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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 chapter treats the luxury hotel concept and practice and its recent trends in the tourism industry. This niche market is expanding rapidly with changing global income structures and increasing complexity of the hospitality sector. Its clientele comprises quality-seeking, prestige-striving, and high-spending customers. The chapter first explores the concept of luxury in relation to hotels. It further groups various associated assets into tangibles and intangibles to discuss their recent trends across the world. It is suggested that companies and destinations active in the luxury hotel market or contemplating entry take these trends into account to gain and/or maintain competitiveness.

This paper aims to analyse trends related to hotel investment in Canada and propose innovative practices for the financial management of hotels.

The foundation for this paper was laid during a well‐attended Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes (WHATT) roundtable discussion between industry leaders and hospitality educators in May 2012. Topics of hotel investment and financial management in Canada are discussed in the context of the theme for the 2012 Canadian WHATT roundtable and the strategic question: “What innovations are needed in the Canadian hotel industry and how might they be implemented to secure the industry's future?”

The paper outlines historic hotel investment patterns dating back to the 1980s and analyses the current investment climate. Out of 850 hotels sold in Canada during the first decade of this millennium, foreign investor participation was less than 10 per cent. Currently the foreign interest in hotel investment in Canada is increasing and hotel assets in the 100‐175‐room range are more popular.

The paper presents three innovative practical tools for strong financial management of hotels to optimise ROIs – profit sensitivity analysis, strategic revenue management and embracing historical low interest rates.

Although Canada has done well weathering the global financial storm, Canadian hoteliers should exercise due diligence in financial management. As the team of authors represents both the industry and academia, this paper will be of immense value to students, researchers, and educators, as well as practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to fill an existing gap in the field. A transaction-based hotel price index for Europe is constructed to provide a true measure for hotel real estate performance. The index will enable investors enhance investment decisions in many ways: to assess individual property performance; to make an objective decision about where to invest and in which property type; to assess the relative performance of hotel assets to all other sectors and consequently reach optimal funds allocation decisions. This will allow investors to time their acquisitions/disposals according to the hotel property cycle.

Data include 495 hotel property transactions in Europe during the period between 2004 and 2013. Transaction prices and property characteristics were collected from a variety sources published by hotel agents and consultants, property magazines, newspapers, tourist board, individual property and hotel association registers and web sites. Data include property name, sale price, size, time of sale, location, buyers and sellers. A hedonic pricing model is developed where the transaction price is regressed on the different characteristics. The index is calculated by taking the anti-logs of regression coefficients of the year index.

This paper claims that the hotel property price index (HPPI) portrays a more realistic picture of what happened to hotel property prices in 2008 showing a single digit negative growth vs the hotel valuation index which reports a double digit negative growth rate in European hotel prices during the same year. The real impact of recession showed on hotel property prices in 2009. HPPI shows a crash in hotel property prices by -23.7 per cent in 2009. The year 2011 was marked by more sales transacted through administrators and a looming double-dip recession. Unlike appraisal-based indices, HPPI does not suffer from sticky valuation issues and is not desensitise from distressed properties. Therefore, it was more volatile to distressed situations throughout the period between 2011 and 2013.

Results of this study should be considered with caution. There are limitations associated with transaction data including incompleteness or inaccuracies regarding price data, financing information for each deal, property tenure, and property characteristics.

This work has successfully developed an HPPI for hotel property in Europe. This paper paves the way for transaction-based indices that are more volatile than existing appraisal-based indices. This represents a significant development in tracking price movements of hotel properties in Europe. The index has potential to support research and forecasting of the hotel property cycles.

This paper fulfils an identified need to track hotel property prices and timing the hotel property cycle.

In this vein, this paper aims to provide empirical evidence on the following questions: Which expansion strategies offer better operational and economic performance? What effects does performance-related diversification have? How do other factors such as size, quality, service offered, location or seasonality interact with performance.

In this paper, the analysis of the effects of growth strategies and hotel attributes on performance is carried out with a sample of 255 hotels that operate internationally. Using panel data and quantile regression, this study evaluates the effect of expansion and diversification on the hotels’ performance.

