Tourism intermediaries and innovation in the hotel industry

Abstract

This paper examines the influence of tourism intermediaries on innovationin SMEs in the hotel industry from the perspective of the global value chainapproach. The paper contributes towards characterizing the changingpatterns of governance in the tourism global value chains. In addition, itprovides useful information about SMEs’innovation for tourismdestination managers. The dataset for this study comes from a survey ofhotel SMEs in Spain. The results indicate that dependence on touroperators leads to lower levels of marketing innovation, whiledependence on on-line travel agencies stimulates it. Dependence ontraditional travel agencies is observed to be associated with less productinnovation. Overall, dependence on tourism intermediaries implies lowerautonomy in a hotel’s determination of rates and margins, but canfavour innovation by means of stimulating the introduction ofinformation and communication technologies and quality standards.