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The paper provides empirical evidence on technological activity in the Spanish service sector, in particular for the tourist accommodation in the Balearics. The study wants to fulfil the lack of analyses in the field of tourism. Commonly, the study of innovation activity has been carried out from a manufacture perspective, for that reason the paper discusses the precise definition of innovation in accommodation services. The data refer to a large representative sample of hotels in Balearic Islands (Spain), providing a homogeneous set of information. The results show as higher categories hotels are more innovative than lower categories hotels; an aggregated measure of technological innovation presents a rate over the average for hotels that belong to a chain, and that for hotels under management contract. Half of innovative companies adjust the human capital skills and abilities. The hotel industry is a supplier driven sector that innovates introducing R&D embodied technology rather than undertaking internal R&D activities. r

a b s t r a c t This paper provides evidence for different innovation activities in the hotel industry. In particular, we explore the influence of a variety of firm and market characteristics on radical and incremental innovations. We consider the learning of new attributes (radical) and the addition of characteristics to existing attributes (incremental) to represent two different paces or degrees of managing the innovation process in this specific industry. The database used in the empirical study shares the major features of new approaches about innovation in services. A questionnaire administered to a representative sample of hotel managers in the Balearic Islands provides the data for the discrete regression models used to represent the innovation in these hotels. Our main conclusion is that radical and incremental innovations appear to be interrelated. Furthermore, the main determinants of innovation are the form of hotel management, the hotel market strategy, and the size and location of the hotel.

This paper explores the dynamics of hotel innovation and its impact on hotel performance with a representative sample of the whole hotel sector operating in the Balearic Islands, Spain. The managers of sampled hotels (N = 331) answered questions about innovations over a 6-year period. On the basis of an earlier developed model of innovation types, we investigate the effect on performance of different types of innovation. We find that two combinations of innovation types impact hotel performance in a positive way, namely the combinations termed, Full and Service&Back-Office innovation. We therefore suggest that these combinations are used to create synergies for hotel performance. Copyright