Hotel Management in the Twenty-First Century: Opportunities, Threats, and Implications

First decades of the twenty-first century are characterized by numerous changes that have significantly affected the hotel industry worldwide, both positively and negatively. The most important changes relate to technology, the sharing economy, ecology, different types of crisis, as well as to the demographic structure. Moreover, the number of competitors increases continually, as well as customers’ expectations. Hotel management is thus facing great challenges to succeed in such a dynamic environment. Due to its nature, this industry is very sensitive to the most of changes and relatively inadaptable at the same time. Hotel services cannot be stored for later use, and downsizing in hard times and increasing the capacity in the peak of demand are rather impossible. The quality of strategic management can be considered as a determinant of business sustainability and competitive advantage. The first phase of this process is the analysis of environment to reveal emerging business opportunities and threats, followed by strategy formulation, evaluation, and implementation. Therefore, this chapter strives to comprehensively analyze the context of hotel operations in the third decade of the twenty-first century and to provide implications for managers how to achieve and sustain competitive advantage. In this respect, strategic management and total quality management are seen as a backbone for achieving sustainable competitive advantage in contemporary hotel market. Specific attention is drawn to the concepts of dynamic capability, risk management, accessibility, corporate social responsibility, and supply chain management.