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The hospitality and tourism industries are two of the fastest growing and most dynamic sectors of the UK economy. Both industries are highly labour intensive and, because of this, the effective management of human resources is critical to their success. A defining characteristic of these industries is the high incidence of small firms. The issue of training in the small business sector in general has been neglected by academics and management specialists and this is also the case specifically in tourism and hospitality. This article goes some way to address this gap in knowledge and examines the recruitment and training practices of small tourism and hospitality firms. The issues examined include sources of recruitment, the extent to which small tourism and hospitality firms had training plans and training budgets, participation, and evaluation of training.

The purpose of this study is to review the hospitality and tourism strategy literature to identify trends related to key topical areas of research. The study objectives include identifying hospitality and tourism strategy challenges; presenting a synthesis of frequent strategy topics; and identifying opportunities for future research.

Earlier studies in the hospitality strategy literature were reviewed and synthesized to identify trends, gaps and opportunities.

Hospitality strategy research continues to improve and extend the boundaries of strategic thought in the hospitality literature. In assessing the literature from 1980 to 2013, it was apparent that the literature was following the mainstream trend of combining theoretical perspectives to some degree as well as applying more process-based concepts to hospitality strategy research. There were several challenges for propelling hospitality strategy research forward; these included the educational infrastructure, theory development and the quantity and quality of researchers in the field.

Given the depth and breadth of the strategy topics and research, it was difficult to ensure sufficient coverage was provided in the limited space of one journal article.

The study provides a good foundational understanding of where the hospitality strategy research had been and the trajectory of where it was headed. Further, it serves as a valuable resource for current researchers and those entering this area of research.

This paper aims to understand the emergence, the revolution and the relevant knowledge of academic research concentrating on social media (SM) and hospitality and tourism firms’ financial performance. The authors not only identified the gaps and critical issues in research but also re-conceptualized profound directions for the future research in technology and finance in the hospitality and tourism field.

This study adopted an in-depth review analysis to investigate and review previous scholarly papers published in hospitality, tourism and hospitality and tourism journals from January 2011 to the present. The authors thoroughly analyzed and reviewed peer-reviewed/refereed, blind-reviewed, full-length published articles and working papers within SM and hospitality firms’ financial performance. Editor notes, prefaces, research notes, industry articles, internet publications, conference preceding, books and book chapters were excluded.

Having examined the empirical content of 26 peer-reviewed scholarly articles, the authors clearly observed that none of the papers went beyond analyzing the effect of SM on hotels’ revenue per available room, revenues, net profit, average daily rate, occupancy rates, net operating income, etc., and all papers ignored the analysis of many critical financial proxies.

This critique and review paper is limited to the relationship between SM and firms’ financial performance within the hospitality and tourism context.

This review provides a blueprint to guide future research, facilitate knowledge accumulation and create a new understanding and awareness in practice as well as SM and financial performance research.

This paper complements and adds to previous work by demonstrating various aspects, evidences, findings and inferences regarding the association between online SM platforms and firms’ financial performance and by proposing rigorous abstract and specific future extensions to both practice and discipline-specific knowledge.

There is an absence of the most updated review study of published papers on SM and hospitality and tourism firms’ financial performance. Although how SM contributes to firms’ financial performance is clear to academicians and industry professionals, no solid consensus or theoretical certainty about what the authors know and do not know has been achieved.

This paper aims to review the main literature on the relationship between the natural environment and management in hospitality and tourism firms and uses strategic lenses to propose a general framework of previous works and a map for future research.

A detailed collection of the most relevant literature on organizations and the natural environment in general is used, along with a specific compilation of the analysis in hospitality and tourism firms. The analytical comparison between the general studies and tourism literature provides opportunities for the discussion of research gaps.

The growing volume of research on environmental management in the hospitality and tourism firms suggests increasing interest in the topic in the past decade. However, our analysis uses a strategic framework to identify multiple relevant topics that are due for exploration. The generation of more robust theoretical and empirical contributions should also be prioritized in the future.

