Innovation radar in hospitality: a new procedure to evaluate the innovation in hotels

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to propose a new procedure called innovation radar in hospitality (IRH), which was specifically designed to measure the innovations in hotels. Design/methodology/approach Based on a systematic review, a structured questionnaire was developed with 31 questions. The questions covered 12 dimensions related to hospitality: offer, platform, solutions, customer, customer experience, value capture, processes, organization, supply chain, presence, network and brand. The developed IRH instrument allowed to identify five ordered stages of innovation in the hospitality industry: basic operational, advanced operational, basic innovator, intermediate innovator and advanced innovator. The IRH was tested in real environment in Brazilian Hotels. Findings The procedure proved to be stable and able to rank hotels by innovation. The IRH allocated hotels consistently into one of the five stages. By analyzing each survey hotel individually, the procedure showed no discrepancies between the individual rates and the allocated stage by IRH. Practical implications The IRH can be an automated and structured instrument to measure innovation by consumers, platforms, agencies, research studies and governments. Originality/value To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first structured and quantitative procedure to measure innovation in hotels. The radar was able to detect specific actions aimed at innovation that serve as a good prediction mechanism for innovation in the hospitality sector. In this context, the radar emerges as an important tool for innovation metrics in the tourism sector, offering analysis mechanisms and a way to evaluate and monitor companies.

New technology and tourism industry innovation: evidence from audio-visual patented technologies

“…Table 1 presents the results of that comparison suggesting not only the presence of a positive trend in tourism audio-visual patents, but also that this trend is growing much faster than the total amount of patents, showcasing an increasing interest in innovation in tourism. These results challenge some researchers' perception which underestimate the current level of innovation research in tourism (Valenca et al, 2020), but echo Succurro and Boffa (2018) findings on patented innovation in the hospitality sector in Italy.…”

“…These results challenge some researchers' perception which underestimate the current level of innovation research in tourism (Valenca et al, 2020), but echo Succurro and Boffa (2018) findings on patented innovation in the hospitality sector in Italy.…”

“…From Table 2 it becomes evident that tourism audio-visual patents registered have the second highest rate of growth after micro-structural and nano-technology, and they surpass well-known innovative sectors like food chemistry and telecommunications, further validating the classification of tourism as an innovation-oriented sector. This finding is surprising considering the recognised lack of empirical research documenting innovation in tourism (Rodriguez-Sanchez et al, 2020;Williams et al, in press;Singh et al, 2020;Valenca et al, 2020). 2 Here] The next step involved performing content analysis of the identified 4,237 patents' abstracts.…”

“…Innovation is playing an increasingly important role in the service sector (Tajeddini et al, 2020) and is particularly critical for the tourism industry, which is characterized by growing innovation research (Divisekera and Nguyen, 2018;Rodriguez-Sanchez et al, 2019;Hjalager, 2010;Valenca et al, 2020). The need to be innovative is strongly linked to the existence, sustainability and growth of tourism operators that intensively compete in a highly globalized marketplace (Backman et al, 2017).…”

“…A number of scholars, however, have highlighted that rigid innovation research in tourism is lacking in general and called for additional empirical evidence generated through quantitative studies rather than a case-by-case approach (Divisekera and Nguyen, 2018;Hall and Williams, 2008;Succurro and Boffa, 2018), as the latter fails to provide rigid classification of the critical areas of development in the industry (Pantano et al, 2017). Recent studies justified the still scarce research on innovation in tourism as prompt by the adoption of approaches developed for manufacturing industries that are inadequately applied in tourism (Valenca et al, 2020).…”