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This paper aims to examine a number of Asian hotel companies to identify the hurdles and provide recommendations for those companies expanding internationally. Many Asian-based hotel companies have made their strategic choice to expand beyond their home territories by opening and managing hotels in non-Asian destinations to achieve growth. This is a strategic decision that other Asian hotel companies will eventually have to face when they follow their customers’ footsteps and/or enhance their brand awareness in non-Asian destinations for greater market penetration and other network advantages.

This is a review article that analyzes Asian hotel groups’ development practices based on content analysis of published references. The 2012 Hotels 325 list, the leading source of news and analysis for the global hotel industry, is used to identify the top Asian hotel management companies in the world. Their history is traced to examine key success factors for their growth and to identify issues and concerns for such companies’ development into non-Asian destinations.

There are a number of approaches that Asian hotel companies have adopted for international expansion based on their match with these companies’ key success factors.

The review focuses on the top 53 Asian hotel companies on the Hotels 325 list and does not cover smaller Asian companies that may have had successful global expansion records.

The paper provides high-level guidelines for what Asian hotel groups need to do to expand their business internationally outside of Asia or their traditional markets. Non-Asian hotel groups would also learn from this Asian wave of hotel development.

There has been limited, if ever any, previous literature on the strategic development choices of Asian hotel management companies. As such, this paper contributes to such an important but largely overlooked area in hotel management.

The Asian paradigm is more than just a demonstration of visually impactful behaviors and practices by hospitality establishments that can be explained by their different Asian cultural backgrounds and reinforced by training; it is focused on the customer, leveraging of the commercial environment while highlighting, not hiding, cultural and destination differences to give people more reasons to visit and repeatedly use their properties. This chapter examines to evaluate transferability of Asian paradigm in hospitality management concepts to non-Asian countries; what and how Asian paradigm in hospitality management can be transferred. For the detailed level on examination and discussion of transferability of Asian concepts, the chapter includes case of Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts for operators’ point of view.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate intellectual capital (IC) reporting, from a service-centric approach, in the hotel industry. The strategic enhancement of value-creation and sustainable competitive advantage requires both management and measurement. Sound measurement and reporting practices enable management performance to be judged; one such practice is IC disclosure. Service-dominant (S-D) logic emphasizes that intangible operant resources, the foundation of IC, are at the core of competitive advantage.

A disclosure instrument based on S-D logic and designed specifically for the hotel industry was applied to the annual reports and sustainability reports (in English) of 30 Asian hotel companies. Content analysis measured the disclosures of dynamic IC assets typically overlooked by traditional IC disclosure instruments.

The majority of IC communication concerns lower-order basic operant resources. Although more than one-third of the companies’ disclosures of IC assets relate to collaborative processes and practices that support networked value-creation, most disclosures demonstrate a prevailing firm-centric orientation. IC items regarding reciprocated relationship and informational management were minimally reported.

A single research approach was used. Future research could use other communication channels to triangulate.

The results highlight opportunities for hotel companies to better report their IC assets as part of their value-creating strategies.

This research is one of the first to operationalize S-D logic concerning IC. It provides a promising framework for understanding IC reporting in the hotel industry.

This paper aims to test the differences in the consumer complaint behaviour of Asian and non‐Asian hotel guests in terms of culture dimensions. It also aims to examine the relationship between demographic factors (age, gender and education level) and complaint behaviour.

The paper adopts the Hofstede's typology of culture as a framework to investigate cultural differences and demographic characteristics in the complaint behaviour of hotel guests. A face‐to‐face interview survey is conducted to collect data in this research. Data are then analyzed by various statistical methods such as two‐way contingency table analysis, non‐parametric Mann‐Whitney U and Chi‐square tests.

The survey reveals that older complainants tend to resort to “public actions,” but people with a higher level of education tend not to complain publicly. In addition, Asian guests are less likely to complain to the hotel for fear of “losing face” and are less familiar with the channels for complaint than non‐Asian guests. They are more likely than non‐Asian guests to take private complaint action, such as making negative word‐of‐mouth comments. The findings also indicate that there is a significant relationship between “complaint encouraging factor” and respondents' nationality and between “effective complaint handling method” and respondents' nationality.

Few studies have focused on the cultural differences in complaint behaviour of Asians and non‐Asian hotel guests in the hotel industry. The result will be most valuable in assisting hotel managers and marketers to better understand the customer complaint behaviour and intentions both from the Asian and non‐Asian contexts, and help formulate strategies and tactics to effectively manage the customer complaint.

The Indian hospitality and tourism industries, major economic growth drivers and employment generators, have been greatly affected by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In FY 2020, the Indian tourism sector created 39 million jobs and contributed nearly US$194.3bn, or 6.8%, to India’s gross domestic product. The purpose of this study is to focus on ranking 22 listed hotels and 9 listed travel agencies in India based on their performance across 14 selected financial parameters in both the pre-COVID-19 year ending in March 2019 and the post-COVID-19 year ending in March 2021 to understand how the pandemic affected their businesses.

This research proposes to analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the financial performance of 22 listed Indian hotels and 9 listed travel agencies evaluated over 14 financial parameters using a pipeline of two recently developed multicriteria decision-making techniques, method based on the removal effects of criteria (MEREC) and grey-based combined compromised solution (CoCoSo). First, the criteria weights are objectively determined using MEREC, and then the financial performances of the selected companies in both the hospitality and tourism industries are separately assessed using CoCoSo to get their overall performance score, based on which the companies are ranked in order of preference.

It was observed that Westlife Development, Lemon Tree Hotels, Indian Tourism Development Corporation, Royal Orchid and Country Club performed significantly poorer than their peers in the aftermath of the pandemic, whereas EIH, Advani Hotels and Resorts and TGB Banquets performed relatively better. Travel agencies Easy Trip and International Travel House performed particularly poorly because of the pandemic, but VMV Holidays performed relatively better in FY 2021.