The findings provide insight into the growing importance of environmental issues in multiple areas of hospitality and tourism firms, including corporate strategy (new green business and implications of the environmental issues on the attractiveness of traditional tourism activities), competitive business strategy (differentiation and reduction of costs through environmental management), functional strategy (eco-labels, certifications and environmental management systems), green marketing, responsible supply chain and training.

While previous literature has emphasized the macro analysis of environmental challenges in the industry, this paper is one of the first to provide an analytical review of the literature on the natural environment and management of hospitality and tourism firms and will be particularly useful to better understand the organizational challenges.

Financial bankruptcy is inevitable in the tourism and hospitality ecosystem. Despite the pertinence of tourism and hospitality businesses going into bankruptcy, limited studies have investigated the early warning signs and likelihood of a financial bankruptcy occurring in tourism and hospitality firms. This study examined the predictive value of financial ratios as potential indicators in predicting bankruptcy among tourism and hospitality firms.

Altman's z-score bankruptcy prediction model was applied through five key financial ratios to predict bankruptcy of the Thomas Cook Travel Group over a ten year period (2008–2018).

The key findings of this study strongly suggest that besides the size and location of the firm, financial ratios are reliable predictors and play a pivotal role in predicting the bankruptcy of a tourism and hospitality business.

The paper provides key stakeholders to adopt checks and balances to identify financial distressed tourism firms through financial ratios.

This is the first academic paper to inspect the financial history of Thomas Cook Travel Group in a financial ratio context, particularly following the bankruptcy of the firm in 2019.

The purpose of this study is to provide a synthesis of the state of research on collaborative innovation in tourism and hospitality. It presents a systematic review of the academic literature, and provides insights into the specific issues addressed by studies in this area.

A search of major research databases with multiple keywords was performed to identify relevant articles up to 2017. A total of 79 articles were identified and analyzed according to the following criteria: location of the study, perspective of analysis, methodology, level of analysis and specific themes addressed.

Based on a qualitative thematic analysis, five groups of articles were identified: cooperative behavior of innovating firms, co-creation, collaborative networks for innovation, knowledge transfer and innovation policies.

This study contributes to making the current body of knowledge on collaborative innovation in tourism and hospitality more organized. The analysis of the different issues addressed by the literature could build the foundation for future research.

This study presents a comprehensive review of literature on collaborative innovation in tourism and hospitality. It can serve as a roadmap of literature for both academicians and practitioners, and help stimulate further interest.

The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of entrepreneurial attitudes, motivation and orientation on the entrepreneurial competitive advantage of innovative entrepreneurs in the tourism and hospitality industry, including those involved with bed and breakfasts, travel agencies and restaurants.

First, the sample for this study was selected through news media reporting on well-known new entrepreneurs, from lists of those entrepreneurs who have won innovation entrepreneurship loan subsidies from the government and from lists of those who have won innovation awards. Second, a pretest was used to confirm the feasibility of the questionnaire. The pretest survey was distributed to a total of 150 tourism and hospitality entrepreneurs. A total of 8 dimensions/facets and 36 items were confirmed. Finally, data collection took place for 9 months. A total of 1,150 questionnaires were distributed, and 606 questionnaires were recovered.

This study proposes a new multi-integration model of moderation-mediation analysis. The innovative business model explores the relationship between entrepreneurial factors and competitive advantage. Based on a survey of 606 staff members and managers of tourism and hospitality firms, entrepreneurs in the tourism and hospitality industry with entrepreneurial attitudes and motives had opportunities to increase their entrepreneurial orientation.

In the process of innovative entrepreneurship, whether through organizational learning or other enterprise cooperation, it is necessary to pay more attention and propose different environmental management strategies. In addition, this study also found that marketing uncertainty moderates between entrepreneurial attitudes and entrepreneurial motives. Entrepreneurial motives are more conservative than other motives, and there is increased confidence in investing in innovative entrepreneurship in stable environments.

This study indicates that innovative entrepreneurial tourism and hospitality firms have a mediating or moderating effect on the relationship between entrepreneurial attitudes and positional advantage. If used properly, these resources can help the new entrants in the tourism and hospitality sector avoid the limitations of environmental change, firm size or insufficient information and improve their competitive advantage.

