Strategic attitudes and information technologies in the hospitality business: an empirical analysis

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Abstract

This work is based on empirical research on the management of information technology (hereafter IT) and its contribution to competitiveness in the hotel business in the Valencia region of Spain. The feasibility of a hotel taxonomy is also investigated. This is based on cluster analysis, by searching for factors common to these establishments, mainly of a qualitative nature, such as similar strategic attitudes to IT in terms of the advantages perceived.

Introduction

Spanish tourism is at the moment undergoing a transitional phase. Spain is still the European market leader for Mediterranean holidays, with the Valencian Region and the Balearic Islands sharing market leadership in the Mediterranean Arc (measured by number of tourists), and national statistical data seem to show a picture of growth. The industry is dealing with the problem of seasonality, inherent in massive sun, sea and sand tourism, by diversifying supply towards such alternatives as sporting tourism, green tourism or cultural tourism.

However, the continuing success of the Spanish tourism model has been placed in doubt by various new trends, some of which we list here:

  • 1.

    There is growing competition from low-cost tourist packages to alternative resorts.

  • 2.

    The independent hotel (which predominates in Spanish and Valencian hotel supply systems) is becoming less and less competitive face to face hotel chains.

  • 3.

    New commercial formulae such as franchises and specialised hotels, resulting from innovation in management and marketing systems and the progressive exclusion of intermediaries, are growing in importance.

  • 4.

    Spain has a poor position in the world market for business tourism, on which the future of hotels in cities and around convention and conference centres increasingly depend.

  • 5.

    The aggressive growth strategies of European and United States chains has led to growing internationalisation.

  • 6.

    Lower transport costs have improved the competitiveness of long-distance tourist resorts

  • 7.

    The market is evolving towards the satisfaction of more personalised and active demands as well as value for money.

  • 8.

    There have been widespread changes in commercialisation due to the application of telematics (the increasing importance of “computerized reservations systems”, CRS), the more generalised use of electronic money in payments, and the wide diffusion of information technology in hotel operations and management (The Economist Intelligence Unit, 1991).

These tendencies, though they give cause for concern, may also be seen as opportunities for remodelling the strategy of the Valencian hotel business. A change in the competitive environment may provide the impetus for correcting weaknesses and learning to exploit strengths; for which it is vital to identify the factors which will determine the future competitiveness of the hotel business.

These factors include, among others, the development of an ability to innovate, to improve quality, to professionalise management of human resources, to design a long-term vision for the business, to differentiate, to co-operate, and to improve qualifications so that the introduction of information technology can be assimilated and the strategic value of new technologies1 can be understood.

This study devotes special attention to the last of the factors mentioned above. Firstly, we give an overview of the strategic and organisational impact of intra- and inter-organisational information systems based on IT, and of their contribution to the creation of competitive advantage in the hotel industry. We then study the hotel industry of the Valencian Community, the state of its information systems and its practices in managing IT. The study compares how the competitive advantages arising from IT are perceived on the ground, by defining five strategic groups with different strategic attitudes towards IT, and providing empirical evidence on the correlation of these different views with other variables such as legal category, scale, hotel business type or location.

Section snippets

Information systems and information technologies: their strategic value in the hotel business

Research into IT and their impact on business has developed within two different but complementary approaches. The first has a technical slant, basically concentrating on the processes for selection, introduction and management of IT, while the second, more organisational in its viewpoint, has focussed on the management of systems which use such IT and their impact on administrative and organisational processes.

According to this second approach, three basic trends in the management of

Goals and methodology of the research

The objective of our study was thus to study whether it is feasible to base a typology of hotels on the advantages and barriers they perceive in the introduction of IT into hotel management and operation. In addition, we looked into the correlation between these different strategic positions and any variables, such as legal status, scale, business-type, location, or tourist framework, that might have affected the hotels.

The research took the hotel establishments of the Valencian Community as a

Perception of competitive advantages based on IT

In our survey, managers’ perceptions of the strategic value of inter and intra-organisational information systems based on IT (Table 2) coincided with our theoretical identification of the competitive advantages derived from them.

The hotel managers in our sample show some maturity in assessing the possible benefits to be derived from IT. The introduction of IT innovations is basically seen as a means of improving agility (defined as capacity to answer quickly to opportunities or threats),

A typology of hotels according to their strategic attitudes to it

The results of the cross tabulation reveal substantial differences in strategic attitudes according to the different criteria of segmentation selected. However, the main objective of our study is to obtain, through Cluster analysis, a typology of hotels differentiated by their perception of the advantages and barriers derived from the introduction of IT in hotel management and operation.

As we have noted above, in Cluster analysis with the Galaxy application the selection of the number of groups

Summary and conclusions

The advantages of IT as perceived by hotel managers in the Valencian Community have been examined, and an attempt has been made to define groups with different strategic attitudes towards IT. The results obtained illustrate the points made in our introduction in various ways:

  • 1.

    It would seem from the present study that the strategic potential of IT does not seem to affect all hotels equally; and

  • 2.

    it is possible to establish different groups of hotels in accordance with their strategic attitudes to

About the Author

César Camisón, Doctor in Economics and Business Sciences from the University of Valencia, is at present Professor in Business Organization at the Jaume I University in Castellón and chief of the Research Group on Economics and Management of Tourism. He has been a Visiting Professor at the universities of Texas, Surrey and Bocconi in Milan, and has published many works in the fields of strategic management, total quality management and innovation strategies, especially applied to

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    César Camisón, Doctor in Economics and Business Sciences from the University of Valencia, is at present Professor in Business Organization at the Jaume I University in Castellón and chief of the Research Group on Economics and Management of Tourism. He has been a Visiting Professor at the universities of Texas, Surrey and Bocconi in Milan, and has published many works in the fields of strategic management, total quality management and innovation strategies, especially applied to the sphere of tourist companies.

    This study has been assisted by grants from the General Directorate for Scientific and Technical Research of the Spanish Ministry for Education and Science (PB93-0692), and the Education and Science Council of the Autonomous Government of Valencia (GV-3244/95).

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