The status of the small hotel firm

Abstract

This paper revisits and builds on Morrison Citation1998a work, which contrasted and compared statistics from the United Kingdom small firm sector in general with those related to small firms within the hotel industry. At that point in time, it was concluded that the plight of the small firm operating within the hotel industry was dire and it questioned what the future would hold. The small hotel firm sector in the UK was confronting a number of profound challenges of an operational, financial, market, and managerial nature that were intensified given the exacting competitive environment in which it existed. The data were drawn mainly from 1994 sources; thus, a decade on, analysis enables a longitudinal review of the current status of the small hotel firm. However, as will be highlighted, such analysis is fraught with definitional and conceptual challenges. Investigation is placed within the context of relevant literature published during the intervening years. The content of the paper commences with a discussion of associated definitional issues, followed by recognition of the various constraints and limitations embedded in available statistics. Thereafter, the framework presented in is used to structure analysis and discussion leading to contemporary informed inferences pertaining to the current status of the small hotel firm within the geographic context of the UK.