Resource sharing with local partners: How do hotels benefit?

Abstract

In tourism, resource sharing with local partners is becoming increasingly important as cooperative efforts are seen as specific modes for hotels to reduce shortages of information, technology, or market-related processes. Locally interconnected hotels are expected to share tangible and intangible resources across their horizontal and vertical boundaries, complementing traditional competitive strategies to achieve cooperative benefits and firm performance. We developed a conceptual framework relating resource sharing to benefits and firm performance. Our results reveal that various facets of resource sharing provide certain benefits with varying strengths for hotels. Vertical tangible resource sharing offers the most pronounced potential for benefits but can negatively affect financial performance. While some scholars assert that cooperation helps firms with limited resource endowments, we argue that hotels must be sufficiently strong to cope with cooperation challenges effectively. Our results support both perspectives. Within the hospitality context, some resource sharing mechanisms generate more benefits for large and high-star hotels, while others do so for small and low-star ones.