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This study aims to examine the interplay among three key drivers of service innovation success in the hospitality industry. Specifically, how internal marketing practices in hotels influence frontline employee involvement, training and empowerment for the new service provision (frontline employee ITE) and new service advantage. The study also analyzes how success factors affect new service internal and external performance.

Using data collected from managers of 256 hotels located in Spain, the model is tested through structural equation modeling data analysis.

Internal marketing practices have a positive and direct effect on frontline employee ITE, which, in turn, strengthens new service advantage. Frontline employee ITE also has a positive effect on the employees’ satisfaction and motivation (new service employee outcomes). New service employee outcomes and new service advantage reinforce the new service customer outcomes in terms of customer’s loyalty, improved hotel image and perceived leadership. Both new service employee and customer outcomes benefit new service market outcomes.

The findings are obtained from a cross-sectional study. Hotel managers must pay particular attention to internal marketing practices, as they foster key drivers of new service success that ultimately improve new service internal and external performance.

This study extends the literature on service innovation success providing for the first time a study of the interrelationships among organizational and project-level new service success factors in the hospitality context.

The purpose of this study is to examine the scientific research related to sustainability in hospitality and tourism from 1994 to 2020 by conducting bibliometric and science mapping analyses and to discuss the implications for prospective research opportunities.

Keyword co-occurrences with 2,980 published papers collected from the Web of Science (Social Science Citation Index and Emerging Sources Citation Index) were used for the bibliometric-based analysis. The authors use SciMAT software which offers relevant outputs, such as research themes and graphical outputs (strategic diagrams, cluster networks and science mapping representing the temporal evolution of the themes).

The findings show that biodiversity conservation, sustainable attitudes, climate change, protected areas, satisfaction and environmental management were the focal motor-themes in the studied periods. Additionally, four areas for future investigation are identified and discussed: sustainable behavior and environmental sustainability; consumption, demand and economic growth; tourism development and strategies; and rural tourism, poverty, ethics and education.

This analysis shows insightful results processing a high number of published documents. However, the authors recommend further research focused on qualitative literature review for each critical topic.

The authors are unaware of analogous, completed and recent work about sustainability in hospitality and tourism. The authors believe this article is of great value to academics and practitioners because it synthesizes and disseminates the research topic while providing an outstanding basis for identifying research opportunities.

This study aims to analyze the drivers of a creative food tourism experience (CFTE) and its effect on the tourists' perceived authenticity and satisfaction. Specifically, this study captures the importance to explain a CFTE of two sets of stimuli: internal stimuli, including push motivations for food travel (i.e. emotional, cultural and social) and the tourist self-congruity (i.e. actual and ideal) with the chosen food establishment; and external stimuli, referred to the pull motivation exerted by restaurant innovativeness.

Data are obtained through a questionnaire completed by 407 food tourists who have traveled to visit a creative restaurant. The research model is tested using structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

Results confirm the relevance of emotional and social motivations to enjoy a CFTE and the need to align the target tourists' self-concept and restaurant positioning. The most vital driver of the CFTE is the restaurant innovativeness, which suggests that entrepreneurship in gastronomy is critical to boosting food tourism.

This study expands the understanding of the role of food tourism motivations and self-congruity in the tourist experience and underlines the relevance of the restaurant's production process to create authentic and compelling experiences that improve the tourists' satisfaction. Moderation analysis considering the tourists' previous experience reveals that cultural motivations only exert a positive effect on the CFTE for first-time travelers. However, self-congruity is the strongest predictor of a CFTE for repeat travelers.

Appropriate management of service failures involves a complex organizational response that allows an effective internal and external recovery, learn from mistakes and introduce future service innovations. Empirical evidence on the organizational recovery practices more suitable to achieve these objectives, leading to superior performance, is limited. The present work seeks to extend the existing literature by identifying the potential dimensions that constitute an integrated service recovery system (ISRS), introducing a strategic, proactive and relational approach to service failure and recovery management, and by proposing a causal model linking the ISRS with performance.

The ISRS dimensions and their attributes are derived from an extensive literature review and suggestions from academics and business experts. Structural equations modeling is used to test a model linking the ISRS (conceptualized as a second order construct), with client, employee and business performance indicators, using data from a Spanish sample of 151 Knowledge‐Intensive Business Services (KIBS).

Results confirm that the firms' ability to approach service recovery from a strategic, proactive and relational perspective allows improving performance among clients and employees, that is, the external and internal recovery to occur, which leads to a superior competitive performance.

The ISRS scale can provide managers with a diagnostic tool to analyze their recovery practices and to further improve their competitiveness in the long term.