From these findings, it appears that the equity strategy (own hotels) outperforms non-equity strategies (hotels under rental, franchise and management contract) at the operational level. However, the economic return of the property, both adjusted and unadjusted to risk, is lower under the property ownership strategy than under the franchise and management strategies because, in general, it requires a higher investment. Regarding diversification, the growth strategy based on related diversification in food and beverage services has a negative impact on performance, calling into question the synergies between the two businesses. However, an exception to this effect is seen among those hotels, mainly those in the Caribbean, that opt to provide all-inclusive services, since these hotels achieve better occupancy rates and more stable results.

This study has not taken into account the effect of hotel property revaluation on the performance of the ownership strategy, as there is no information on the historical average revaluation at the level of each individual hotel. This study has also been unable to include information regarding the level of competition and seasonality of sales.

This paper considers a wide number of factors that can influence the performance of hotels. Second, this is the only paper that studies the impact of growth strategies from the point of view of the hotel chain. Also, the sample considered uses data at the individual level on hotels and this research analyses not only operational performance but also economic performance.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the differential motivations of hotel owners and operators to engage in earnings management through the selective capitalisation or expensing of asset related expenditures.

Research evidence has been collected via a mixed methods approach utilising 20 semi‐structured interviews with key hotel management contract stakeholders in Australia and a questionnaire survey administered to hotel general managers in Australia and New Zealand.

A review of the literature has resulted in an original distillation of 18 distinct earnings management motivations for hotel owners and operators. Qualitative data collected suggest an additional four motivations and that the primary motivation for hotel owners and operators to engage in earnings management stems from the two parties' desire to affect the size of the incentive management fee that is paid to hotel operators. A suggestion that operators have a greater tendency to seek to capitalise asset related expenditures, relative to owners, has been supported by both qualitative and quantitative data collected.

This study appears to be the first to have examined the manner in which an idiosyncratic aspect of hotel governance can result in competing earnings management motivations between hotel owners and operators; the first to pursue a broad level of abstraction with respect to examining earnings management in the context of asset related expenditure capitalisation decision making; the first to assess the relative strength of earnings management motivations concerning the capitalisation or expensing of asset related expenditure; and the first to conduct earnings management research utilising a mixed methods research approach involving the conducting of face‐to‐face interviews as well as administration of a questionnaire survey.

Reviews the literature on the valuation of intangibles for hotel investments. Contrary to the sceptical outlook portrayed in the literature, demonstrates the effectiveness of ex‐post models and hedonic pricing models (HPM) as an objective and robust tool in separating and measuring intangible hotel property and decomposing total asset value. Develops two HPM models using data on 50 hotel properties appraised in 1997. All hotels are owned and managed by the same hotel company and affiliated with the same brand. Some 58 per cent of the properties are freeholds and the rest are leaseholds. Estimates the hedonic price equations by regressing appraised values on physical, location and economic characteristics of the properties. Results confirm the effectiveness of HPM and in fact its relative superiority to traditional ex‐ante modelling in measuring and decomposing intangible property. As expected at the outset, comparable‐leases and excess‐profits‐based models produced similar results.

The international hotel industry's growth has been achieved via the simultaneous divestment of real estate portfolios and adoption of low risk or “asset light” market entry modes such as management contracting. The management implications of these market entry mode decisions have however been poorly explored in the literature and the purpose of this paper is to address these omissions.

Research was undertaken with senior human resource executives and their teams across eight international hotel companies (IHCs). Data were collected by means of semi‐structured interviews, observations and the collection of company documentation.

The findings demonstrate that management contracts as “asset light” options for international market entry not only provide valuable equity and strategic opportunities but also limit IHCs' chances of developing and sustaining human resource competitive advantage. Only where companies leverage their specific market entry expertise and develop mutually supportive relationships with their property‐owning partners can the challenges of managing human resources in these complex and diversely owned arrangements be surmounted.

A limitation of this paper is the focus on the human resource specialists' perspectives of the impact of internationalization through asset light market entry modes.

