FSU Dedman School of Hospitality faculty members Don Farr and Mark Bonn each traveled to cities in China this summer to participate in academic conferences.

Farr, director of the Dedman School and Dedman Professor of Hospitality Management, visited Hong Kong to attend the World Summit for Deans of Independent Schools in Hospitality and Tourism, hosted by the School of Hotel & Tourism Management at Hong Kong Polytechnic, May 27 – 29.

The summit brought together deans and directors from independent hospitality schools and colleges to discuss current issues in hospitality and tourism education, including curriculum, courses and program rankings.

Farr was invited to lead a discussion panel on hospitality education topics — the next generation of skills to incorporate into hospitality curriculum; intelligence sharing; human resources; and the use of technologies for artificial intelligence, virtual assistance, digital management, and massive online open course learning.

Following the summit, Farr traveled to mainland China for the 16th Annual Asia-Pacific Council on Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Education (APacCHRIE) Conference, hosted by the Business School at Sun Yat-sen in Guangzhou, May 30 - June 3.

Asia-Pacific CHRIE is the top hospitality and tourism education association in the region, with members from more than 18 countries and 75 leading universities. At the conference, Farr discussed international partnerships with deans and directors of hospitality schools and continued conversations with those who had attended the Hong Kong summit.

Bonn, the school’s Robert H. Dedman Professor of Services Management, attended the APacCHRIE Conference to present two research papers, both of which are parts of a larger project examining how restaurant performance can be improved.

The first paper, “Restaurant purchasing skills and the impacts upon strategic purchasing and performance: the roles of supplier integration,” investigates how specific purchasing skills can impact a more strategic approach to purchasing in order to improve restaurant performance.

The second paper, “Interplay effects between contract specificity, competence trust and goodwill trust upon supplier opportunism and relational stability: Focusing on restaurant performance,” investigates the extent to which types of trust (competence and goodwill trust) interact with specificity in contracts to reduce supplier opportunism and improve relational stability for improved restaurant performance.