Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1）According to my opinion, I suggest that the author should strengthen the richness of the literature discussion, and because the Delphi method is used, it should strengthen the development of the topic.  Added some up-to-date literature to support the current state of the hotel's progress.

2）More in-depth explanations should be given in the description of the selection of expert samples.  And, if applicable, state the professional background of the expert in a table.  What is the basis for selecting these experts?  Please also explain more.

3）In the section on research limitations, I hope that the authors can further explain how to address the limitations of the Delphi method.  And explain the importance of the contribution of this method in the hotel industry.

Author Response

Please, see the attach. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors, 

Thank you for this oportunity to review this paper, an interesting one and one that has the pontential to bring out a new method to asses the performance of ethical marketing in Luxury Hotel Chains. However, the article has some issues that should be addressed before final publication: 

• Regarding the definition of marketing ethics, you mentioned that are many definitions and you presented just some of them. I would recommend to extend this evaluation of the current definition of ethical marketing
• You proposed a definition of ethical marketing - what are the basis of this definition, from my perspective you must justify more clearly the basis of this proposed definition 
• The title of figure 1 should be above the figure, not on another page
• In section 2.4 - you mention in the title ethical marketing, however, the issue of ethical marketing is just briefly mention in the section. Please rectify the title to match the content or the other way around. 
• From my perspective, table 7 - even if it is the research result, it should be presented as an annex. in this sectio you should explain the content specificly not as a table. 
• From my persective the paper should end in the conclusion and discussion section also by mentioning quantitative validation of the evaluation tool. While the results and the tool itself is valid, and the responses underlined by 23 specialised participants are important, it should be also validated by a quantitative analysis. 

Author Response

Please, see the attach. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Key words don’t need to be numbered and the end. This is why you apply “;” to separate them.

The second aim is of the study (lines 83-84) is odd: “and (2) to develop and validate the Ethical Marketing Model for Luxury Hotel Chains: an ethical marketing model for luxury hotel chains” – it is obvious that The Ethical Marketing Model for Luxury Hotel Chains is a ethical model for luxury hotel chains (fix the pleonasm).

Figure 2 (General theory of marketing ethics) is not properly inserted into the paper – the right part of it is cropped.

Lines 304-319 – the Delphi rounds description would benefit if it would be also shown in form of a graph that visualizes and explains every stage (round) and processes that occurred during them.

Table 6 – the right column is different font size than the left one.

Line 330 – shouldn’t it be table 7?

Additional thoughts: because each dimension of the model has different number of items, the impact of each dimension is different of the final score. If I understand correctly the experts did not rank every item’s or dimension’s impact on the overall hotel ethics. Yet in the current form of the tool, in a hypothetical example if in a hotel integration developed to the highest possible level, but performance evaluation is low it would score higher than another hotel that is characterized by high performance but with low integration. If all the dimensions are  equally important for ethics maybe an equal number of items in each dimension and both areas should be considered? Or a weight system (but this would complicate  the tool). The tool would also benefit if for each item and each assessment level there would be guidelines for choosing a correct score – making it less subjective to the assessor, and making the results from various hotels and assessors comparable. For this purpose the cells at the intersection of each assessment column and item row could be used, as I understood the score has its own column and there the assessment of each item will be written. I would also suggest to include a summary row for each dimension, where the assessor can write the sum of scores individually (including the maximum possible number of points that could be assigned to each dimension) – this would help to identify and rank the strongest and weakest dimensions that require most work.

I’m not sure that the first objective of the study was completed (“to analyse and evaluate the ethics marketing practices in luxury hotel chains’ promotional campaigns”) – the designed tool would allow to do so, but it wasn’t applied yet, so the marketing practices have not been evaluated.

Finally, interesting how it is, the paper lacks solid foundation in the scope of the paper. Ethic plays a role in sustainability, but the paper does not anchor sufficiently the topic and findings to this issue in its introduction, literature background and final conclusions. Those sections need to be supplemented with additional description of the studies impact on sustainability.

The conclusions and discussion section currently contains only conclusions and assumed contributions. It needs to be expanded and the results should be juxtaposing current findings from the literature (references needed) to be a proper discussion with solid contributions.

Author Response

Please, see the attach. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Authors,

your manuscript deals with interesting and internationally important topic, which is related to tourism sustainability. It utilizes appropriate methodology, and the findings are reasonable. However, substantial changes and additions are necessary before this work can be considered for acceptance.

• What are luxury hotels and hotel chains? How to differentiate them from the other hotels and hotel chains?
• Where was this study done? In Portugal? This should be reflected everywhere – in the title, the abstract, Introduction, etc. If you focused on one country or one city or one part of the world, the related limitations should be stated (things may be different on the places and in other cultural contexts).
• You have to tell more about your participants. Age, gender, nationality, education, work experience...
• Conclusions MUST be separated from Discussion. Discussion = what do your findings mean, how these are comparable with the findings of the other researchers (citations are necessary!), what are further interpretations of your findings? Conclusion – a numbered list of the most principal findings to be followed be limitations, perspectives for further research, and practical implication.
• You need to cite more articles published in top international journals in the 2020s.
• Key words: please, avoid numbering and usage of the words from the titles.
• The writing is clear, but needs additional polishing.

Author Response

Please, see the attach. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors, 

Thank you for response and your quick answer to my sugestions. I would advise that you go over the english / sentence topic of some parts of the paper, but I will recommend that the paper be accepted as is. 

Author Response

Paper is being revised again by a native English editor.

Reviewer 3 Report

Find the attached PDF with comments to your four last replies.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please, see the attach. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Authors, I appreciate your revisions. Nonetheless, I strongly feel your manuscript needs some additional improvements.

First, your object of study is fully unclear, and it is similarly unclear where and how you have gathered your information. So, the data are also unclear.

Second, although I still think Discussion can be extended, well, let it remains "as is" if you insist. But you need to call this section "Discussion and Conclusions" anyway.

Third, the paper demonstrates various short-cuts. If it cannot be extended substantially, the plausible solution would be to label it as "Communication", not as "Article".

Author Response

Please, see the attach. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

No additional comments are needed.

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Authors,

 

thanks for revisions and explanations! Ok, I tend to recommend positively your article this time. However, if you consider this to be a full-scale research paper, its last section should be titled "Discussion and Conclusion". It cannot be research paper without Discussion. Anyway, this issue can be fixed at the stage of proof check.