CHALLENGES OF MANAGERIAL COMMUNICATION IN HOTEL BUSINESS OPERATIONS

Abstract

Purpose – Hotel managers meet daily challenges when communicating and conducting hotel business operations. Some challenges can be predicted and prevented, while some are ad hoc and cannot be influenced in advance. To address these challenges and convey messages they use communication. Communication is at the heart of every business and a key success factor. The purpose of this paper is to investigate, analyze, present and map the internal and external challenges that hotel managers face when communicating and managing hotel business, based on a theoretical review of previous research. It aims to identify the importance of the role communication plays in hotel operations and how it contributes to them, and to identify future communication challenges that hotel managers will face in hotel business operations. Methodology – This paper uses the literature review as a research method and focuses on reviewed open sources only and published relevant studies in publications about communication, management and tourism and hospitality industry. Desk research was used to search for and analyse papers. The literature review provides an analytical overview of the latest publications and research on the role of managerial communication and hotel business operations. The search for relevant papers was based on the keywords challenges, communication, management, and hotel business operations, using the citation and bibliographic databases of DOAB, EconLit, Emerald, Google Scholar, SAGE journals, Science Direct, Scopus, Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Web of Science. Findings – Results indicate that maintaining continuous and targeted communication is of crucial importance in ensuring timely and appropriate responses to emerging challenges. At the core of any business, communication is an element that warrants great attention. Poor communication can be counter-productive and adversely affect overall business performance. The paper highlights the primary challenges in communication facing hotel managers. These are: sending the right message to the right audience at the right time; communicating about sustainability; addressing the environmental and social awareness of consumers, financial, political and health crises, information and communication technology development, social networks, climate-related disasters, armed conflicts, and other challenges. Contribution – The contribution of this paper is that it presents an overview of the challenges that hotel managers meet in communicating in hotel business operations and can serve as a basis for further research in this field and improvement of hotel business operations. Challenges that have appeared over the past twenty years have been analyzed and grouped so that hotel managers can learn which challenges often arise in running a hotel business and prepare strategies to overcome the same or similar challenges in their business. By reviewing the literature, the paper determines what is known about this topic and what needs to be further researched. It is recommended that further studies investigate the current challenges facing hotel managers, given the increasingly rapid changes, globalization, computerization and new world crises occurring today.