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The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) dimensions on firm performance in the tourism sector. The goal is twofold: on the one hand, the paper aims to test whether EO dimensions are still significant determinants of performance after controlling for possible confounding factors; on the other hand, it aims to address the question of which EO dimension exerts the strongest effect on performance.

A survey was carried out in the Sardinian accommodation sector in 2012 and 224 questionnaires were collected. The multidimensional EO constructs were adopted.

The results show that innovativeness, proactiveness and autonomy were significantly associated with tourism firm performance, whereas risk-taking and competitiveness were not.

The results are limited to the Sardinian accommodation context. Self-reported data were used to measure firm performance. Further research works could replicate the analyses using objective firm performance not only in similar touristic destinations but also in other countries and incorporating other industries.

The study suggests educational and managerial implications. Entrepreneurs in the tourism sector should be encouraged to adopt an innovative, autonomous and proactive approach in managing their firms.

The study advances entrepreneurial knowledge in the tourism sector and in particular in the accommodation industry. The multidimensional EO approach has never been adopted among touristic firms. Furthermore, considering that EO research has been overlooked in the country of Italy, this study’s contribution is also providing evidence from an area that has received minimal attention to date.

The specific typology of local accommodation in Portugal has undergone a huge expansion accompanied by a proliferation in the number of firms and it is crucial that the firms associated with this boom can ensure their survival and remain in the market. The purpose of this paper is to specify an insolvency forecasting model and identify which financial indicators best contribute to forecasting insolvency in local accommodation firms.

At the methodological level, the financial data of firms in this sector were initially collected via the SABI database; then the probit model was estimated to perform the analysis of financial variables, with the aim of observing their behaviour and understanding which are crucial in predicting business insolvency.

Given the scarcity of studies in this specific typology of accommodation, the results of this paper are relevant and increase the knowledge for the sector. They also enable the identification of financial ratios that deserve greater attention from those responsible for firms in this sector, namely, profitability and liquidity ratios. In short, profitability ratios vary inversely with the probability of insolvency, so that firms with higher levels of net profitability, asset rotation or accumulated profitability have a lower probability of insolvency, with the opposite being true in terms of liquidity, where firms with higher current assets are more likely to become insolvent.

The novelty of this paper is focused on the urgent need for tourism accommodation stakeholders to prevent or anticipate insolvency and identify which financial indicators best contribute to forecasting insolvency. This research is fundamental, as many cities are considered major tourist destinations and where a high number of tourism businesses are concentrated.

Considers the interrelationships between manufacturing firms and their accommodation in the rented sector of the industrial property market. Discusses the implications for the industry of the growth of the rented sector, and outlines three analytical approaches to an understanding of firm‐property interrelationships: industry‐based analysis, behavioural analysis, and life‐cycle theory. Concludes that the increasing importance of rented industrial property has highlighted the need for a better understanding of the firm‐property interrelationship, three approaches to which have been outlined above.

The reawakening of the Northern Ireland tourism industry, in 1994, has developed a growing business confidence that international tourist levels will increase. Unfortunately, there is not a range of suitable accommodation either in standards or in number to cater for an influx of visitors. Examines the development of the accommodation sector in relation to the tourism industry of Northern Ireland. Highlights problems of the Northern Ireland accommodation sector and documents recommendations for future developments.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of successful business performance among accommodation firms by focusing on entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and destination attractiveness.

A web-based e-mail survey was undertaken in the Sardinian accommodation sector in 2012. The sample included 224 accommodation firms and analyses were performed using ordered logit regressions.

The results suggest no differential impact of EO on sales and profit depending on the attractiveness of the location in which the accommodation firm operates. Both EO and destination attractiveness were found to exert independent positive effects on firm performance. Furthermore, EO was found to have a larger effect on firm performance than destination attractiveness.

The study mainly considered hotels and camping accommodations in Sardinia. Additional investigations across accommodation types and geographic contexts are needed.

The findings suggest that accommodation firms should focus on implementing entrepreneurial activities and not only, as frequently happens, concentrate on selecting attractive destinations in which to conduct their business. Moreover, the findings also suggest that accommodation firms that are located in less attractive areas may produce good performance if they are managed with an EO. Finally, training programs should be developed to improve the entrepreneurial abilities of accommodation managers.

The specific topics of this paper have been understudied. The findings hold practical implications for entrepreneurs and managers who are involved in the accommodation sector.

This paper aims to better understand how business model innovation (BMI) occurs in the context of sustainable entrepreneurship, emphasizing the dialectical nature of entrepreneurial relationships. To do so, key interdependencies and reciprocal influences between internal/firm-specific and external/environmental factors underlying BMI for sustainability are analysed through co-evolutionary lenses.

A co-evolutionary framework is developed and applied to a longitudinal business model (BM) analysis of 15 Italian widespread hotels, which creatively use historic villages at risk of abandonment to establish their hotels.

Largely influenced by the interplay between internal and external factors, BMI of widespread hotels occurs through multilevel co-adaptations, which are recognised as virtuous by all stakeholders involved. Effective variations of the BM value elements are selected resulting in circular economy practices, which are retained for successful BMI, radical (first) and incremental (thereafter). Knowledge of specific local and multi-local conditions, time awareness and a future-oriented temporal perspective, by both entrepreneurs and policymakers, favour this dynamic.

Developing targeted policies and practices based on increased organisational knowledge supported by indicators can help in selecting and retaining successful variations of BMs appropriately in/with time with positive effects on firms' performance and sustainable development.

