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This study aims to analyze the relationships between knowledge management, internationalization and ambidexterity, also exploring the influence of these variables on Spanish hotel chain performance. Hypotheses are proposed from the dynamic capabilities and knowledge-management views of the firm.

The research model was tested on a sample of 70 Spanish hotel chains applying variance-based structural equation modeling (partial least squares).

The results show that Spanish hotel chains that use knowledge management processes achieve a greater degree of internationalization and this increases their organizational ambidexterity. This study can also confirm a direct, positive and significant relationship between organizational ambidexterity and performance.

This research shows that knowledge may be considered an essential resource to improve hotel firms’ results. Spanish hotel firms should manage their knowledge to stimulate international activity because this could enhance learning capabilities related to organizational ambidexterity and positively influence performance.

The present paper analyzes relationships between variables that had not previously been analyzed in a single model, including knowledge management, the degree of internationalization of hotel chains, ambidexterity and performance.

The central aim of this paper is to identify some of the motives behind the type of growth strategy followed by Spanish hotel enterprises in recent years.

This study was elaborated from secondary data corresponding to news published on the web page of a digital newspaper specialising in tourism – HostelTur. The information obtained in this way was completed and contrasted using other sources like the BARATZ database (where all the news items published in the economic press since 1981 are collected), and the web pages of hotel enterprises, since many of them publish news about their main actions along with the most relevant events that take place within these organizations.

From a sample of 444 observations, the results suggest that initial profitability, size, age and indebtedness level of firms are some of the factors determining growth strategies in this sector.

The paper throws light on some of the reasons behind the behaviour of Spanish hotel enterprises as far as growth is concerned. The innovative approach of this study, which focuses on the causes rather than on the consequences of certain corporate growth strategies, is its main contribution.

This paper aims to investigate the determinants of dynamic efficiency in the Spanish hotel industry. The study also aims to introduce a large number of variables potentially related to efficiency and performance measurement. In particular, it seeks to explore the association between efficiency scores and firm-specific factors (variables related to market conditions, business factors, audit variables, organisational forms and subsidiary variables).

In this study, the data envelopment analysis (DEA) double-frontier approach is used according to firm size in conjunction with non-parametric tests (Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis tests), a dynamic Tobit regression model and a bootstrapping procedure. The tests are performed using 1,805 hotels from the years 2002 to 2011. This allows the authors to overcome several of the major limitations of previous papers, namely, the low number of observations, the static or cross-sectional analysis referring to a single period and the use of conventional DEA models, among others.

The results show significant differences in dynamic efficiency among Spanish hotel companies. In addition, the evidence suggests the levels of efficiency are related to the hotel's location, the hotel's size, internationalisation, the first source of the hotel's activity, audit service and management variables.

One limitation of the study is related to the input and output variables specified in the DEA model. The selection of inputs and outputs was based on data availability and the previous literature on hotel efficiency, but the results might change if the hotel sample and the selected input and output variables were changed. Another limitation is the availability of data on ownership structure and subsidiary variables for very small businesses.

The paper contributes to the tourism literature by offering new insights into hotel performance: dynamic efficiency evaluation and its main determinants. The paper presents strategic market implications for hoteliers, government decision-makers and destination management organisations.

This paper aims to identify the main factors affecting the success of the knowledge replication process in service firms when new units/outlets are created or acquired.

The quantitative approach of the study is based on a survey to the first general managers of new hotels integrated in Spanish hotel chains that implement a strategy of knowledge replication.

Transfer experience in the region; compatibility between the underlying cultural context of the knowledge and the recipients’ culture; recipients’ absorptive capacity; source’s and recipients’ motivation; and lack of adaptation in the transfer routines are key factors that influence several aspects of knowledge replication success in service firms.

From an academic point of view, this work identifies the determinants of success in replication processes. Moreover, two dimensions in knowledge replication success have been identified: a functional dimension and an economic one. Industry and survey limitations must be considered.

Organizations that face a growth process where they want to replicate their corporate knowledge should consider several aspects that seem to be determinants of success in those projects.

Despite the prevalence of replication-based growth strategies in the service sector, there is a lack of research analyses about this phenomenon in the academic literature. The empirical-based research on knowledge transfer and service firms’ growth is scarce and fragmented. This work provides an integrated view of factors affecting knowledge replication success in new organizational units from an empirical quantitative approach.

The aim of the paper is to identify which variables of training policy have a significant and positive impact on organisational performance.

A targeted literature review was conducted to identify and collate a comprehensive range of human resource management and training conceptualisations/investigations. This was the basis for the approach to contrast hypotheses. The paper used a sample of Spanish companies and the method of analysis was regression.

The results obtained in this paper do suggest that the training policy positively correlates with organisational performance, both using objective result measures (productivity and financial performance) and in the subjective measure of perceived financial performance and in intermediate result measures.

The study was confined to the analysis of a single Spanish region, and specifically referred to its hotel industry, which means that the results obtained must be situated within that specific context examined. To this must be added that the data were collected from a single source (CEOs) and, of course, it would have been more appropriate to use data from multiple sources.

From an academic point‐of‐view, the research initiative presented here is placed within the new line of development for research into training and performance that tries to overcome the restrictions faced in other publications, trying to go one step further in the search for more specific connections between human resources and performance. From a practical viewpoint, this research work could help hotel entrepreneurs in two ways: first, by providing evidence that the resources allocated by hotel firms to the training of their staff have a positive impact on their profit levels; and second, by showing which variables should be considered to achieve this relationship.

