Critical issues of globalisation in the international hotel industry

Competition in the international hotel industry is increasingly global as hotels seek new ways to grow and customers have more alternatives to choose from. Globalisation could lead to bland hotel images where hotels are similar wherever they are located. They could lose their local uniqueness and authenticity. This paper presents strategies for international hotel companies to operate in the globalised market. The main issues of globalisation in the international hotel industry are also discussed and ways to optimise the implementation of operating strategies given.     

Multinational hotel development in developing countries: an exploratory analysis of critical policy issues

Multinational hotel companies, often integrated with tour operators, travel agencies and other businesses in tourist‐generating or tourist‐receiving countries, play a key role in the development and continuity of an international tourism industry in developing countries. In order to take advantage of benefits and minimise the unwanted adverse effects from multinational hotel involvement, developing countries need the planning, implementation and evaluation of carefully designed policies linked to their particular objectives. This paper reviews the potential benefits and costs of multinational hotel companies and brings together previously scattered critical policy issues in relation to them, while suggesting possible options for developing countries to follow. Seven critical policy areas are identified: establishment of the need for foreign investment; deciding on forms of involvement; deciding on the scale of hotel development; supporting sectoral linkages; supporting indigenous employment/training; monitoring business practices; and determining foreign investment incentives and regulations. It is argued that policies should be worked out in these areas and co‐ordinated in order to achieve a balance between the benefits and costs of multinational hotel involvement in developing countries. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Encouraging tourism development through the EU structural funds: a case study of the implementation of EU programmes on Bornholm

The Danish island of Bornholm has had success in attracting funds from the European Union structural fund to remedy its declining tourism sector, supporting both private sector development and public tourism services. It is difficult, however, to measure the impact of these funds on the tourism sector. Most evaluations of such support schemes are based on a top-down approach, with evaluation conducted on the basis of predefined end-goals. This study takes a different approach, evaluating the programmes on subjective criteria defined by the actors in the tourism industry themselves. Success is defined in terms of the extent to which the programmes have enabled the local tourism industry to overcome what they view as the major obstacles to tourism development. The main findings are that the programmes are most well suited to help the tourism sector overcome tractable problems such as low hotel standards and lack of offseason attractions. On Bornholm, the programmes also have had some success in alleviating problems such as lack of cooperation on a common strategy. This is found to result from the comprehensive network of private and public agencies participating in the process of implementing the funds. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Unionisation in the Dublin hotel industry

The Dublin hotel industry experiences significantly higher levels of union density than is the case amongst hotel workers in the UK. This paper examines the context in which these different experiences of union density take place. It provides an examination of the historical roots of union organisation within Dublin hotels and explores the factors that have contributed to effective organisation within the industry today. It concludes by arguing that although the structural characteristics of employment in the UK can act as a barrier to union organisation, these can, in certain historical periods, be overcome where there is a shifting balance of power between workers and employers affecting both the hotel industry and society as a whole. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An analysis on the concentration–advertising relationship in the hospitality industry

This paper empirically investigates the non-linear relationship between advertising and concentration in the hotel industry. Using data collected from the Taiwanese hotel industry, this paper finds that (1) the influence of concentration on advertising intensity is inverted U-shaped in the room service market and (2) concentration in the food and beverage markets has no significant effect on advertising intensity.     

The Incorporation of Consumer Experience into the Branding Process: An Investigation of Name‐Brand Hotels

Given the growing number of hotel brands, improving consumer experience has become an increasingly important area of interest to industry practitioners. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between hotel guests' brand experience, knowledge and loyalty to name‐brand hotels. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling with the incorporation of a second‐order factor analysis were employed to achieve the research goals. The findings indicate that brand experience was represented as a holistic concept with sensory, affective, behavioral and intellectual aspects. While brand experience influences brand loyalty, its impact is partially mediated by brand knowledge. This is a pioneer study that combines consumer experience with branding in the hospitality industry and offers practical suggestions to facilitate hotel managers in their development of effective branding strategies. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Decline and turnaround: a literature review and proposed research agenda for the hotel sector