The findings of the analysis will aid portfolio construction, corporate investment decisions, competition research, government policymaking and industrial analysis.

The proposed model is novel because it fills the research gap in the application of the integrated MEREC–CoCoSo method to study the impact of COVID-19 on the hospitality and tourism sectors in India.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the following expatriate issues as related to the hospitality industry, from the perspective of practitioners: the most important management skills hotel expatriates should possess, whether these skills vary by the country of origin of the expatriate and parent company, and the most effective cross‐cultural training activities provided by hotel companies.

Data for this exploratory study was obtained from a sample of 66 respondents from lodging organizations with membership in the International Hotel and Restaurant Association (IH & RA). Data was collected by means of self‐administered, web‐based surveys.

Participants in this study indicate that expatriate management skills vary in importance for hotel expatriates. The results of the analysis of variance demonstrate that the importance placed on the different expatriate management skills varies based on country of origin of both the expatriate and the parent company. Respondents and companies originating in different countries place more importance on certain expatriate management skills than others. Analyses also indicate that seven of nine cross‐cultural training activities provided by the parent company are perceived to be effective for the success of an expatriate assignment.

This study suggests that opportunities do exist for international hotel companies to better prepare hotel expatriates for foreign assignments by integrating more effectively issues of cultural awareness into their preparation programs. Additionally, although it may appear counter‐intuitive for a future expatriate to focus on the structure and processes of the home company before embarking on a foreign assignment, the results of this study suggest that such knowledge is very valuable.

While studies investigating expatriation management in the mainstream literature have been growing recently, only a handful of published studies have explored the issue in the hotel industry. Answers to the research questions that guided this study add to our knowledge and enhance our understanding of the issues related to expatriation management within the context of the hotel industry. The present study generated fruitful avenues, especially with regard to the issues related to the variation of management skills according to the country of origin of participants and parent company.

General Management, International Strategic Management, International Marketing and Brand Management.

MBA (General Management), MBA (Marketing), Management and executive development programme.

The Indian Hotels Corporation limited known as the Taj Group was set up by JRD Tata in 1903. The company has undertaken a long journey since then. It is one of the most recognized hotel brands in luxury market segment of the hotel industry. Off late some micro- and macro-level changes in the business environment have not been in favor of the group. The strategy of international expansion in acquiring and refurbishing of assets has mounted the debt and the growing losses. What has compounded the growing troubles is the entry of aggressive multinational brands in the luxury segment of the hospitality industry. The group prioritizes to get its financials in order. It thereafter needs to rework on its competitive strategy and take advantage of the booming domestic hotel industry for profitable future growth.

Expected learning outcomes are as follows: to understand the impact of expansions on the top line and the bottom line on the hospitality industry; to understand the impact of expansion on brand image for the legacy brand; to understand and develop strategies for a company which make it profitable in the hotel industry; and to formulate entry and exit strategies for companies dealing in the hospitality industry.

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CSS: 11: Strategy.

The article seeks to evaluate the capital structure of leading hotel chains of India to examine the role of financing decision in the overall performance of companies. It aims to analyze the debt‐equity structure of these hotels, try to discover the industry benchmark and scrutinize how capital structure plays a momentous role in the company's overall growth.

The paper is based on financial data collected on leading hotel chains in India. The consolidated financial results of the hotels have been considered for selecting these hotel companies.

From the financial perspective, capital structure is one of the most important determinants of a company's sustainable growth. Leverage seems to be working only for a few companies, whilst affecting others negatively. Firms that have been moderately geared have been able to generate a good return on equity.

The paper would be of specific use for top and middle level management of the selected hotel chains to reassess their capital structure for enhanced financial performance. For the hospitality industry in general, it would divulge best financial practices in terms of debt‐equity mix and would assist in fixing on better financing decisions.

The findings of the research are pertinent for the industry, as no explicit study in this area has been conducted in the Indian context. More so, because it focuses on the high turnover segment of the industry which captures the major market share in the business, it would beg the question – “Does being big always mean being better?”

The purpose of this paper is to identify the development and implementation of Environmental Management Accounting (EMA) and environmental management at the level of a firm in the hotel sector in Sri Lanka.

Case study method was used in the study. The primary data were collected through semi-structured interviews supported by observations of various facility centers (on-site assessment). Accounting records such as the Green Book, daily and monthly material and energy records, online resources and various other documents were content analyzed as sources of secondary data.

The study observed that the hotel had reinvigorated some of its environmental management and EMA practices in an urgent, cost-saving bid when faced with a financial crisis. Having realized their cost-saving potential and strategic benefits, the management developed these selective practices over time into comprehensive practices that are integrated into the daily management process supported by all stakeholders. The development stages of EMA reflect how the hotel moved from a survival phase to an integration phase.

The paper attempts to apply an integrated eco-control approach in an emerging South Asian country, Sri Lanka. Because eco-control of EMA is a new approach in developing countries, this paper provides important insights into the development of eco-control and EMA.

The purpose of this study is to test the entrepreneurial orientation organization structure‐performance link within the context of the Asian hotel industry.

Performance was designated as the dependent variable while strategic posture and organization structure were considered the independent variables. Correlation and regression analysis were adopted to test relationships.

Results suggest that entrepreneurial strategic posture is positively associated with performance. Contrary to expectations, organic structures were negatively associated with performance. The study findings are in support of previous researchers who have suggested that western theories are not easily generalized to a non‐western context.

The cross‐sectional approach adopted in this research does not capture the effects of strategy‐structure alignment over time. The external validity of the results is also limited due to the geographically focused nature of the study sample.

This study offers useful insights for hoteliers based on empirical evidence.