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This study has a twofold purpose: to identify the competitive strategies and advantages of hotels located in the province of Alicante (Spain); and to inform hotel managers about how some key strategic variables (size, type of hotel management, category and competitive advantage) impact on hotel performance.

A study of the population was carried out using a questionnaire addressed to hotel managers. A principal components factor analysis was performed to identify business strategies. In addition, hotels were grouped together according to the key strategic variables and the degree of development of the different business strategies implemented.

A comparative study of the performance levels achieved by each strategic group was carried out for the purpose of checking whether any of them produced significantly higher performance levels. In the light of the results, if hotels are to achieve higher performance levels, they should preferably be medium or large sized, belong to a chain, increase their category and base their competitive strategy on improvement and dimension.

Strategic groups simplify the complex strategic reality in which hotel managers develop their professional activity. Thanks to the creation of these groups, managers acquire an aggregate knowledge of the business strategies and advantages of the hotels operating around their establishments and can equally be aware of the performance levels reached in each group analysed. This information also allows hotel managers to identify the strategic variables which must be developed to avoid being left behind inside their group in competitive terms or to join a different group which they may eventually consider more interesting in terms of strategy or performance.

This study provides a method to identify strategies and competitive advantages within the hotel industry and additionally suggests strategic actions for hotel managers to improve firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to test the relationships between a hotel’s design quality and the property’s business performance.

Hotel guests’ assessments of the design quality of hotels that they recently visited are tested using the design quality indicator (DQI). Business performance is measured using indexed values for each property’s occupancy, average daily rate (ADR) and revenue per available room (RevPAR). The data are analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and a variation of a hedonic pricing model.

Factor analysis reduced the DQI instrument to 19 measurement items. Factors that measure navigability and signage positively impact occupancy index. Factors that measure flexible space usage negatively impact the RevPAR and ADR indices. Factors that reflect aesthetic constructs, including Urban & Social Integration and Character & Form, positively impact the RevPAR and ADR indices.

The study examines a nationwide sample of guests from two full-service brands of a single multi-brand hotel company. The study provides a parsimonious, validated design measurement instrument and a revised hedonic pricing analysis.

Hoteliers can use this technique to assist with resource allocation decisions. Aesthetic elements, including the building’s Urban & Social Integration with its surroundings and its Character & Form, lead to higher ADR and RevPAR performance. Managers should ensure a coherent layout and good signage program to drive occupancy.

This study offers a technique to measure design quality and a new method of performing a hedonic pricing analysis.

This paper aims to focus on supply chain quality (SCQ) in the hospitality industry in China, and to stress the importance of the synergy of quality management (QM) and supply chain management (SCM). The authors have investigated the relationship among QM practices, SCM practices, SCQ and hotel performance, and examined the effect of contextual variables.

This study mainly uses a questionnaire survey to collect data relating to the research hypotheses. Structural equation model technique is suited for our research purposes, and the LISREL software is implemented to test the conceptual model.

The results show that QM practices and SCM practices are significantly correlated. QM practices/SCM practices are positively related to SCQ, and consequently influence hotel performance. SCQ has the mediating effect between QM/SCM practices and hotel performance. Contextual variables truly play a moderator between QM/SCM practices and SCQ.

Hotel managers should look beyond their own hotels into supply chain to manage quality, highlight the importance of interdepartmental or external (i.e. customers or suppliers) connectedness, such as building close and long-term relationships with well-chosen suppliers, encouraging customer involvement and establishing an effective interface for accumulating information regarding customers’ needs and feedback. Hotel managers are also able to realize the influence of contextual variables (e.g. the new normal state of the Chinese economy), and further to gain chance of hotel’s survival.

This study focuses on SCQ and tries to fill a gap in the exiting literature on SCQ management in hospitality industry.

This paper aims to examine the role of senior managers’ use of financial and non-financial performance measures in the relationship between decentralization and organizational performance in the hotel industry.

Data were collected using a mailed questionnaire. General Managers in charge of medium-to-large hotels in Thailand completed the questionnaire. In total, 131 general managers, one from each hotel, participated in the study. Path analysis technique was used to test the hypotheses.