Tourism systems are composed of an inter-related and inter-dependent set of individual businesses, organisations and servicescapes. The hospitality industry, and more specifically the hotel sector, comprises many businesses that contribute significantly to the tourism system. Yet, the industry is renowned for business failures and poor financial returns. Increasing competition, globalisation, technology, social change and internal weaknesses are some of the reasons why tourism and hospitality businesses fail or perform significantly below expectations. When in a state of decline or poor performance, many businesses attempt a ‘turnaround’. Declining performance can have wide-ranging impacts not only on hotel businesses directly, but also upon those communities where local economies rely on tourism for jobs and economic prosperity. Consequently, an improved understanding of the processes of declining performance and turnarounds is particularly important to both researchers and practitioners. However, there has been limited research focused on turnarounds in the tourism industry, in general, and in the hotel industry, in particular. In this study we assess the literature on decline and turnarounds and propose an agenda for future research that will enhance our knowledge and inform ongoing debate on the process and impact of turnarounds in the hotel industry.     

Human resource development issues for the hotel sector in Libya: a government perspective

The Libyan government emphasises the importance of tourism in economic diversification through its Libyan Tourism Master Plan identifying various initiatives to develop the Libyan tourism industry, including human resource development (HRD). Hotels are key to an internationally competitive industry and human resources critical to perceptions of service quality. This paper analyses issues relating to the Libyan hotel sector, including the need to strengthen the private sector; to match education/training programmes to industrial needs, and to address cultural and religious dimensions which exacerbate poor industry image. The paper identifies a partnership approach between governmental, educational and hotel sectors to address HRD issues through workforce planning. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Perception and attitude of Hong Kong hotel guest‐contact employees towards tourists from Mainland China

In recent years, the majority of arrivals to Hong Kong, which were once dominated by the Western and Japanese markets, were replaced by arrivals from Mainland China. The number of tourists from Mainland China has overtaken others to become the largest single market for the territory. With its increasing significance, providing quality service to these visitors becomes crucial to the success of the tourism industry and of the hotel industry in particular. Unfortunately, the satisfaction rating of the Mainland visitors on hotel services in Hong Kong is reported to be relatively low when compared to those given by other major markets. It is suspected that the perception and attitudes of the service staff may influence their behaviour in serving customers. As such, this study conducted a survey questionnaire with 228 guest‐contact employees of hotels in Hong Kong. Results indicate that most respondents have a fairly positive perception towards the Mainland tourists in relation to the economic and financial benefits that they bring to Hong Kong. However, a majority of the respondents express negative perception and attitudes towards these tourists in respect to their appearance, personalities and behaviour. Despite some respondents indicating that they exhibit different service behaviour towards visitors from Mainland China and other countries, no major significant differences in their perception and attitudes were found in this study. It is recommended that various types of cross‐cultural training, such as sensitivity training and role playing, would be helpful to guest‐contact employees in enhancing their ability to be more objective and more tolerant of other people's behaviour. This study concludes that hotel employees, especially those who work as front‐line staff, must remain aware of their subjective judgments when dealing with guests and be more accepting of others. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sampling method for monitoring the alternative accommodation market

Tourism is an extremely competitive industry where effective destination management is necessary to compete. One of the main destination management stakeholders is the hotel industry. Since the advent of the Internet websites that facilitate the sharing economy, the hotel industry has had to compete with an alternative accommodation market. This alternative market is difficult to monitor as there is no official data. Current research works on developing methods for calculating tourism metrics for a destination based on digital footprint with the objective of offering figures to complement official statistics. The objective of our research is to develop a method to monitor the alternative accommodation market based on data collected from Airbnb. This paper reports the results of the first step: the design of a sampling method for data scraping from this website that provides a representative sample of the accommodation offer of the Basque Country distributed through it and its prices. The results show that the length-of-stay (LOS) parameter of the queries to the website is key to obtaining a representative sample of the accommodation offered through this channel. A sampling method based on the representative values of LOS inferred from a data sample is proposed.     

Hotel general managers: A review of prominent research themes

This paper offers a comprehensive review of the prominent research themes concerning hotel general managers. The paper identifies and explores six main research themes; issues relating to managerial work, hotel managers’ careers, the personality characteristics of hotel managers, occupational functions, skills and competencies, women hotel managers, and emerging themes. The commonalities and differences between the research fields are outlined, both within and between the categories. By way of conclusion, the paper identifies areas of research that would benefit from further exploration, these are issues relating to skills and competencies, job mobility, and the barriers to career advancement for females in the hotel industry. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Post-2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup: oversupply and location of luxury hotel rooms in Cape Town

