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Conclusions
This article reviewed innovation as an essential factor for hotel’s competitive advantage,
since hotel industry is a perfect area to promote innovation due growing consumer needs
and their call for new experiences. This article analyzed hotel-oriented innovation in terms
of four innovation types of product, process, marketing and organizational innovations
(OECD, 2015), based on a case study of Marriott’s hotel practices. It discussed 1) product
innovations based on Marriott’s sustainable hotel development initiatives; 2) process
innovations based on Marriott’ innovative apps development for new customer experience;
3) marketing innovations based on Marriott’s virtual reality initiatives and 4) organizational
innovations based on Marriott’s Innovation Lab for participatory innovation contribution. In
turn, this exploratory study illustrated various approaches to promote innovation in hotel
industry.
Indeed, it could be noted that hotel industry aims both at incremental and more radical
innovations. Incremental innovation refines and improves an existing design, through
improvements of its components or processes like promoting sustainability-driven
innovations or more advanced apps for new customer experience. In contrast, radical
innovation calls for a whole new design or experience like virtual realities.
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