Innovative Product Development in Hotel Operations

SUMMARY The hotel industry has a hard time resisting the continued globalization pressure. In order to survive the fierce international competition, even hotel chains need to offer their potential customers an added value that they do not receive from their competitors. The product development offers promising integrated solution approaches. Numerous unique characteristics can be established through entrepreneurial implementation of innovative product concepts in hotel operations. Indicating that this can occur in the fullest sense, this theoretical article concludes with an actual product development. Its objective is to demonstrate that the integration of the resource-based view in the product development processes in hospitality and tourism is necessary to generate competitive differentiation opportunities. Environment-based and resource-based views are no longer interpreted as monistic and mutually exclusive, but as complementary management approaches. A practical example underlines the fact that such considerations are already being implemented in hotel chains although they still tend to be neglected in tourism-scientific research.