An excess of hotel rooms in cities preparing to host a mega-event such as the FIFA Soccer World Cup is not a new occurrence. Between 2007 and 2010 the number of five-star hotel rooms in Cape Town increased by 50% and four-star hotel rooms by 20%. A spatial database of three-, four- and five-star hotels was compiled for the hotel sector of Cape Town. This paper reveals the global–local nexus of luxury hotel development in Cape Town (South Africa) and three different contexts in which the oversupply of hotel rooms must be understood. First is South Africa as a developing country engaged in hosting a hallmark event and engrossed in concomitant inflated tourism-related expectations. Second is the vulnerability of Cape Town's hotel sector with its overdependence on long-haul holiday tourists from a narrow northern-hemisphere market experiencing the worst economic recession since the 1930s. Third is the favourable economic trends in South Africa from 1999 to 2007 that have trapped hotel developers in a ‘fallacy of composition’.     

Big data in smart tourism: challenges,issues and opportunities

In the era of digital transformation, Big Data have assumed a crucial role in changing the global travel and providing significant challenges and opportunities for established companies, as well as new entrants into the tourism industry. All these companies can get valuable information on Big Data for predicting tourist demand, enabling better decision-making, managing knowledge flows and interaction with customers, and providing the best service in a more efficient and effective way. This can result in improved productivity, increased customer satisfaction, personalized marketing campaigns, and more efficient operations. However, open research issues about the role of Big Data in the tourism industry can be still recognized. With these premises, this Editorial aims to present the articles included in the special issue of Current Issues in Tourism titled ‘Big data in smart tourism: challenges, issues and opportunities’, which has called for research contributing to the recent debates on the implications and challenges of the adoption of Big Data to improve the competitiveness of tourism destinations and companies. Main topics considered by the accepted articles include a literature review proposing a novel theoretical investigative frameworks, metrics and critical dimensions, and empirical investigations of the use of Big Data in different tourism contexts.     

How efficient and productive are road toll companies?: Evidence from Norway

This article evaluates the technical efficiency of toll companies, i.e., how toll companies perform relative to each other, their productivity, and whether toll companies improve their efficiency from one year to the next relative to the best performers. The rationale for this study is that Norwegian road toll companies have been criticized for not being as efficient as they should; it has been claimed that some have very large operational costs compared to their peers and hence are inefficient. The framework for analysis is Data Envelopment Analysis and its subsequent Malmquist Productivity indices. The data are from the accounting period of 2001–2004 and contain information on 18 companies. The results show that: (1) there is a potential for efficiency increases of about 14%, (2) there are economies of scale in the industry in that larger companies (as measured by number of lanes served) tend to be more efficient compared to smaller companies, and (3) there has been a productivity increase in the sector of about 1%, and this progress is due more to companies employing a newer and more effective method for collecting funds and less to improving efficiency from one year to the next. Finally, these findings suggest that the Norwegian road authorities should consider reorganizing the toll sector such that the inherent economies of scale are utilized.     

Business travellers' perception of service quality: a prefatory study of two European city centre hotels

The business traveller contributes significantly to the turnover of the hotel industry and, with the globalisation of business, this sector shows signs of increasing growth. Service quality has now become one of the main factors used to gain competitive advantage, thus the industry must focus more specifically on the needs and expectations of its business customers. The aim of this paper is to focus on the business travel market and more specifically on the comparison of two hotels in two European cities, Brussels and Manchester. This area of research has not been attempted before and will provide an interesting comparison with findings in USA. A literature review identified the relevant attributes used to measure service quality, which were utilised to design a questionnaire, distributed to customers in a five star hotel in Manchester and in Brussels. The primary data obtained were then compared with the findings of other researchers. The analysis indicated that Brussels scored the majority of the attributes more highly (many significantly) than did Manchester. This may be influenced by the international profile of the Brussels respondents who tended to travel on business more frequently than the Manchester sample. The comparisons with the USA surveys found some inconsistencies that might be attributed to societal differences.Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Entrepreneurship in the small and medium-sized hotel sector

