Internationalization and Sustainable Hotel Competitiveness: Resilience and Network Ties to Increase Tourism Sustainability

Abstract

The tourism industry, which is exposed to a turbulent environment, is one of the sectors that are the most vulnerable to any change (such as political, economic, environmental, or social). This makes it necessary to study firm resilience in this industry in order to identify the factors that can enhance companies’ capacity for resilience in turbulent environments. Moreover, the strategies pursued by tourism companies to become more resilient and more competitive are closely related to tourism sustainability. Among the factors that can affect resilience, we analyze the roles of the degree of internationalization and network ties. Moreover, we explore the influence of resilience on the sustainable competitiveness of hotel firms. For this purpose, we propose a variance-based structural equation modeling analysis where resilience acts as a mediating variable between the degree of internationalization and sustainable competitiveness. Our results allow us to draw important theoretical implications, which shed light on a field of study that is currently much debated, and practical implications, which will help hotel entrepreneurs to make timely decisions in dynamic environments.