In This Part:

Overview

This chapter offers an explanation as to how hotel chains have grown and developed, especially in the last decade, and offers some projections from Otus on the European hotel industry in 2011. The development process in hotel chains is explored and some conclusions offered for the future.

The structure is in five sections as follows:

• Conceptual background

• Context

• The evolving structure of the hotel industry

  • Global overview

  • Economic structures

  • The structure of the hotel industry in Europe

  • Demand growth and share of new hotel rooms

  • Capital availability and hotel migration

  • The European hotel industry 2011

• The development process in hotel chains

• Conclusion.

Conceptual background

This first section reviews some of the underpinning concepts of planning and of development strategy. Every business plans for the future and hospitality organizations are no exception. If firms plan carefully and objectively, they can, at least to some extent, prepare for the possible impacts of key factors such as changes to target markets, sales, volumes and trends. Armitstead (2000) suggests that the planning process starts with articulating a mission and vision, before setting objectives, developing and implementing a strategy, as shown in Figure 4.1.

Figure 4.1: The planning process

As seen in Figure 4.1, planning is often seen as a linear, but flexible process, in which mission, vision and strategy are regularly refined and re-evaluated according to...