The barriers and enablers affecting innovation in hotel gastronomy and its impact on performance.

This paper aims to identify what factors are barriers to gastronomic innovation in the hotel sector and which ones facilitate it. The paper analyses whether external or internal barriers and demand or competition orientation and network-based knowledge influence whether a hotel implements more or less gastronomic innovation. It also investigates the impact on performance from a financial and non-financial perspective, using a structural equation model to test the hypotheses. Gastronomy becomes a priority for hotels as guests look for experiences at the destination. A sample of 131 three to five-star hotels in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain) was selected for the purpose of this study. Respondents were different categories of managers of the participating hotels. The results show that there are internal and external obstacles that have a negative influence on gastronomic innovation, whereas risk-taking does not show any significant negative influence. Furthermore, when a hotel is driven by demand and competition, there is a favorable outcome on gastronomic innovation. It is also apparent that applying of higher levels of network-based knowledge has a positive impact on gastronomic innovation. The study’s findings show that a stronger focus on gastronomic innovation improves financial and non-financial performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]