RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN HOSPITALITY

Recent Developments in Hospitality

Recent Developments in Hospitality

Introduction

Globalization, as one of today's most controversial issues, can be defined as the increasing integration of economies, societies, and civilizations. It includes, and goes beyond, the more simple internationalization defined as relations among and within nations. Globalization is a restructuring process that works across units and affects all aspects of human life: from capital flows, through political collaboration, to the flow of ideas. It also includes environmental pollution, criminal behavior, disease, and, ultimately, terror. Travel and tourism are among the many causes and results of globalization processes.

Part A

There is a huge body of literature on internationalization from the point of view of the individual enterprise (Pugh and Plath 2003). Johanson and Vahlne (1977) carried out a pioneering study of incremental stages of internationalization of the firm. In the first stage, a purely national firm sporadically enters export markets. This is often followed by more systematic marketing efforts through agents in neighboring countries. The next step is own sales representation in major markets, and, as knowledge accumulates, investments in production and/or distribution facilities abroad. The internationalization process continues until increasing costs outweigh the growth potential. Following up on Johansson and Vahlne, later contributions emphasize the need to understand both the behavioral mechanisms of the single enterprise and the driving forces that make whole industries of the economy—for better or worse—undertake an increasingly intensified and multifaceted global orientation (Jones, 2005 and Wolf, 2004).

Conceptualizations of the ongoing globalization of firms are dominated by stage models (Hedlund, 1993 and Johanson and Vahlne, 1977). However, in spite of their intuitive use as guidelines for strategy and practical action, these models have also been strongly criticized. Cannon and Willis (1983) found that, rather than moving from one stage to the next, firms chose to move in and out of markets, depending on specific conditions. Others could ignore particular stages, and leap directly to more advanced formats, or back to an “inward” strategy (Björkman and Kock 1997). Danmarks Erhvervsråd (2005) investigated a large number of Danish firms and found support both for the idea of “born globals” (enterprises that adopt such a concept from the very start) and for the idea of “reborn globals” (those that reengineer operations entirely over a short period of time to the conditions of a larger market). While the present article is also based on a stage model, the aim here is to apply this theoretical framework both to single enterprises and to national tourism systems, those comprising tourism and related industries and institutional and political structures. Thus, the article attempts to apply the stage paradigm in a broader context.

While globalization in tourism has attracted some research interest, most studies have tended to focus on international hotel chains and airlines (Dunning and McQueen, 1982a, Dunning and McQueen, 1982b, Johnson and Vanetti, 2005, Rodriquez, 2002 and Williams, 2005). It is, however, remarkable how little the literature has discussed the broader manifestations of globalization in tourism, and how limited interest has been in applying theory to ...