BRAC Business School (BBS) Faculty Dr. Mohammad Shahidul Islam received the Best Paper Award at the 33rd Annual Council of Australasian Tourism and Hospitality Education (CAUTHE) Conference in Australia recently.
Among 109 worldwide research papers, Dr. Mohammad Shahidul Islam, assistant professor at the BRAC Business School, won the Best Paper Award at the 33rd Annual Council for Australasian Tourism and Hospitality Education (CAUTHE) Conference (7-9 February 2023) in Australia. The success of service firms, as Dr. Islam underscored, depends on the quality of the customer experience. A business can only create or develop the events and circumstances required for customers to perceive an experience; it cannot provide consumer experiences without offering means.
His study investigated experiences of smiles and eye contact at hotels, which had not been explored in earlier hospitality studies, including those in psychology, health care, sports, and law, using a novel video-elicited focus group study methodology. His work adds a new theoretical framework to the body of knowledge. To successfully promote interaction in the hospitality sector, it will emphasize the use of smiles and eye contact. Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, and Murdoch University in Australia co-hosted the CAUTHE Conference, one of the most prominent conferences on hospitality and tourism, to present the best research findings in these fields. The conference looks for inclusive and diverse new research trajectories in tourism, hospitality, and events. It invites scholars and educators to use fresh perspectives to examine the most prominent challenges affecting tourism, hospitality, and events internationally and locally. Dr. Islam has won three best paper awards since joining BBS, the most recent being at the CAUTHE conference (2023), following best paper awards at the BBS ICBM conference (2021) and the Turkey AGGA conference (2022).