Understanding innovation in hospitality through the words of innovative managers

Recently, researchers have become more interested in service innovation, and they describe it mostly as a process of continuous improvement of service quality, quite different from the industrial sector, more directed to technological innovation. This paper summarizes research designed to explain the role of hotel managers in fostering innovation in high quality hospitality industry. Within a role theory approach, interviews with 24 managers considered innovative by their employees, and six considered less innovative, were subjected to content analysis and correspondence analysis in order to extract the managers’ perceptual maps. Results show the differences between innovative and non-innovative managers’ self perceptions and the implications in service innovation. This research suggested ways that can be used to bring better results to the hospitality organizations, and stressed the value of employee creativity in the management process