The results indicate that the general managers’ use of financial and non-financial performance measures fully mediates the relationship between the extent of decentralization of decision-making and hotel performance. The results reveal that the decentralization of decision-making alone is not enough to help a hotel improve its performance. Indeed, the relationship between decentralization of decision-making and hotel performance exists only via the general manager’s use of the performance measures. It is contended that a general manager’s use of the performance measures in a hotel encourages department managers to make appropriate decisions to successfully improve their department’s performance which, in turn, leads to increased performance of the hotel.

This study provides empirical evidence indicating how senior managers in hotels with decentralized decision-making could use performance measures to better manage their hotels, thereby improving the hotel’s performance. An in-depth analysis of the data reveals that the senior manager’s use of the non-financial, and not the financial, performance measures is a mediator of the relationship between decentralization of decision-making and hotel performance.

This paper aims to investigate the links between daily review sentiment and the hotel performance measures of occupancy rate (OR), average daily rate (ADR) and revenue per available room (RevPAR).

The authors conducted review sentiment analyses in three moments (−1, −7 and −14 days) before arrival time using a data set of budget hotel performance and online reviews. The aim was to identify the effect of review sentiment in the budget hotel market on the three performance metrics.

Daily sentiment positively affects ADR and negatively affects OR and RevPAR, but only up to a certain threshold, after which the trend reverses. Prices increase with the level of sentiment, and high prices lead to low OR and RevPAR only when the sentiment scores are low. When they are high, they are associated with low rates, which lead to high OR and RevPAR.

Daily review sentiment can be viewed as a valuable “barometer” indicating a hotel’s daily operational effectiveness. Daily sentiment can thus allow hotel managers to adjust their dynamic pricing strategies more accurately.

This study identifies daily sentiment as an alternative predictor of hotel performance. In addition to the roles of valence and volume in the decision-making process, the authors found that daily review sentiment can be an “in-the-moment” factor with a high impact, encouraging consumers to complete their transactions. This study suggests that aggregated measures such as the total number of reviews and overall ratings of the hotel should not be the sole consideration in reputation management.

The sharing economy has caught great attention from researchers and policymakers. However, due to the dearth of available data, not much empirical evidence has been provided. This paper aims to empirically assess the impacts of Airbnb on hotel performances in South Africa.

Using South Africa as a case study, the study measures the impacts of Airbnb on hotel performances on three key metrics, namely, room prices, occupancy and Revenue per available room (RevPAR). A difference-in-difference model is estimated using a population-based data set of 809 hotels from 2016 to 2018.

The results reveal that despite Airbnb significantly and negatively impacting on hotel occupancies it has a non-significant effect on hotel prices and RevPAR. Although from the theoretical perspective a disruptive innovation business model such as Airbnb can possibly have a negligible effect on hotel performances because it may attract a different group of customers and create a new market, the empirical findings of this study fail to support this theoretical hypothesis. Consequently, the findings diverge with newly developed knowledge in other markets and point to nuanced and contextual complementary effects.

Although some interesting findings are revealed into his study, some caveats remain. For instance, the study relied on data from hotels not from Airbnb. If the data of Airbnb can become available, it would be interesting to further examine whether the aggregated RevPAR of Airbnb can compensate for the aggregated loss of hotel RevPAR. This type of analysis could provide a broader evaluation scope regarding the overall effect of Airbnb on hotel performances. Moreover, if a longer time series data set of hotels in the post-Airbnb time period could become available, it would be interesting to further investigate the time-varying dynamic effects of Airbnb on hotel performances.

While hotels have launched a campaign to portray Airbnb as being commercial operators looking to compete illegally with hotels for the same segment of customers, this study shows that the rhetoric has been exaggerated. Airbnb, and more broadly, vacation rentals do not represent a war with hotels. They represent an answer to a different need. Indeed, the study reveals that Airbnb’s offer is a mere supplement to the market contrary to media rhetoric that it is meant to substitute hotels. The study has several implications for practitioners. First, these results are important because they serve as evidence against news articles that claim Airbnb is driving hotels out of business. They also show that if current trends continue, employees in the hotel industry in South Africa do not need to be concerned about losing their jobs because of Airbnb’s emergence. It is also important information for investors who may be concerned that Airbnb is hurting the hotel industry’s bottom line. Second, as the share of Airbnb listings on the accommodation market varies dramatically between cities, it is likely that eventual regulations/restrictions should be introduced in the provincial levels, while most of the cities continue benefiting from the increasing number of Airbnb visitors.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first in South Africa to provide empirical evidence that Airbnb is significantly changing consumption patterns in the hotel industry, as opposed to generating purely incremental economic activity.

