Management Accounting Practices in the Hospitality Industry: A Systematic Review and Critical Approach

Abstract

The hospitality industry has been making a remarkable contribution to the growth of several countries’ economies. From a business perspective, the best management accounting (MA) techniques and practices are fundamental to the success of companies. However, studies in this specific area in the hotel industry are scattered in the scientific literature in different types of documents and different languages, and with an irregular distribution throughout the years (2000–2020). To fill this gap, a thorough analysis of the global performance of management accounting practices in hospitality is crucial. This study accessed the Web of Science database in three different languages and systematized the articles to be included in this research through the PRISMA guidelines, which allowed an empirical basis for the critical approach to this topic. The greatest relevance of the study is the fact that it presents a systematic review of the literature on hotel management accounting practices, for which these results were enriched with a critical approach. The innovative character of the study focuses on evidence of the increasing implementation of some hotel management accounting practices over the years, such as some operating ratios and the USALI. In practical terms, the results of this study explain the overall performance of management accounting practices in the lodging industry and which ones are most widely used. The importance of the practices to support the decision-making of hoteliers and the challenges that they need to face in their implementation are also shown.

SMEs Managers’ Perceptions of MCS: A Mixed Methods Approach

“…The TdB is a "dashboard" that helps to guide organizations to their destinations and, consequently, has emerged and evolved over time to meet the operational needs of managers (Bessire and Baker, 2005). In using the TdB, French authors have emphasized the need for nonfinancial indicators and organizational changes over the years have forced companies to adopt non-financial measures, leading the TdB to move in that direction (Campos et al, 2022). The TdB involves translating the organizational vision and mission into a set of objectives which the company then translates into a series of quantitative KPIs (Epstein & Manzoni, 1998) that yield four types of benefits:…”

“…Sawang (2011) results show that 38-40% of manufacturing managers and 41% of non-manufacturing managers who highly recognized the importance of nonfinancial measures do not use them. However, managers increasingly adopt non-financial performance measures (Campos et al, 2022;Corona, 2009) and it is often associated to corporate social regulation and investments increasingly deal with nonfinancial consideration. Hence, managers must recognize the importance given to nonfinancial measures since they rise the investors' confidence on investment (Antony, 2020) and reduce risk (Ghoul et al, 2011).…”

“…Although organizations increasingly use financial and nonfinancial measures in reports such as the Tableau de Bord (TdB) (Campos et al, 2022) and the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) (Malagueño et al, 2018), there is no evidence on the perceptions of the importance given to the financial and nonfinancial measures by the SME managers, since not much attention has been given to human perceptions in accounting (Birnberg, 2011). Nevertheless, SMEs managers recognize the importance given to both types of measures and adopt different MCSs.…”

Investigation of the Effects of Covid-19 Pandemic on the Tourism Sector: Evidence from Greece

“…Management accounting allows the control, the anticipation of problems, and the opening up of perspectives in companies this tool is very powerful in preparing accounting information to improve the company's costs, revenues, and results (Campos et al, 2022). Gordon et al (2021) pointed out that sustainable tourism can bring huge benefits to regional development when mass international tourism is drastically reduced in a pandemic period.…”

“…Previous pandemics have also exposed the tourism sector to major adverse shocks. Campos et al (2022) pointed out that the nineteenth century and the relatively recent Covid-19 pandemic, brought a rapid change in the application of management accounting systems and techniques, which has been considered vital to business success in the tourism sector however, the importance of practices differs significantly between different businesses and managers in this sector.…”