تاثیر نوآوری بر ارزش بازار هتل

The purpose of this article is to analyze the effect of hotel innovations on firm value. Specifically, this study fills a research gap in the previous literature by examining this effect through market value and by distinguishing the potentially different impacts of distinct innovation types: product, process, organization and marketing. This research contributes to consolidating the empirical evidence of hotel innovation and performance by analyzing whether distinct types of innovation lead to different levels of results. The findings show that innovations are perceived to have a positive impact on the future sales of the company: in a four-day period (0,+3), there is an increase in stock exchange returns of 1.53%. In terms of innovation types, process and marketing innovations are found to have a higher positive effect on hotel market value than product and organization innovations; which is explained by potential cost differences among innovations.

This article analyzes the effect of innovation on the firm value of hotels. Innovation is a critical element in today's tourism companies (Sundbo et al., 2007 and Martínez-Ros and Orfila-Sintes, 2009). It certainly helps firms reach and keep higher competitiveness standards (Aldebert et al., 2011, Hjalager, 2002, Kumar et al., 2008, Pulido et al., 2011, Rodgers, 2007 and Zach et al., 2010) as well as growth (Love et al., 2011). In the context of hotel management, Chen (2011) points out that “innovation appears to be the only means for an organization to convert change into opportunities and thus succeed”. In a recent article, Hjalager (2010) describes innovation research in tourism as a young phenomenon, suggesting several research gaps that should be tackled in order to get further insights that contribute to consolidating the theoretical underpinnings of tourism innovation. Specifically, this author, among others, points out a research gap in tourism innovation that should attract more analysis: the relationship between innovation actions and their economic performance. This author explicitly raises the question of examining “what types of innovation produce what level of results”. In an attempt to add to the extant body of knowledge on the topic, this article analyzes the effect of different types of innovations on the hotel industry's market value. With this objective, the subsequent sections of the article are arranged as follows: Section 2 presents the literature review of innovation in the hotel industry and justifies the hypotheses; Section 3 outlines the methodology and data employed; Section 4 describes the results; and Section 5 presents the conclusions.

