliers were hotel rooms, food and beverage (FB) capacity (area in pings, the total space utilized by all such outlets in a hotel), number of employees, and total cost of the hotel (including employee salaries, FB costs, room costs, utilities, advertising, operational cost, maintenance fees, taxes, and miscellaneou s costs). The three output variables were yielding index, FB revenue (the total generated from such businesses), and miscellaneous revenue (the total excluding the room and FB revenues). The RevPar (revenue per available room) is the most universally accepted measure for overall hotel operating performance (Enz and Canina 2002). Yielding index (personal communication with R. Hanks in 1998, Cornell School of Hotel Administration) is used speci? cally to examine room performance (yielding index = RevPar of individual hotel/Market RevPar). If the yielding index for an individual hotel is greater than one, it means that its performance is better than market average. While the index has received much attention from hoteliers, it 714 RESEARCH NOTES AND REPORTS as been neglected in the literature. This study is the ? rst to adopt it for research. To ? nd the DEA results, a specialized computer package—DEAP 2. 1 was used to handle the data. The BCC model (named afer those who proposed it; Bank, Charnes and Cooper) is employed to evaluate the overall ef? ciency, the pure technical ef? ciency, and the scale ef? ciency (Overall ef? ciency = Technical ef? ciency A Scale e f? ciency; Banker, Charnes and Cooper 1984). Table 1 groups the DEA results by hotel operational styles. Of the 25 properties, 14 have an overall ef? ciency score of 1. , which is relatively ef? cient. Of the franchised hotels (Table 1. A), two are DEA ef? cient, while one is relatively inef? cient. The overall ef? ciency score of Hotel 16 is 0. 878, which means it has only attained about 88% ef? ciency. This is a result of the lower pure technical ef? ciency score. Of the ? ve internationally managed hotels (Table 1. B), numbers 12 and 15 are inef? cient, with an overall ef? ciency score of 0. 978 and 0. 73, respectively. The overall inef? ciency is mostly due to technical inef? ciency. Among the 17 independent hotels (Table 1. C), 1, 9, 10, 13, 19, and 23 are members of several domestic chains holding multiple properties, with resources shared among properties. However, hotels 1 and 9 are not ef? cient overall, due to technical inef? ciency. It is also worth mentioning that number 10 signed a management contract with an international hotel operator for the ? rst couple of years. After becoming an independent hotel, it successfully transferred obtained know-how internally. The model by Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes (1978) is used to analyze slack. By examining the input/output variables, a number of suggestions can be made (Table 2). For example, hotel 16 as the only inef? cient franchised property could cut the number of hotel rooms by 98. 15, the FB space by 2613. 69 pings (1 ping Table 2. Amounts of Improvement/Slack of Inef? cient Hotels DMU Hotel Rooms FB Capacitya Employees Total Number Costb Yielding FB Misc. Index Revb Revb A. Franchise Licensed Hotel 16 A98. 151 A2613. 686 0 A10. 826 0. 311 0 0 A2. 599 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0. 129 0 0. 082 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1. 539 0 0 3. 024 0 1. 938 0. 114 0 0. 067 0 0. 079 B. Internationally Managed Hotel 12 A122. 614 A466. 261 A58. 868 Hotel 15 A34. 5 A485. 299 0 C. Independently Owned and Operated Hotel 1 A91. 544 0 0 Hotel 7 A102. 645 A202. 989 A36. 234 Hotel 9 A61. 838 A1430. 368 0 Hotel 14 A24. 175 A74. 17 0 Hotel 17 A44. 84 A209. 873 A41. 936 Hotel 20 A71. 789 A297. 454 0 Hotel 22 A67. 277 A53. 55 A6. 923 Hotel 24 A101. 568 A95. 732 0 a b Area in pings, one ping equals 35. 583 square feet. In millions of US$. RESEARCH NOTES AND REPORTS 715 equals 35. 58 square feet), the total expenditures, by $10. 8 million, to increase the yielding index by 0. 311, as well as other revenues by $1. 5 million and reach overall ef? ciency. As another example, of all hotels, number 12 is advised to cut the highest number of rooms (122. 614; Table 2. B). From the results obtained, it became clear that not all Taipei’s franchised or managed ITHs performed more ef? ciently than the independent ones. As to franchised hotels, number 16 did not perform well, and has encountered management problems in recent years. Keeping or dropping a franchise is always controversial. If managed by a well-known company at the expense of high expenditures, hotels that do not achieve productivity ef? ciency are of great concern. Hotel 12 was the ? st Taiwan property to sign a management contract, but it has not performed well for years. One of the advantages for independent hotels is that they can meet the needs of local customers in time. Some independent hotels focusing on local FB business do have an outstanding performance (such as hotels 2, 4, and 13). By incorporating yielding indices and other indicators, DEA has provided Taiwan ’s hotel operation with insights into resource allocation and competitive advantages. It also helps with strategic decision-making, especially regarding operational styles under intense competition through high hotel density. This research indicates that future studies should include soft, market-oriented variables such as the hotel’s image, customer satisfaction, and service quality, to achieve a more complete DEA analysis. A _ Wan-Erh Chiang: Department of Business Administration, National Central University, Taiwan, Ming Chuan University, Taiwan, Chung Li, 320, Taiwan. Email REFERENCES Banker, R. , A. Charnes, and W. Cooper 2003 Some Models for Estimating Technical and Scale Inef? ciencies in Data Envelopment Analysis. Management Science 30:1078–1092. Charnes, A. , W. Cooper, and E. Rhodes 1999 Measuring the Ef? ciency of Decision Making Units. European Journal of Operational Research 2:429–444. Enz, C. , and L. Canina 2002 Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Differences in Hotel Performance Following 9/11. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 43(5):22–32. Ismail, J. , M. Dalbor, and J. Mills 1991 Using RevPar To Analyze Lodging- Segment Variability. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 43(5):73–80. Submitted 4 April 2003. Resubmitted 4 July 2003. Accepted 10 July 2003. Final version 30 August 2003 doi:10. 1016/j. annals. 2003. 11. 001