Lodging industry competitive strategies: Developing a multidimensional causal empirical model to test the relationship between strategy and performance

Abstract

Over the past two decades, hospitality strategy researchers have made several attempts to develop models aimed at capturing the competitive strategies of hospitality firms. These efforts, although comprehensive in their own respect, were unable to verify the applicability of models proposed by Porter (1980) and Miles and Snow (1978) to the hospitality industry. The objective of this article is to develop a multidimensional causal model for the lodging industry, primarily using Porter (1980, 1985), that addresses the complexity and multivariate nature of relationships making up the strategy construct. This model, once tested, will provide lodging strategic business unit managers an overall strategic orientation as well as a resource allocation decision framework for their firms.