Factors encouraging innovation in Spanish hospitality firms. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 52

An analysis of data from 443 Spanish hospitality firms highlighted four factors that encourage innovation. This original analytic model considered the joint effect on innovation of both internal and external factors but did not find that external factors—including government assistance programs—had a significant effect on hospitality innovation. The results confirmed a significant and positive relationship between hospitality innovation and four internal factors, namely, large firm size, membership in a business group (that is, a franchise, management contract, or membership association), willingness to change, and a sufficiently strong bureaucratic framework to manage and institutionalize any innovations. Keywords hospitality firms; innovation decision; technological innovation; Spain; CIS data Much of the theoretical and empirical literature on innova-tion has focused on manufacturing firms. Despite the increasing interest in analyzing service sector innovation activities, to date there is a lack of studies addressing hospi-tality industry innovation. Recent theoretical studies in this field have focused on analyzing technology adoption in hospitality firms (Wang and Qualls 2007). The existing empirical studies have focused on describing hospitality firms ’ innovative behavior and practices (Orfila-Sintes, Crespí-Cladera, and Martínez-Ro