Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the key characteristics of sustainable service innovation in the hospitality industry. We conducted a content analysis based on the interview records for 17 experts (including three academic scholars, three government officers and 11 top-level managers) with an average of 20 years of experience in the hospitality management domain in Taiwan. The analytical results conform to Amabile’s (1988) componential theory of creativity and innovation and show that 11 characteristics are major indicators of sustainable service innovation in the hotel management field. These include the following characteristics: market position, customer satisfaction, service orientation, environmental thinking, employee involvement, incentive mechanism, human resource development, environmental services, cultural resource management, government policy and school education. Accordingly, using the integrated theory of sustainable service innovation and professional opinions from experts, we provide theoretical and practical implications for current and future trends on sustainability and innovation in the hospitality industry.
Highlights
Innovation, the heart of success in the hospitality industry, enables hotels to adopt novel ideas, improve service processes, enhance operational efficiency levels, meet customer needs, earn sales and achieve profitability, engage in corporate social responsibility and maintain competitive advantages in rapidly-changing markets [1,2,3,4,5]
To systematize the experts’ responses, we focus on the following questions in Table 2: “What is the meaning of sustainable service innovation?” “Please define the framework and effort to promote sustainable service innovation.”
Based on Amabile’s [29] componential theory of creativity and innovation, the characteristics of each concept were grounded in three dimensions: (1) organizational motivation includes the characteristics of market position, customer satisfaction, service culture and environmental thinking; (2) management practices contained the characteristics of employee involvement, incentive mechanism, human resource development and environmental services; and (3) resources are related to the characteristics of cultural resource management, government policy and school education
Summary
Innovation, the heart of success in the hospitality industry, enables hotels to adopt novel ideas, improve service processes, enhance operational efficiency levels, meet customer needs, earn sales and achieve profitability, engage in corporate social responsibility and maintain competitive advantages in rapidly-changing markets [1,2,3,4,5]. In consideration of the creation of novel products, services, processes or markets with regard to environmental, social, financial and sustainability matters, the spectrum of sustainable innovations may be used at diverse levels from the adoption of new ideas to systems in all aspects of society [8,9,12,13,14]. We intend to identify key innovation elements regarding quality services and procedures to guarantee the inclusion of these quality services in the hospitality realm
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