The concept of information and communication technology (ICT) has extensively used among travel and hospitality organization in the contemporary world. The present study discovers tourism and hospitality business reactions toward ICT-based marketing usage and investigates its relationship with functional competencies and profitability among tourism and hospitality business organizations in India. With a quantitative approach, the study found an extensive usage of ICT-based marketing in tourism and hospitality organizations was noted from descriptive tables. The application of regression analysis indicated positive and significant impact of ICT-based marketing on functional competencies and profitability of tourism and hospitality organizations in India. A positive and significant correlation was also noted among these two due to adoption of ICT-based marketing. This study provides insights to formulate comprehensive ICT-based marketing strategies to fulfill growing customer needs.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the state of academic research on innovation in tourism. The authors present a systematic review of the literature, different research approaches and perspectives on tourism innovation; offer a synthesis of our findings and provide a discussion and proposals for future research.

Existing studies on innovation in hospitality and tourism (included in the Web of Knowledge database) were reviewed, and their limitations were identified. A procedure used in previous studies (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010; Tranfield et al., 2003; Becheikh et al., 2006) was applied. Moreover, aiming to reveal theoretical foundations of tourism innovation research and identify their structure, a bibliometric analysis was performed.

This paper identifies 152 published papers that represent the major efforts in expanding the body of research on innovation in hospitality and tourism. The importance of innovation for business and regional competitiveness and success has been recognised by both researchers and practitioners. In the papers included in the sample of this paper, the authors identified a general consensus that much remains to be done in the development of the theory of innovation in tourism. Through bibliometric analysis, nine co-citation networks, or clusters, were retrieved by applying co-citation relations among the most cited authors. The examination of these nine clusters revealed some dominant themes that characterise the field.

The authors used three databases: Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. While these databases may not include all relevant research, the authors, nonetheless, believe that by using a rigorous procedure in reviewing the literature systematically, they were able to reduce the probability of neglecting any information that would critically change the content of the present paper.

The aim of this paper was to bring together the prior research with presently existing models that may be used in further research. For the continuation of the research, the authors propose additional studies with the aim of theory development. By introducing new theoretical ideas and theoretical models, more qualitative and inductive research would help to stimulate further work. As stated above, researchers could go further by undertaking quantitative methods to empirically verify the theoretically proposed models.

Since the last review (Hjalager, 2010) of past studies in tourism innovation, mostly focusing on studies up to 2009, tourism innovation research has grown noticeably in terms of diverse topics. In this paper’s database, the year with the most publications was 2012 with 48 papers, followed by 2014 with 42 (by 19 September), 2010 and 2011 with 41 and 2009 with 29. To the authors’ knowledge, no updated reviews focusing on innovation in tourism have been published recently. This study, consisting of a systematic review of academic literature, includes analyses of the international context, the methodology used, the points of view, the level of analysis (micro-level, macro-level and general level) and the type of innovation discussed in the paper. Moreover, the authors did not find any studies that used bibliometric analysis to identify the structure of the theoretical foundation of research in the area of innovation in tourism.

This paper aims to analyze the extent to which social capital (SC) spurs innovation in firms located within tourism clusters. Specifically, the study focuses on the mediating role of ambidextrous knowledge strategy (AKS) on the relationship between SC and innovation.

A structural model is used on a sample of 215 firms of the hospitality and tourism industry located in World Heritage Cities of Spain. Data analysis is carried out using partial least squares.

The combination of bonding and bridging capital yields higher innovation performance through AKS.

This analysis does not take into account the full set of confounding factors that influence innovation. The factors captured by this study significantly explain heterogeneity in the intensity of innovation among the studied firms.

The main recommendation is that firms located in cultural tourism clusters (CTCs) do not restrict the focus on either local or outside relations only but pursue a strategy based on the combination of internal and external relations. This will enable ambidextrous knowledge strategies and better innovation performance.

There are numerous studies on the relation between some dimensions of SC, some knowledge strategies and some types of innovation. The value added of the present study is the articulation of complementarities among these dimensions. In particular, this study integrates bonding and bridging dimensions of SC, exploration and exploitation of knowledge and incremental and radical innovation. In addition, the paper provides an empirical identification of World Heritage Cities of Spain as CTCs.