This article analyzes the effect of innovation on hotel market value. The results show that innovations are perceived to have a positive impact on the future sales of the company (note that market value is a future-oriented measure of cash-flow). Specifically, in a four-day period (from day 0 to day +3), there is an increase in returns of 1.53%; what is more, 1.53% in four days is equivalent to annual returns of 300% (this annual measure would be compared with other investments’ internal rate of return or discounted cash-flow, which are usually presented through annualized figures to use equivalent measures). Also, in an attempt to further explain these returns derived from innovations, the news items are categorized into the four traditional types: product, process, organization and marketing (plus distribution). “Process” and “marketing” (and “distribution”) innovations have a higher positive effect on the market value than “product” and “organization” innovations. This shows that each innovation needs to be treated differently and individually, not only between but within categories, on account of cost differences among innovations. 5.1. Implications Beyond the specific results of the empirical application, the study has important implications, both academic and managerial. Regarding academic implications, the finding that a hotel's market value varies when the prospect of innovation activities is announced indicates that this measure can be regarded as appropriate to analyze this type of investment. This fact, along with the outcome that these variations in hotel market value are contingent upon the type of innovation, suggests that, when a comprehensive examination is pursued by the analyst, different types of innovation and distinct kinds of measurements should be employed. While different innovation types are expected to lead to different results, the use of several performance measures might allow the researcher to find hidden effects that, otherwise, would not be easy to uncover. Note that using distinct performance measures implies looking at the company from different perspectives; perspectives that represent facets that might be worth looking into. As for managerial implications, the use of market value facilitates the analysis of the effect of innovation on performance by estimating unbiased market predictions on future profits. This technique employs a forward-looking firm performance measure that overcomes all the difficulties of the traditionally used backward-looking firm profitability, i.e., accounting measures. Specifically, once the innovation is announced, managers can observe the evolution of share prices to determine how valuable the news is perceived to be by the shareholders. If the shareholders’ perceptions of it are not as good as the managers would have expected, they may want to see whether this is due to a lack of information (or even to misinformation). If this were the case, a new flow of information should be released, in order to clarify the hotel's innovation. Also, finding that innovation has a positive impact on firm market value means that the market considers that an innovative company is a healthy one. Therefore, any tourism company introducing innovations, no matter whether they are internal or external, should show that it is innovating all the time, by releasing news through a well-executed public relations system. 5.2. Limitation Even though the process followed to collect the innovation news announcements in the hotel industry guarantees that, a priori, all of them must have been detected, the resulting sample size is a clear limitation; not so much because it affects its ability to capture potential reactions in share prices, but because it does not allow the inclusion of a larger number of potential explanatory variables that could shed further light on the innovation-related determinants of hotel market value. 5.3. Future research For further research, several lines can be followed in order to provide a more comprehensive view of the relationship between innovation and market value in the hotel industry: (1) The paper uses the Schumpeterian classification to identify differentiated effects in innovation types; nevertheless, the use of other taxonomies would offer a broader view in terms of academic perspectives (as it would permit the identification of the best explanatory classification) as well as in terms of management perspectives (as it would show decision-makers the best innovation types according to the taxonomy used). (2) A larger sample would permit the use of factors related to a hotel's characteristics; for example, the same innovation might have different effects on hotel performance depending on its category (e.g., number of stars). (3) The analysis of the effect of innovation on distinct tourism-related industries would show whether the same type of innovation has a differentiated influence (hotels, travel agencies, airlines, etc.). (4) The use of specific information on each innovation, especially in terms of costs incurred in the investment could shed more light on the specificities of every initiative; that is, knowing the cost invested in an innovation could determine how costly (per unit) the variations in market value are. (5) Risk analysis. Some innovation decisions are particularly relevant as sometimes they can imply enormous investments; this fact, together with the large amount of fixed costs generally involved in the hotel industry, makes them strongly revenue-dependent, which might lead to profit instability. Consequently, it would be critical to examine the effect of innovation on the risk of a hotel's market value (measured through its volatility, for example). (6) There is a social trend today that favors corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions, so it would be interesting to see whether innovation oriented to enhance a hotel's CSR exerts an incremental effect on performance. That is, as the CSR literature shows that these activities have a positive impact on market value and this article has shown that innovations also have a positive effect on market value, it would be worthwhile to analyze whether a greater effect exists when both activities – CSR and innovation – are linked together (e.g., the announcement of an innovation that allows a more efficient use of solar panels in hotels). (7) Recent literature has proven sequential interdependency between radical and incremental innovations (Martínez-Ros and Orfila-Sintes, 2009). It would be relevant to test the effect of this sequential interdependency on market value, as it would allow managers to determine the best innovation decisions (and their sequence) to optimize the firm's market value. (8) As market value has been shown to reflect innovation announcements, it is possible to analyze the effect of innovation-based competitive reactions on the firm. In other words, as market value captures the hotel's innovation strategy, it could be expected that it will reflect competitors’ innovation strategies too. It would facilitate a rivalry analysis between actions and reactions based on innovation strategies. (9) Innovation is supposed to enhance customer satisfaction, and it should be reflected in the “opinion polls” that are shown in most hotels’ web pages these days. On the one hand, the value or ranking obtained in these polls can be used as an alternative measure of innovation effectiveness; and on the other, correlation analyses between the value/ranking obtained through these perceptions and a hotel's market value would show whether variations in market value are materialized in real terms too. (10) With the advent of new technologies, other measurements of innovation impact can be used. If “twitter” were treated as a market where information is exchanged, and the number of “tweets” were considered as a measure of repercussion (or hype), it could be interesting to observe the expectations generated by an innovation announcement on a specific day. Paralleling the method employed in this article, it would imply observing whether the amount of “exchanged information” (tweets) derived from a firm's release of news on a given day is abnormally superior to the quantity of “exchanged information” in a normal day, and whether and how many good things are said.