Structural Changes: The International Hospitality Industry and Firm

Increasing competition in the hospitality industry in Europe and downsizing of head‐office staff in corporate firms will require the development of new unit‐level management skills. The change needed is from an operations orientation to strategic thinking – a difficult management development task for this industry and one that is lagging behind other changes. Competition increasingly looks like a question of who can best time the matching of the necessary internal structural changes to the implementation of the strategies chosen to deal with increasing buyer power and the profitable use of new technology.