The Measurement of Competitiveness of International Tourist Hotels in

Gu-Shin Tung, Associate Professor Tien-Ming Cheng, Associate Professor Li-Chih Wu, Graduate Student National Pingtung Institute of Commerce, Pingtung , Taiwan

ABSTRACT

The international tourist hotels (ITHs) increased rapidly in Taiwan. This trend raised an important question to figure out these hotels’ competitiveness. This study applies two analytical methods Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) to indicate the level of competitiveness for those hotels by using four main themes, management performance, property asset, class and scale and communication distance. A sample of total is 58 Taiwan ITHs for the period 2007. The empirical results shed light the management performance and property asset are the key indicators for competition among hotels. The top five were Grand Hyatt , Grand Formosa Regent Taipei, Sheraton Taipei, Grand Hi-Lai Hotel and Hotel Taipei. Keywords : International Tourist Hotel, Competitiveness, Grey Relational Analysis

INTRODUCTION

The hotel industry was one of the factors affecting national competitiveness (Cooper et al., 1998). The US’ 911 incident in 2001 and China’s liberalization of overseas tourism caused the international tourists to choose the place of East Asia for traveling. Taiwan is a top priority destination of tourists from China based on the relationship of “blood is thicker than water” that attract more investors and intensify the competition of hotels market. The potential demand of hotels greatly increased that leaded investors entered into Taiwan’s hotel market, for example, Four Seasons, Kagaca and Hyatt. There was 58 international tourist hotels with a total of 17,294 rooms in 2007 and a total number of 55 under construction (Taiwan Tourism Bureau, 2009). The identification of hotel competitiveness indices can secure competitive advantage and competitiveness structure in the hotel market. There is a trend study for competition which is starting from countries, metropolitans, and further to tourism aspect. However, those methodologies adopted by these different fields were similar and limited on the results of questionnaire surveys and of expert interviews. Gooroochurn and Sugiyarto (2005) noted that different regions may cause differences in the data collection and data inconsistency. As referred literature show that a list of themes and ranking analysis of the competitiveness of ITHs are not available. This paper proposes a refined methodology of Gooroochurn and Sugiyarto (2005) to explore the competitiveness monitors, insight and rankings of ITHs in Taiwan. In this paper, the influences of various themes on competitiveness have been discussed to formulate effective competition strategies for hotel operators.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Competitiveness The concept of competitiveness first emerged in Charles Darwin’s “competition by natural selection, survival of the fittest” theory. Buckley et al. (1988) first proposed the academic research of competitiveness. They noted that competitiveness was the precedence of competition, a management process, and a result of competition. Francis and Tharakan (1989) classified competition into 3 levels, enterprise, industrial, and national competition. Porter (1990) proposed in his Diamond model that national competitiveness meant to indicate that the business have the ability to compete in the competitive markets. Meanwhile, industrial competitiveness is concerned with whether a certain

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industry of a country has advantages in the global market. And in terms of business segment, companies can create relative competitive advantage and possess unique resources (Hsu, 2000). Competitiveness has different implications when applied to different levels and the common purpose is to achieve a beneficial position through the establishment of competitive advantage (Man et al., 2002).

Hotel Competitiveness Monitors Researches related to competitiveness have extended from countries (Porter, 1990; Makhija, 1993; Lenway and Murtha, 1994; Keith and Lance, 1997; Moon et al., 1998 ), cities (Hu, 2004; Kresl, 1995; Begg, 1999; Rogerson, 1999), urban tourism (Crouch and Ritchi, 1999; Kim, 2000; Kozak, 1999; Gooroochurn and Sugiyarto, 2005) to various industries (Man et al., 2002). The different objectives refer to the greatly different structure of competitiveness. Our paper proposes the competitiveness of ITHs industry in Taiwan. We adopt these variables from Man et al. (2002), except technical resources, organization structure, system, creativity, culture, service differentiation, customer service and influence of business owners those are not available for the database of Taiwan Tourism Bureau. We also refer previous literature to hotels as shown on Table 1. Preliminary established hotel competitiveness themes (management performance, property asset, class and scale and communication distance) and indicators for this study are listed on Table 1.

