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1. Introduction
The hotel industry is viewed as a cyclical industry and highly influenced by contextual factors and product characteristics. If business declines, hotel firms are not able to reduce costs as production falls in response to falling sales. Because of their high fixed costs, hotels require maintaining high performance to survive and generate adequate profit. Consequently, after operational management and business strategies’ implementation, managers have to evaluate the organizational effectiveness using adequate performance measurements. An operational diagnosis through efficiency assessment can help to develop policies and strategies that use and allocate valuable resources in a more informed and optimal manner.
Different approaches and techniques have been used for this assessment, such as the cost–benefit ratio or net present value methods. These techniques and approaches are often difficult to implement or require immeasurable variables. According to Peypoch and Solonandrasana (2007), data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a fractional linear programming technique that can be an appropriate methodology to overcome measurement difficulties. In terms of management strategy and organization, this analysis offers, as a decision-making tool, topic outlines that maximize results and minimize waste. First, this method provides a multi-dimensional assessment of efficiency, and second, it allows rigorous identification of partners in a benchmarking process. The efficiency score will be considered in this paper as measurement for the hotel performance, as we attempt to examine its dependence on certain internal and external economic variables using a two-step approach.
The main focus of the present study is to carefully scrutinize hotel performance response of tourist hotels in Tunisia to business conditions such as destination attractiveness and competition level and to managers’ qualifications and abilities. This paper aims also to highlight the importance of adopting the efficiency evaluation with the habitual performance indicators in hotel industry. In terms of management strategy and organization, this analysis offers, as a decision-making tool, topic outlines that maximize results and minimize waste. First, this method provides a multi-dimensional assessment of efficiency, and second, it allows rigorous identification of partners in a benchmarking process.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the literature on the determinants on the hotels performance. Section 3 focuses on the additional information given by the efficiency score compared with other hotels’ performance measure such...