Previous literature has identified human resources as a key source of competitive advantage in organizations of all sizes. However, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) face difficulty in comprehensively implementing all recommended Human Resource Management (HRM) functions. In this study, we shed light on the field of HRM in SMEs by focusing on the context of Greek Small and Medium-sized Hotels (SMHs), which represent a dominant private sector employer across the country.

Using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and 34 in-depth interviews with SMHs' owners/managers, we explore the HRM conditions leading to high levels of performance, while taking into consideration the influence of internal key determinants.

We uncover three alternative successful HRM strategies that maximize business performance, namely the Compensation-based performers, the HRM developers and the HRM investors. Each strategy fits discreet organizational characteristics related to company size, ownership type and organizational structure.

To the best of the authors' knowledge this is among the first empirical studies that examine different and equifinal performance-enhancing configurations of HRM practices in SMHs.

The development of a service improvisation competence (Serv-IC), operationally defined as “the systemic ability of a service firm’s employees to deviate from established service delivery processes and routines to respond in a timely manner to unforeseen events using available resources” (Secchi et al., 2019, p. 1329), has been proposed as an effective way to accommodate customer variability while increasing the quality of the service experience. However, empirical evidence of its impact on service performance is scant. This paper tests the effect of Serv-IC on performance in the hospitality industry.

This paper develops a conceptual typology of service delivery systems (hereafter service typology is used interchangeably) in the hotel industry based on the experiential content of the service and the amount of standardization of service delivery routines. Then, using a survey of hotel managers, the effect of Serv-IC on hotel performance is estimated within each service group in the typology.

Serv-IC is associated with increased occupancy in high-process-standardization and high-experience hotel operations but does not have a significant relationship with the average price per room. The results suggest that managers could invest in Serv-IC to increase loyalty and positive word of mouth but not to increase prices.

This paper provides evidence of the effectiveness of developing a service improvisation competence while also offering boundary conditions to its applicability. The proposed service typology disentangles the design of service processes from their execution, thereby shedding new light on the complex relationships among service design, employee behaviors and business outcomes.

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, clustering patterns of urban hotels are explored, and, second, clustering effects on performance for upscale urban hotels are estimated.

Local indicators of spatial association (LISA) were computed using geographic information system (GIS) techniques. Clustering for the entire population of hotels in Madrid was explored visualizing LISA statistics. Then, a system generalized method of moments regression was applied to test a set of hypotheses about the performance effects of LISA statistics for a sample of upscale urban hotels.

Two significantly distinct types of clusters are identified: dense “cold spots” or clusters containing many low-priced hotels and quiet “hot spots” or clusters only containing a few high-priced hotels. And, estimates confirmed two important results: evidence of adverse selection when clustering and evidence of positive location economies for upscale hotels.

This study has a number of relevant implications for making better hotel location decisions. Specifically, the paper shows the applicability of GIS to find statistically significant clustering in the data. In the hotel sector, knowing exactly where hotel clustering occurs and of what type is of vital importance.

This paper’s novel application of LISA based on GIS techniques for hotel clustering sheds light on the effects of clustering on performance to convey the subtle nuances of the relationship for upscale urban hotels.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of promotional mix in terms of advertisement, website and direct sale on job performance during the political crisis in the Middle East.

Data were collected from 121 Jordanian employees working in hotels in Aqaba city, using a self-administrated questionnaire including 35 items. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to test the research hypotheses.

The results of the current study revealed that there is a significant impact of hotels’ advertisement and hotels’ direct sale on hotel performance, whereas hotels’ website has no significant impact.

This is the first study that examines the effect of promotional mix on hotel performance during the political and economical crises in the Middle East and clarifies the most important elements that affect the countries’ economy, especially those involved in political conflicts.

本论文主要研究中东地区政治危机时期的促销组合对酒店绩效的各种影响, 其中促销组合是指广告、网站、和直接销售。

本论文采用35个问题的自助问卷形式采集数据。数据样本取自亚喀巴城的121名约旦员工。本研究采用多元回归分析法以测量研究假设。

本研究结果表明酒店的广告和直接销售对酒店绩效有显著作用, 但是酒店网站对于酒店绩效的作用并不显著。

本论文是首篇研究中东地区政治危机时期的促销组合对酒店绩效影响的文章。