This paper presents important insights into the tensions, practices and implications of management contracts as market entry modes which create complex inter‐organisational relationships subsequently shaping international human resource management strategies, practices and competitive advantage.

To apply Williamson's six dimensional typology of asset specificity as a theoretical framework for appraising the nature of outsourcing activities in hotels.

Interviews with senior managers in large hotels.

Site specificity and brand capital appear to be the most pertinent dimensions of asset specificity in the sample investigated. Most observations support the transaction cost economics (TCE) prescription that high asset specificity results in insourcing.

This study suffers from the normal shortcomings associated with fieldwork based on a limited sample of observations. Rather than attempting to make generalisable assertions, the study provides an exploration of the ways that asset specificity might manifest itself in hotel outsourcing decision making.

Asset specificity represents an important construct that should be considered when considering whether to outsource. It also provides a valuable context when considering the motivations of parties entering into a subcontracting arrangement.

No study applying either the asset specificity notion or the broader TCE theory has been found in the hospitality management literature. Also, there is a lack of prior research concerned with outsourcing in the hotel sector.

The purpose of this paper is explore an organizational design that allows firms to invest in transferable strategic human capital. Strategic human capital requires considerable investment in training costs, effective compensation, opportunities for professional development and expectancy of long employment relationship within a firm. A firm can undertake investment in strategic knowledge and workers can engage in learning only in these circumstances. However, there are a number of risks that are associated with investment in strategic human capital within a firm. In this paper, the author argues that providing strategic human capital to other firms within alliances could be a strategy for leveraging resource. Strategic knowledge facilitates transactions between firms possessing co-specialized human capital and tangible resources. Organizational design of an alliance based on co-specialization allows to balance costs and returns for the human capital supplier, as well as for beneficiary and workers. Within an alliance, the human capital supplier provides workers to a beneficiary firm and coordinates their activities. Supplier specialized in human capital investment ensures improved performance, productivity and efficiency of workers. Possibility to form a greater pool of labor force and to centralize training allows optimizing cost and sharing risks associated with investment activity among alliance participants. Human resource practices in an alliance system foster long-term employment relationship. Entering an alliance increases number of job positions, professional development opportunities through horizontal mobility, promotion and learning opportunities for workers. Finally, alliances allow leveraging investment in human capital beyond a single organization.

This paper conceptualizes the use of alliance based on co-specialization as a strategy to optimize investment in strategic human capital resource. It draws upon the resource-based view (Barney, 1991; Wernerfelt, 1995) and transaction cost theory (Coase, 1937; Williamson, 1981) to examine an alliance as a strategy for leveraging the human capital resources for accessing new markets, building reputation and sharing the risks across more than one organization.

First, the paper reviews the theoretical literature on human capital as a strategic resource (Becker, 1962; Coff, 1997), its sourcing on internal and external labor markets and respective employment systems (Delery and Doty, 1996; Doeringer and Piore, 1971). Second, it focuses on the features of human capital resource (Barney, 1986; Chi, 1994; Doz and Hamel, 1998). Third, it conceptualizes the use of alliances based on co-specialization as organizational structures for investment in human capital across organizations and examines respective employment system and HR practices (Delery and Doty, 1996; Doeringer and Piore, 1971). As result, the author argues that an alliance can be an alternative mean to optimize returns on investment in human capital with strategic transferable knowledge. By consequence, the author describes an alliance employment system and illustrates the arguments with a case of human capital trading in a co-specialization alliance under a long-term management contract in the luxury hotel industry.

This paper discusses collaborative ventures as a sourcing strategy of the human capital. An alliance strategy is relevant for sourcing the strategic human capital resources. Human capital resource can be accessed by firms through transfer of skills and organizational routines within collaborative agreements, such as alliances based on co-specialization. In this case, alliance is an organizational architecture between organizations that improves the efficiency and productivity, reduces marginal cost on training due to larger scale of operations and reduces risk by splitting investment in human capital and by offering more career and development opportunities for strategic knowledge workers.