Unexploited potentials of networking in the hospitality business - Slovenia's case

In addition to theoretical arguments advocating various advantages of industrial networking, many examples of good practices and positive experiences can be found worldwide. Therefore, in many countries political measures have implemented to boost strategic partnership between companies. Nevertheless, examples of good practices of networking in the hospitality business are still relatively rare. In this paper, results of a study on the potentials for good practice in this regard and some reasons for the current state of poor networking in the Slovene hospitality sector are presented. The research consists of two parts. Managers of hospitality companies and leaders of two formal networks were interviewed for this purpose. The quantitative approach with Likert-type ordinal scale was used with the former group, while semi-structured interview and qualitative analysis was employed for the latter. The results revealed some interesting differences in the operational focus between formal and informal networks in terms of goals sought by their members. Strategic cooperation with the suppliers turned out to be the most common field of networking, while the principal obstacles for more intensive networking seem to lie in the conservative character of managers in the hospitality business, distrust and lack of time and organizational knowledge. This research fills the gap in dealing with industrial networking by confronting formal and informal strategic cooperation praxes in hospitality business.