Who’s in Charge Now? The Decision Autonomy of Hotel General Managers

Abstract

The general manager (GM) is the key position in a hotel, but the changing structure of the industry has altered the scope of the GM's decision-making autonomy. In many hotels, the GM is an employee of a hotel operating firm and is effectively an agent of the operator or owner (and sometimes both parties). These principals have authority over several aspects of hotel operation, although the GM also has responsibility. A study of the GM's role and authority in 115 upscale European hotels finds a mixed picture in decision autonomy, depending on the individual's experience and education, as well as whether the hotel is independent or chain managed. Overall, independent GMs have greater autonomy in their properties than chain GMs, and highly experienced managers are often given greater autonomy by independent owners, while operating companies give greater autonomy to GMs who offer a combination of education and experience. With regard to individual functional areas, chain GMs have relatively greater authority in human resources, marketing, and strategy but limited autonomy in finance and operations.

High Performance Work Systems for Service Quality: Boundary Conditions and Influence Processes

“…As such, hotels that are owned and operated by brands can invest more slack resources in the implementation of HPWSs to achieve higher service performance than hotels with nonaligned ownership and management. Independently owned and managed hotels, although having the flexibility to adapt to the needs of the targeted market without the constraints from affiliation requirements (Hodari & Sturman, ), often suffer from low marketing power because of a lack of brand name or well‐established reputation (Corgel et al, ), which is particularly salient during recession (O'Neill & Carlbäck, ). Thus, as customer perceptions of service quality are partially shaped by hotel brand and marketing campaign (Grönroos, ), the investment in HPWSs by independent hotels may not be associated with the same level of service performance as perceived by customers.…”

“…In addition, as independent hotels’ managers are often subject to fewer formal corporate policies and regulations as stipulated by the brand, they may implement less arduous HRM policies and practices than the hotels that are owned and managed by brands. A recent study found that general managers in independent hotels possessed greater autonomy in determining the hotel's operation, marketing, and HRM than those working for hotel management companies (Hodari & Sturman, ). As such, we conducted a follow‐up multivariate analysis of variance to compare the HRM practices across hotels, which showed that there was a significant difference among the three types of hotels in terms of the performance management practice, F (2, 123) = 4.40, p < .05; partial · 2 = .07.…”

Strategy tools: Contextual factors impacting use and usefulness

“…The focus on the hotel industry is especially relevant since it is an industry which has, with mixed results, habitually incorporated findings and recommendations, including tools and concepts, from the broader general business environment (Okumus & Wong, 2005;Olsen & Roper, 1998). By studying strategists from an industry allied to tourism, we are also able to add to the nascent work of scholars investigating strategy at work within tourism organisations (see for example, Aldehayyat, 2011;Beritelli & Laesser, 2011;Devine & Devine, 2011;Hodari & Sturman, 2014;Stokes, 2008).…”

Revisiting the relevance of economic theory to hotel revenue management education and practice in the era of Big Data

“…While revenue strategy may be guided by corporate level managers (Hodari & Sturman, 2014), the implementation and final decision of daily price setting is done at a unit level, often overseen, if not led, by hotel general managers. Hotel general managers also face complexity and time pressure (Yan et al, 2013) when implementing daily changes to prices due to the perishable nature of the hotel product.…”