Table 1: Studies on the Industries and Hotel Competitiveness Competitiveness This paper elements (Man et Theme Hotel competitiveness monitor Definition al., 2002) Total operating expenditure ： Total related expenses Greenberg (1986); Morey and Financial resources Dittman (1995) Advertising intensity ：Greenberg Advertising expenses divided by (1986) sales Average occupation rate of room ： Rooms occupied in individual Greenberg (1986); Morey and hotel divided by rooms available Dittman (1995); Tsaur (2001); Wu et al. (2008) Average production value per Return on sales divided by total employee ：Yan (1997); Wu et al. number of hotel staff during the (2008) year of reference Productivity Total revenue ：Greenberg (1986); Total the relevant income Anderson et al. (2000); Yan (1997); Chang and Hwang (2006); Wu et Management al. (2008) performance Market share ：Geller (1985); Miller The percentage of total sales in the (1990) hotel market captured by individual hotel Average daily rate ：Morey and Actual daily revenue divided by Quality Dittman (1995); Tsaur (2001) the total number of available rooms Pre-tax profit margin ：Lee et al. The aggregated before tax ratio of (2000); Wu et al. (2008) accounting profit to total sales as a percent Earnings growth rate ：Nkomo Individual hotel’s changes to Management (1987) earnings dividends, as compared performance with the previous year’s total earnings Pre-tax investment return rate ： The aggregated before tax ratio of Ruan (1994); Wu et al. (2008) accounting profit to total property asset value as a percent

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Competitiveness This paper elements (Man et Theme Hotel competitiveness monitor Definition al., 2002) Number of rooms ：Morey and Total number of hotel rooms Dittman (1995); Anderson et al. Product （2000 ）; Tsaur (2001); Sun and Lu (2005a) Property asset Total property asset ：Johnson and Total property value Financial resources Ball (1989) Number of employees ：Morey and Total number of hotel staff Human resource Dittman (1995); Anderson et al. （2000 ）; Tsaur (2001) Number of local chains ：Wang et Every year the number of local al.(2006); Yan and Lu (2006) chains Image and Internationalized ：Yesawich Internationalized=1 if firms Class and scale reputation (1988); Vinitia (2000) participate in internationalized systems, otherwise=0 Hotel class ：Vinitia (2000) Chain=5 if firms are classified into five-star class, otherwise=4 Transportation convenience ：Lewis The distance between the hotel to and Chambers (1989); Barsky and MRT station Labagh (1992); Roger (1998); Sun The distance between the hotel to External Communication and Lu (2005b); Yan and Lu (2006) Train station environment distance The distance between the hotel to High-speed rail station The distance between the hotel to Airport

Evaluation Methods of Tourism Competitiveness Hsu and Chen (2002) analyzed the images of 11 ITHs in Taiwan area based on questionnaires interview method and the questionnaires were originally designed to collect the views of 62 local travel agents that services ITHs. In their study, the fewer number (62) of respondents hindered the shape of overall image and are unable standard (Gooroochurn and Sugiyarto, 2005). The questionnaire interviews have an advantage in addressing characteristic issues but the data is easily subjective and biased. Chang and Hwang’s (2006) used GRA and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methods with the secondary data to rank the performance of ITHs in Taiwan. They selected 6 indices associated with management performance, such as room department performance, catering department performance, profitability, production value, sales and investment from the Taiwan Tourism Bureau. However, the empirical results were limited on performance and unable to provide insight on the overall competitiveness of ITHs. This paper follows Dwyer et al. (2000) and Gooroochurn and Sugiyarto (2005)’s rationale and adopts the secondary data compiled by the Tourism Bureau that could be extended to all ITHs in Taiwan. We summarize the key literatures in Table 2.

Table 2: Competitiveness Measurement of the ITHs in Taiwan Units and data Paper Method Inputs Outputs Competitiveness source Chang DEA & GRA 54 Taiwan Average production value per Room Management and (secondary) hotels, room department performance Hwang operation performance (2006) analysis report Average catering production Catering of international value per square meter in the department tourist hotels in catering division performance Taiwan Before tax ratio of accounting Profitability profits to total revenue Average production value per Production employee value

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Units and data Paper Method Inputs Outputs Competitiveness source Average occupation rate of room Sales Pre-tax investment return rate Investment Hsu and Factor 11 Taiwan Facilities image, environment Scale image Chen analysis, hotels, image (2002) stepwise questionnaires Service image, profession image, Function regression interview price image, marketing image, image Corporate image analysis trust image (primary) Brand image, management Operating image, mission image, society image image

METHOD AND PROCEDURE

Research Design The framework of this paper is showed in figure 1. The CFA is applied to carry out the significant indicators and themes. Then, we adopt the GRA under the acceptable goodness-of-fit to compute the rankings of the hotels competitiveness.

