Perception of cost, cost drivers, human resource management, long and short term critical success factors in the hotel industry: Recommendations for hotel management

The main objective of the authors is to analyze the perception of hotel owners and managers on the importance of success factors, like human resource management and cost management. The central question is: What do owners and managers think about the influence of these factors on a hotel’s success and which interdependencies can be observed empirically. They further analyzed whether there were differences in manager perceptions that could be correlated to basic hotel characteristics such as quality standard, operating mode, hotel type or size. The results were based on 95 answers of hotel owners/senior managers in Germany. Important results for human resource management were the fact that managers are largely aware of its importance and aim at the goals that are supposed to influence success. Only with regard to a more long term perspective hoteliers displayed some deficits in a temporary understanding of human capital management. In the area of cost management the main starting points identified by hotel managers were in cost cutting, including general as well as personnel costs. Another result was that about 80% of the target group has an understanding of short and long term business success drivers which is more than expected. This understanding is higher for managers in chain hotels. Managers of individual hotels need some improvements especially within completion of the short term performance point of view towards a more long term value perspective. This mainly refers to the transfer of perceived differences between business and value drivers into management action.   Key words: Hotel, hotel management, success factors, cost drivers, value drivers, human resource management, value based management, key performance indicators, cost management.