This study provides a novel co-evolutionary framework that explicitly links sustainable entrepreneurship and BM concepts in the accommodation sector. It further proposes a dynamic and holistic explanation of BMI for sustainability from which the crucial roles of the time-knowledge binomial and circular practices emerge.

The research purpose is to conceptualize competitive productivity (CP) in the peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation businesses. This study aims to conceptualize the four driving forces of P2P hosts’ CP and to empirically capture guest-based equity that supports such conceptual hosts’ CP model.

The goal of this paper is to apply Bauman’s Firm competitive productivity (FCP) model to the P2P accommodation business to conceptualize the CP of micro-entrepreneurial hosts. Four areas of the FCP model were reviewed to find how each of them contributes to the P2P hosts’ CP maximization.

Host talent, host resource management, value and host branding were conceptualized as key drivers of P2P hosts’ CP. The study also filled a gap in current literature by empirically analyzing online reviews to successfully capture key guest-based equity as satisfiers contributing to host talent, resource and branding.

Based on the hosts’ CP model, customer-generated resources play a significant role in the managerial implications, so that guest reviews with needs and wants and ratings can be empirically used to strengthen hosts’ CP under specific market circumstances.

This study is the first attempt to conceptualize a P2P host as a micro-entrepreneurial firm in the sharing economy platform for CP. This study looked at how the unique characteristics of the P2P accommodation industry and guest-based equity affect the P2P hosts’ CP.

The purpose of this study is to assess the key determinants of sustainability practices and policy adoption in small- and medium-sized tourism accommodation firms and its possible impact on the firm’s competitive advantages.

A combined model has been developed and tested with a set of relevant hypotheses based on primary data collected from tourism firm’s owners and personnel. Structural equation modeling has been used to test and validate the hypotheses.

The key results indicate that collaboration and innovation of tourism firms, employee culture, technological infrastructure, tourism intermediary’s sustainability practices and top management support have a significant impact on sustainability practices adoption, whereas government sustainable tourism policy and local’s attitude toward sustainability have an insignificant impact.

The findings assist managers and owners of tourism accommodation firms to re-address their policy and operational processes toward sustainability. This study is an endeavor to bridge the knowledge gap of current literature on sustainable practice adoption and tourism accommodation firm. This would be ensured through encouraging the economic aspect of sustainability practices and also facilitate social well-being, which is a real contribution that ought to practice to other countries where the tourist area is environmentally adverse tremendous.

Considering sustainability is a social commitment, this study positively changes tourists’ behavioral approach reducing the undesirable use of social resources and maximizing the enduring socio-economic and environmental development for social well-being.

The novelty of this empirical study is that sustainability practices and policies adoption is entirely a new phenomenon. However, the mediating impact of the construct on the competitive advantage of small and medium tourism accommodation firms enhances the effectiveness of emerging tourism economy.

By adopting network analytic techniques, this paper aims to examine interlocking directorates among firms operating in the hospitality services sector in seven major Italian tourism destinations.

The authors collected information for all the hotel corporations whose headquarters are located in the seven top Italian destinations: Florence, Milan, Naples, Rimini, Rome, Turin and Venice. Data come from the Analisi Informatizzata delle Aziende Italiane database by Bureau Van Dijk and were used to build a network where the nodes are board members (people) and corporations (hotels) and the links represent the membership of individuals in the boards. From this, with a one-mode projection, the authors obtain two networks: people and corporations. The overall networks’ structures are analysed by assessing their connectivity characteristics.

The findings indicate a relatively low number of interlocks that signals a high degree of fragmentation, showing that the interconnections (both within and between destinations) are scarce. This suggests that in absence of formalized cooperation arrangements, corporations might collaborate informally.

This work extends previous research on complexity in business settings, focusing specifically on service companies whose output depends on multiple interactions and helps clarifying coopetition practices of hospitality service firms. Policymaking perspectives are discussed as well as managerial viewpoints.

Not many studies of the interlocking directorates in the hospitality domain exist. This paper uses network analysis for a better understanding of the cooperative practices and the formal social structures of the Italian hospitality industry and derives a series of implications important for both researchers and practitioners while also looking at potential future studies.

The aims of the paper are to evaluate the relevance of environmental factors (seasonality, size and quality) on hotels’ performance and benchmarks; to measure the bias in efficiency resulting from a failure to control for these sources of heterogeneity; and to propose some managerial policies to handle for environmental heterogeneity.

The sample is constituted by 2,705 hotels operating in Emilia-Romagna (Italy). The metafrontier approach is used to identify the different production processes and measure technical efficiency scores.

Different production processes exist among accommodation firms due to environmental features; not considering heterogeneity in technological sets produces high levels of bias in the efficiency measurement, albeit the ranking of hotels tends to be fairly consistent; the star rating is the primary source of efficiency bias followed by seasonality, while size has a minor impact.

Future research could be directed to analyse the relevance of environmental heterogeneity in other areas; study the dynamics; investigate agglomeration effects; and use other methodological tools.

The analysis proposes new managerial interventions: targeted strategies to different groups; creation of networks of enterprises, clustered mainly in respect to size for highly rated enterprises and seasonality for low-rated enterprises; and incentives to annual hotels and raise in the product quality.

This paper simultaneously considers several environmental factors affecting heterogeneity in hotel production processes; investigates the effect of heterogeneity on either the efficiency scores or the ranking of hotels; and focuses on micro, low-quality or seasonal hotels.