The purpose of this study is to gather information about the determinants and characteristics of the owners/managers of small- and medium-sized hotels (SMSHs) and identify various challenges in starting up and operating businesses in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The paper also highlights key actions taken by the owners/managers of SMSHs to manage their business in the competitive business environment. To avoid any bias associated with a specific method, a multi-method research approach has been used for data collection. The results reveal that the majority of the owners/managers of SMSHs in the UAE are male, young and middle-aged with secondary- and higher-education levels, and relatively new to the tourism industry. With the characteristics of self-confidence, perseverance and independence, the motivations for the business ventures of the owners/managers include wanting to be financially independent, become one's own boss, involvement in family business and the opportunities of the hotel business. Among the key business challenges highlighted by the owners/managers of SMSHs are stiff competition in the hotel industry, increased operating costs, reduced demand and lack of skilled employees. Several key strategies have been employed to face these challenges. These include offering competitive pricing, improving the marketing and channels of promotion, enhancing the quality of service and providing superior customer service. At the same time, the owners/managers of SMSHs also felt that the government and policy-makers should play a more proactive role in promoting the tourism sector. This research provides a useful insight into the activities in the hotel tourism business sector and the challenges they encounter while operating in the UAE economy.     

Seasonal hotel jobs: an occupation and a way of life

Research for the present study was undertaken in the summer of 1995. This paper seeks to identify whether Salaman's notion of ‘occupational communities’ exists in a sample of six British seasonal seaside hotels, a relatively unexplored sector of the hotel industry. Briefly, occupational communities have as their major focus the job itself and they are also characterised by a fusing of work and leisure activities. Interviews with 30 hotel workers indicate that seasonal, and particularly live-in workers, tend to form distinct ‘occupational communities’. These communities, however, are different to ‘traditional’ occupational communities in a number of respects. Most importantly, instead of the job itself being the focus for community formation, job importance is replaced by work situations characterised by hedonism and close social bonding. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Impact of all-inclusive packages on hotel efficiency

In the last decade, all-inclusive packages have had an extraordinary boom in one of the most popular sun and beach tourism destinations in Europe, the Canary Islands. This fact reinvigorated the debate on potential benefits and negative effects on the local economy. However, there is no empirical evidence of the impact that all-inclusive packages may have on the efficiency in the hotel industry. This study assessed the effects of all-inclusive packages on cost and profit efficiency using the stochastic frontier approach and the model proposed by Battese and Coelli [(1995). A model for technical inefficiency effects in a stochastic frontier production function for panel data. Empirical Economics, 20(2), 325–332] in a sample composed of 102 hotels of the Canary Islands from 2008 to 2014. The empirical results revealed that the hotels that offered all-inclusive packages exhibited lower efficiency levels than those hotels that did not provide this service. These results have important implications for both public policies and hotel management.     

The economic return on education for hotel managers

This paper estimates econometrically the economic return on education among Portuguese hotels managers, based on a survey carried out in 2003. A Mincerian human capital model is estimated. The main findings indicate that the rate of return is in the range 12–15%, signifying that Portuguese hotel managers are better paid than the average population. The results also indicate that in this sector, the return on education does not depend on the number of employees in the hotels in which the individual works, nor on the region where the hotel is situated. Gender has an impact in this labour market. Being a foreign manager has a positive impact on earnings, as is also the case for partners in the hotel company. The research draws the attention of hotel managers to the need to acquire human capital to enable them to perform their tasks effectively in a globalised world. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Capital structure decisions of globally-listed shipping companies

Debt capital has traditionally been the most important source of external finance in the shipping industry. The access that shipping companies nowadays have to the capital markets provides them with a broader range of financing instruments. As such, this study investigates the determinants of capital structure decisions using a sample of 115 exchange-listed shipping companies. We test whether listed shipping companies follow a target capital structure, and we analyze their adjustment dynamics after deviations from this target leverage ratio. When compared with industrial firms from the G7 countries, shipping companies exhibit higher leverage ratios and higher financial risk. Standard capital structure variables exert a significant impact on the cross-sectional variation of leverage ratios in the shipping industry. Asset tangibility is positively related to corporate leverage, and its economic impact is more pronounced than in other industries. Profitability, asset risk, and operating leverage are all inversely related to leverage. There is only weak evidence for market-timing behavior of shipping companies. Because demand and supply in the maritime industry are closely related to the macroeconomic environment, leverage behaves counter-cyclically. Using different dynamic panel estimators, we further document that the speed of adjustment after deviations from the target leverage ratio is lower during economic recessions. On average, however, the capital structure adjustment speed in the maritime industry is higher compared with the G7 benchmark sample. These findings indicate that there are substantial costs of deviation from the target leverage ratio due to high expected costs of financial distress. Our results have implications for shipping companies’ risk management activities.