The need to assess the integrative nature of effective service recovery systems has been claimed theoretically. An empirical study showing the link between comprehensive service recovery practices and performance was lacking.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between innovative culture, innovation efforts, and their performance among knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). Innovation intensity is evaluated in the technical and administrative domains. Performance indicators include customer-related outcomes and market and financial results relative to competition. To provide insight into how innovativeness contributes to sustaining a KIBS' competitiveness, the mediating role of its predisposition to involve customers and front-line employees in new service development is also considered.

In accordance with the objectives of the research, and from an extensive review of the literature, the authors develop a conceptual model and test it on a sample of 154 Spanish KIBS using structural equation modelling.

The results show that KIBS' appraisal of customers' and front-line employees' participation in new service co-creation is strongly determined by the firm's innovative culture. Organizations with a greater predisposition to new service co-creation achieve higher innovation rates which lead to sustained performance.

As dynamism of the KIBS sector has an impact on the whole economy it is also necessary to understand the most advisable management practices in KIBS to foster innovation and improved performance, although relatively few studies have approached this issue. The importance of customers and front-line employees as co-creators in new service development (NSD) is generally appreciated, although the literature is not conclusive with respect to the feasibility of co-creation and its influence on a firm's performance. The present research introduces an organizational perspective to approach co-creation by analyzing how various organizational cultural types (innovativeness, and the appraisal of front-line employees and customers as co-creators in NSD) interact and contribute to KIBS' competitiveness.

This paper has three objectives: first, to analyse the effects of organisational learning on customer value creation capability; second, to develop a better understanding of how organisational learning influences business performance; and third, to examine the moderating role that market turbulence plays in the learning‐value connection.

According to the objectives of the research, and from an extensive review of the literature, the paper develops and tests a conceptual model on a sample of 181 Spanish manufacturing companies by means of a structural equation system.

It is demonstrated that the manufacturer's organisational learning is a direct and positive antecedent of customer value creation capability, understood from a functionalist perspective. It is also confirmed that this organisational learning directly enhances the manufacturer's business performance. In contrast, the paper cannot confirm that the learning‐value connection is stronger when there is high market turbulence.

The research is one of the first studies to examine and confirm the effect of the manufacturer's organisational learning on customer value creation capability, understood from a functionalist perspective. It is also pioneering in providing empirical evidence that market turbulence does not moderate the aforementioned causal connection.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the status of the implementation of ISO 22000 in the food industry in Spain. The study identifies the main difficulties faced by firms during the adoption process, the benefits obtained, and the most influential benefits on firms overall satisfaction with ISO 22000.

A questionnaire was developed to identify the difficulties and benefits for ISO 22000 implementation. Data were collected among 189 Spanish certified firms. Factor analysis and multiple linear regression were used.

ISO 22000 is used by firms operating in all links of the food chain (FC). Size of the firm is not a factor that determines its implementation. Exporter firms are more attracted to ISO 22000 certification. All sample firms experienced difficulties throughout the implementation process, being those related with time and money the most relevant. The benefits which most contributed to the firms’ satisfaction were internal in nature, in particular, those related to improved efficiency and food safety.

Despite the many difficulties, both material and organizational, that sample firms experienced in implementing ISO 22000, and the complexity of the standard, the overall satisfaction is high.

The sample analyzed comprised certified firms, including representatives of all links in the FC from farm to table. Prior research specifically aimed at analyzing ISO 22000 implementation and its benefits is very scarce.

This paper aims to examine how stealing thunder, apology and compensation influence customer loyalty in a service failure context, and how trust mediates these relationships.

The study adopted a scenario-based between-group experimental design involving 300 customers.

The results indicated that stealing thunder, apology and compensation have a joint effect on customer loyalty. Specifically, this study found a significant positive impact of stealing thunder on loyalty; a two-way interaction effect of compensation and stealing thunder on loyalty; and a three-way interaction effect on loyalty. Additionally, trust mediated the relationship between service recovery attributes (stealing thunder, apology and compensation) and customer loyalty.

This study introduces a new service recovery method called Stealing Thunder, which is commonly used in the fields of law and communication and is the first to assess stealing thunder as a proactive/preemptive strategy to handle service failures and its impact on customer loyalty. The study found that when stealing thunder was present, compensation had no influence on customer loyalty. Moreover, when stealing thunder was present, compensation had no impact on loyalty when apology was not present. However, compensation had a significant effect on loyalty when stealing thunder and apology were not present. This study finds the value of including proactive/preemptive strategies (stealing thunder) along with regular service recovery strategies (e.g. apology and compensation) in the service recovery process. Results show that service recoveries that include stealing thunder help service failure recovery significantly by increasing customer’s trust.