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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the construction of social and environmental strategies and the related implementation of management control by a key organisation located in a pivotal Asian location in the global hospitality industry. In doing so, it sets out to elucidate the forms and processes of strategic social and environmental control as well their relationship to the traditional financial control system.

The study employs field-based case study of a single case operating in both regional and global context. Drawing upon documentary, survey and interview sources, the study employs structuration theory to inform its design and analysis.

The findings reveal the interaction of top-down global corporate framing and bottom-up local-level staff initiatives that combine to develop a locally focussed and differentiated social and environmental programme and expedite an associated management control and accountability system. The study also reveals the dominance of the traditional financial control system over the social and environmental management control system and the simultaneously enabling and constraining nature of that relationship.

Signification and legitimation structures can be employed in building social and environmental values and programmes which then lay the foundations for related discourse and action at multiple levels of the organisation. This also has the potential to facilitate modes of staff commitment expressed through bottom-up initiatives and control, subject to but also facilitated by the dominating influence of the organisation’s financial control system.

This study reveals the importance of national and regional governmental, cultural and social context as both potential enablers and beneficiaries of organisational, social and environmental strategy and control innovation and implementation.

The paper offers an intra-organisational perspective on social and environmental strategising and control processes and motivations that elucidates forms of action, control and accountability and the relationship between social/environmental control and financial control agendas. It further reveals the interaction between globally developed strategic and control frameworks and locally initiated bottom-up strategic initiatives and control.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceptions that managers have of the value and reliability of using big data to make hotel revenue management and pricing decisions.

A three-stage iterative thematic analysis technique based on the approaches of Braun and Clarke (2006) and Nowell et al. (2017) and using different research instruments to collect and analyse qualitative data at each stage was used to develop an explanatory framework.

Whilst big data-driven automated revenue systems are technically capable of making pricing and inventory decisions without user input, the findings here show that the reality is that managers still interact with every stage of the revenue and pricing process from data collection to the implementation of price changes. They believe that their personal insights are as valid as big data in increasing the reliability of the decision-making process. This is driven primarily by a lack of trust on the behalf of managers in the ability of the big data systems to understand and interpret local market and customer dynamics.

The less a manager believes in the ability of those systems to interpret these data, the more they perceive gut instinct to increase the reliability of their decision making and the less they conduct an analysis of the statistical data provided by the systems. This provides a clear message that there appears to be a need for automated revenue systems to be flexible enough for managers to import the local data, information and knowledge that they believe leads to revenue growth.

There is currently little research explicitly investigating the role of big data in decision making within hotel revenue management and certainly even less focussing on decision making at property level and the perceptions of managers of the value of big data in increasing the reliability of revenue and pricing decision making.

This paper aims to (1) organize the open literature on hotel revenue management systems, (2) compare practitioner systems in terms of functionality and (3) integrate (1)-(2) into research stream recommendations for the open literature with an empirical focus.

The authors use Nickerson’s taxonomy development method from the field of information systems to build the taxonomy.

New forecasting areas include developing a metric for the degree of strategic fit of a hotel’s pricing strategy and using it in conjunction with quantifications of online reviews for predictions. New price optimization avenues include determining whether a lack of congruence between customer perceptions of fairness and trust and pricing history has a detrimental effect on overall hotel performance and determining which combinations of flexible products, decision-maker risk aversion, nonparametric forecasting and reference effect optimization features work best in which situations.

This is the first study to combine vendor activities outside the technical realms of forecasting and price optimization with an emphasis on the choice modeling technical framework. This study points to several promising studies using qualitative methods, action research and design science.

This paper aims to analyse the influence of environmental proactivity on cost and differentiation competitive advantages, and to explore the double relationship between environmental proactivity and business performance.

The population consists of all three- to five-star hotels in Spain. A sample of 350 hotels was classified according to environmental proactivity and performance levels, employing a two-step cluster analysis. Significant differences between groups were examined.

The results show two types of environmental behaviour (reactive and proactive), with proactive hotels developing significantly better on both cost and differentiation competitive advantage and achieving significantly higher performance levels. Hotels which achieve above average business performance levels are significantly more environmentally proactive.

The present paper demonstrates that environmental management is related to competitive advantages and business performance. Environmental management systems are more developed in higher category, chain-affiliated and larger hotels. This could be due to having more resources to develop their environmental capability. The environmental proactivity scale employed in this study is presented as a reference measure for hotel managers to benchmark their current practices and implement environmental improvements.

First, measuring environmental proactivity using four managerial systems (operative, information, strategic and technical) is innovative and provides a more detailed approach to measuring environmental proactivity. Second, demonstrating a double association between environmental proactivity and performance provides fresh insights into the relationship between these variables.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of online hotel reviews (OHRs) on the fit between strategy and use of the management control system (MCS) in small- and medium-sized hotels in Brazil. The study analyzed the influence of the variable OHR on the fit between the deliberate strategy and emergent strategy, as well as the diagnostic use and interactive use, of MCS.

The study was carried out with the application of a questionnaire in small- and medium-sized hotels in Brazil. The analyses are based on 78 responses from Brazilian hotels. The analysis used the modeling of structural equations by parts (SmartPLS).

The results show the influence that external variables have in the adjustment of management systems. Specifically, the authors present quantitative evidence that OHR plays an important role in the adjustment between the deliberate strategy and the diagnostic use of MCS.

The results have several implications for research and practice.

The results have several implications for research and practice. A practical implication of this work is to understand how external variables (e.g. OHR) can be important in the fit of management systems. This study offers value for managers in that it supports the argument that hotels can benefit from the use of OHR in the MCS fit.

This study provides evidence for the influence of external variables, such as OHR, on the fit between strategy and MCS use. The study contributes to the literature by providing new evidence of the role of guest evaluations in aligning strategies with the use of MCS.

