ABSTRACT

Customer orientation has been widely recognised as one key factor enhancing innovativeness of hotels. However, very limited research has explored this issue in the context of hotel market in the process of transition. Responding to this need, the objective of the study is therefore to identify the impact of the customer orientation on innovativeness of the hotel companies in Poland. Three dimensions of customer orientation, which includes customers’ knowledge acquisition, customers’ knowledge processing and customers’ knowledge exploitation, were hypothesised as sources of innovativeness and verified on the basis of questionnaire survey carried out among 400 hotel companies in Poland. The results suggest that hotels do take actions aimed at interacting with customers which leads to knowledge creation and innovations. We found significant role of customers’ knowledge acquisition and customers’ knowledge processing on innovativeness. The results of the study provide hotel management with relevant insights into the customers’ engagement in the innovation process.