ABSTRACT
The authors of this handbook clearly provide a critical view of hospitality strategic management. They present a vision of the hospitality and tourism industry in the year 2015 and discuss the forces driving the hospitality and tourism industry. They explain the systems of environmental scanning that a hospitality company should be equipped with so that the leaders of the company can steer the organization through vibrant, dynamic, and complex environments in order to identify opportunities, invest in competitive methods, allocate resources to these competitive methods to achieve proper execution of strategy, and create the greatest long-term value for all the stakeholders of that organization. They argue that the resource-allocation process constitutes how the firm actually implements and executes its strategy. In order to accurately allocate resources to its strategic priorities or chosen competitive methods, a company needs to clearly analyse its functional competences in terms of its human resources system, information technology system, operations management system, marketing management system, and its organizational culture. It must also understand the vital role of its intangible assets, such as branding, human capital, management know-how, innovation, and entrepreneurship in strategic management. The authors believe that as the hospitality and tourism industry becomes globalized, both strategic alliances and partnerships, and outsourcing may help to lessen the resource shortage and provide opportunities for a company to expand to other parts of the world.