This paper identifies the critical success factors (CSFs) of virtual hotel operator (VHO) in using hotel management system partnerships with small- and medium-sized hotels (SMSHs).

This study uses a qualitative approach, with 25 semi-structured interviews with hotel owners and VHO management. Thematic analysis is used to determine themes to evaluate hotel owners and operators' perceptions.

CSFs for VHO partnership with SMSHs include marketing and promotion strategies, client relationships, training and human resources development, hotel operation management, innovation strategies, capital expenditures and property management systems (PMSs). VHOs also have a symbolic impact on the mutualistic relationship with SMSHs by increasing service and enhancing product competitiveness and profitability.

Findings are beneficial for VHO in determining the most significant CSFs, thereby establishing additional metrics in business performance and increasing resilience in the accommodation sector. Further studies can measure the digital technology factors from VHO, including PMSs and mobile applications.

This study first identifies CSFs for VHO companies from the perspectives of hotel owners and management. This contribution adds to the literature on CSFs in the context of digital technology implementation in SMSHs. Moreover, implications are beneficial for VHO management in determining the most significant CSFs for companies to measure the business performance of the companies and increase resilience in the accommodation sector.

The paper aims to discuss the link or relationship between environmental management system (EMS) adoptions with organization learning (OL). It postulates that EMS adoption has the potential to catalyze organizational learning in hotels to make them more dynamic and competitive.

The paper reviewed the literature to link the purpose and steps involved in an EMS adoption with the benefit of managing organizational knowledge and OL. It also uses the literature to identify phases of learning in EMS adoption and the level of employees exposed to the learning.

There are two reasons why more hotels should not be hesitant to adopt EMS: flexibility – EMS does not dictate the level of environmental performance a firm should achieve, thus giving hotel firms the flexibility to determine the level of sophistication of their environmental management; and the building of company’s dynamism – EMS facilitates organizational learning, leading to enhanced organizational performance.

The proposed link between EMS implementation with OL in this paper can only be proven by means of empirical studies.

Understanding the OL value of EMS adoption may persuade more hotel practitioners to adopt it.

This paper proposes a link between a systematic approach to managing environmental responsibility with knowledge management in hotels.

This paper aims to present an integrated framework for hotel revenue room maximization. The revenue management (RM) model presented in this work treats the shortcomings in existing systems. In particular, it extends existing optimization techniques for hotel revenue management to address group reservations and uses “forecasted demand” arrivals generated from the real data.

The proposed forecasting module attempts to model the hotel reservation process from first principles. In particular, it models hotel arrivals as an interrelated process of stochastic parameters like reservations, cancellations, duration of stay, no shows, seasonality, trend, etc. and simulates forward in time the actual process of reservations to obtain the forecast. On the other hand, the proposed optimization module extends existing optimization techniques for hotel revenue management to address group reservations, while including integrality constraints and using “forecasted demand” arrivals generated from the data. The optimization model is based on large‐scale integer programming model to optimize decision rules for accepting reservations.

A case study based on three different sets of reservation records of simulated hotel data was conducted to test the operation of the system on real data. Results showed that the model is able to generate effective recommendations to maximize revenue.

The main value of this paper is that it presents an integrated framework for hotel room revenue maximization. The novelty introduced in this approach is that it is based on an advanced room demand forecast model that simulated the reservation process from its first principles and produces demand scenarios that are used by an optimization model to generate proper recommendations.

Environmental concerns have been increasing in the travel industry. However, most hotels are unwilling to develop an international environmental management system (EMS) probably due to a lack of resources and knowledge. In order to encourage more organizations to take part in the EMS, three cases adopting international EMS are investigated to ascertain the ways to support the formation of EMS. Based on their experience, hoteliers are encouraged to team up with green members to apply for research funding for the investigation and implementation of EMS. Also, “energy performance contracting” methods to finance environmental improvement projects in hotels were also discussed.

A single case study approach was adopted to illustrate the differences in the resources mobilization for setting EMS in these three hotels. A search of documentary evidence and interviews with hotel staff was the main instrument for data collection.

The Shangri‐la Hotel used its own resources to set up its EMS and strategically used its developed template for other hotels in the group to follow. The other two hotels, Nikko and Grandstanford, adopted a creative and “non‐balance sheet” approach to mobilize resources for the formation of EMS. Both hotels have recourse to external resources including a university's engineering department, hotel management school, green bodies, government funds and trade associations to develop and implement the EMS. The study further identified energy performance contracting as another promising financing tool for the implementation of the energy‐related part of the EMS.

The representative and general nature of the findings are limited to large hotels in metropolitan areas, as the three case hotels are located in the metropolis of Hong Kong.

The findings provide informative details on how to secure external resources to set up internationally recognized environmental management systems and the safe way for hotel operators to trial use energy‐saving facilities.

This study provides indications and details on some creative financing techniques for setting up EMS in hotels. These financial strategies are the first of their kind in print and can serve as a useful reference for hotels to develop international EMS.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 as well as the European Union Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) are two established management tools to evaluate, report and improve the environmental performance of businesses. The purpose of this chapter is the development and testing of a model on motivations, benefits, barriers and preconditions to the implementation of environmental management system (EMS) in the German hotel sector. One hundred and thirty six hotels have been identified as having implemented either ISO 14001 or EMAS (or both) in their operations. An analysis showed various correlations between motivations and perceived benefits of implementing an EMS, whereas no correlation could be measured between preconditions and barriers. Finally the preconditions, barriers, motivations and benefits were examined based on various characteristics of the hotels surveyed, which revealed significant differences among the different subgroups, such as chain-operated hotels and independently owned properties, or between luxury properties and budget operations.