Several important managerial factors, such as training, information and communication technologies and information systems (ICT/IS), and environmental management, can be related to total quality management (TQM) in the hotel industry. This paper aims to analyse how TQM is associated with these factors and to verify whether more TQM‐committed hotels achieve higher performance.

The empirical data were collected from a sample of 301 three‐to‐five‐star Spanish hotels. A cluster analysis was carried out to identify the different TQM commitment levels, after which a regression analysis tested the TQM‐performance link.

Managerial factors are significantly further developed in hotels with a stronger TQM commitment, which also have higher performances. TQM does not seem to influence all the performance variables measured.

Hotels showing a stronger commitment to TQM develop more advanced management systems and achieve higher performance levels. Therefore, hoteliers should invest in TQM, as this could help them to become more competitive.

The link between TQM and managerial factors, along with the relationship between TQM and performance, has been expanded in the literature on TQM in the hotel industry.

In response to its profound economic crisis, in the 1990s Cuba adopted a tourism‐based development strategy. As an approach to development, tourism has been both heralded and critiqued. One concern is that for less diversified economies it has large imported input requirements. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Cuba's efforts to address this weakness.

The paper draws on interviews conducted with Cuban policy makers and researchers working in the area of tourism, and one hotelier operating in Cuba. Also, extensive secondary data collected while conducting the fieldwork in Cuba and relevant existing literature are reviewed.

It is found that Cuba has increased significantly its reliance on domestic production for inputs for its tourist sector since the mid‐1990s, thereby reducing its dependence on imported inputs.

These findings suggest that, by reconfiguring domestic production to provide inputs for the tourism sector, foreign exchange leakages typically associated with tourist development in less diversified economies can be diminished and that it can provide an infusion of foreign exchange and investment that benefits the local economy.

This case presents an alternative to the neoliberal approach to policy making in the Global South, one that has the potential to avoid some of the negative social and economic consequences of that approach.

In addition to highlighting the alternative represented by Cuba's approach to tourism, the paper evaluates the extent to which it approximated the novel strategy of development proposed by the neostructuralists almost simultaneously. It concludes that Cuba's approach did approximate the neostructural model in a number of important ways.

This paper aims provides an empirical analysis of the development of the internationalisation process in the Spanish hotel industry, which has experienced major changes during the past decade. The degree of internationalisation between 2000 and 2010 is used as a proxy variable with the aim of mapping the development of international strategies.

A longitudinal dataset measuring the internationalisation of Spanish hotel chains is used. Cluster analysis identifies the different behaviour of groups of firms during the analysed period.

Two different clusters are detected, which can be attributed to different internationalisation strategies over time. Small and medium (SME) hotel companies seem to follow a different path of development than more established multinational companies. Over time, the entire group tends to be more compact, whereas the distance between the clusters is shown to diverge in final years. The groups’ composition suggests that business-networking relationships can be a strategy of particular importance for SMEs pursuing international expansion.

This paper develops a better understanding of the changes of the internationalisation patterns of Spanish hotel chains. Findings could address managers in strategic decisions about how to improve competitive position. In particular, they recommend accounting for size, international experience and business network relationships when expanded abroad.

This paper introduces a new approach based on studying clusters of Spanish hotels according to their internationalisation strategies over the time. Further analysis revealed the role of business network on internationalisation patterns.

This chapter studies the tourism cluster of Majorca and its connection with collective entrepreneurship. To this end, the authors review the history of four world leading Spanish hotel companies, from their beginnings, in Majorca, in the 1950s, to their internationalization, in the 1980s and 1990s: Barceló, Meliá, Riu, and Iberostar. This allows us to identify common patterns of behaviour among them over time, which in turn illustrate the dynamics of the tourism cluster and the role played by its context. This qualitative and historical research allows us to make the following contributions: first, in line with other studies in the economic history of Spanish tourism, the four cases support the identification of Majorca as a tourism cluster. Second, the authors highlight several important characteristics of the island which reinforced and strengthened the cluster and boosted collective entrepreneurship, through an intense flow of information between the companies. Third, the authors illustrate coopetition as the key nature of the relationship between the clustered companies in a simultaneous process of competition and cooperation. Finally, the authors show how the strength of the tourism cluster, in Majorca, drove the companies to replicate the same dynamics and structures abroad.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of quality certifications on apparent labour productivity in a sample of hotels in Spain.

In line with Mairesse and Kremp (1993), the theoretical model was based on a Cobb–Douglas production function readapted to the goals of the study.

The descriptive results show that labour productivity increases only when certifications and quality standards specific to the hospitality industry are implemented and the tourist destination is committed to quality. The econometric analysis shows that the hotel category, belonging to a chain, and outsourcing services have a positive impact on labour productivity. In contrast, the location of the establishment in areas other than the coast or the capital city of a province has a negative effect on labour productivity. Of the quality models and certifications studied, only the Spanish Q-Mark certificate significantly improves hotel productivity (an average increase of 23.27 per cent).

These results provide support for the Spanish Tourism Quality System implemented by the Spanish Ministry of Tourism, which has not only attempted to increase the quality of tourism hotels by increasing their competitiveness and performance but also by providing them with a quality certificate that can be used as a marketing strategy in international markets.

The main contribution of this study is to show how the adoption of quality standards and certifications increases or decreases labour productivity in hotels. Given that most of the previous literature has only taken into account quantities, this study adds to the literature by incorporating the concept of quality into productivity issues.