Hotel competitiveness monitor

Management Property asset Class and scale Communication performance distance Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) Average Total property Number of chain Distance (hotels,

production value asset, number of hotels, class level train stations) per employee, employees, Distance (hotels, total revenue, number of rooms airport) market share, average daily rate

Grey relational analysis (GRA) IThs Competitiveness ranking Figure 1: The Framework of This Paper

Data Collection and Description There are two groups of hotels in Taiwan, international tourist hotels and ordinary tourist hotels. The international tourist hotels almost are four-star and five-star and the ordinary tourist hotels are three-star. Since the data of ordinary tourist hotels are not available, this paper does not include the ordinary tourist hotels. All available information was updated to 2007 in the operation analysis report of ITHs (Taiwan Tourism Bureau, 2009) and information of the communication distance theme was obtained from URMAP (Http://www.urmap.com.tw; March 10, 2007). The sample is with ITHs (58), rooms (17294) , total revenue of 1092 million USD, average market share rate (0.017), average daily rate of 99 USD, average production value per employee of 0.06 million USD, employee ( 18078) and property asset of 5463 million USD.

Goodness-of-Fit Index Test This study applies CFA to perform the test of Goodness-of-Fit Index (GFI) on the model that consists of 4 main themes to measure 22 indicators. According to Jöreskog and Sörbom (1984), variables with high residual values or low

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factor loadings after standardization were removed. As a result, 4 main themes and 11 indicators were remained as test of goodness-of-fit results for these indicators are significant. These 11 indicators include the management performance theme ( β =0.902, p <0.000, weight = 0.457, including return on sales, average production value per employee, average daily rate, market share), property asset theme (β =0.785, p <0.000 weight 0.398, including total property asset, number of employees, number of rooms), scale and class theme (β =-0.117, p <0.009 weight =0.059, including number of chain hotels, class level) and communication distance theme (β =-0.169, p <0.000, weight = 0.086 , including train station, airport). P-value of the χ2/d.f. is 0.071 which does not reach significant level. However, GFI index reaches at 0.997 and non-normed fit index (NNFI) or Tucker Lewis Index (TFI) also reaches at 0.983. The results of goodness-of-fit test show that the overall model fit is good.

Data Procedure The GRA analysis is based on a synthetic measure about the similarity of developing trend to measure the relationship between factors. The GRA required a small amount of information and the ranking did not have specific statistical distribution that the calculation was simple and focused on determining the ranking order (Tzeng and Hu, 1996). There are five steps involved in the forming of grey correlation degree: Step 1 ：：：Find the maximum value and minimum value from the original sequence. Step 2 : Generation of the grey correlation is followed by (a) larger-the-better: the larger the desired objective the better, such as the index of total revenue in this paper: )0( − )0( xi (k) min xi (k) x* (k) = all i , x )0( (k) denotes the normalised coefficient for hotel (0), variable (i) and i )0( − )0( i max xi (k) min xi (k) all i all i theme (k); (b) Smaller-the-better: the smaller the desired objective the better, such as the indicator of train station . )0( − )0( max xi (k) xi (k) x* (k) = all i , i )0( − )0( max xi (k) min xi (k) all i all i Then, we find the maximum value from those above coefficients and the maximum value is equal to 1. ∆ = − Step 3 : Calculate the absolute value between x0 (k) and xi (k) : 0i (k) x0 (k) xi (k) . Step 4 : Calculate the grey relational correlation. ∈ ∈ Let X be the factor set, x0 X 0 be the reference set, and xi X i the comparative sequence. Then, the grey relational correlation coefficient of x0 (k), xi (k) will be represented by (Deng, 1989): x ( k ) − x ( k ) + ζ x ( k ) − x ( k ) min min 0 i max max 0 j r 0 ()x ( k ), x ( k ) = j k j k ， k 0 i − + ζ − x 0 ( k ) x i ( k ) max max x 0 ( k ) x j ( k ) j k Specifically, ζ (distinguishing coefficient) ∈[ ,0 ∞] generally has the value of [ 1,0 ]. The smaller the ζ , then the distinguishing ability is higher (generally smaller than 0.5). ∆ = ∆ = − min min min 0i (k) min min x0 xk ∀j∈i ∀k ∀j∈i ∀k ∆ = ∆ = − max max max 0i (k) max max x0 xk ∀j∈i ∀k ∀j∈i ∀k The major function of distinguishing coefficient ζ is to adjust the comparison relationship between background value and measured value. Step5 : Calculate grey relational correlation rank. Multiple grey relational correlation coefficients with the weight yields grey relational correlation. The definition of grey relational correlation could be extended as follows: n 0 ( ) 1 ( ()()) r , = ω k r k , k k x i x j ∑ x i x j n k k =1

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0 Where r ( , ) is the hotel (0)’s theme composite index k, nK is the number of variables in theme k k x i x j and ω is the normalized weight of theme K. This study’s formula for calculating weight is β and K w = k k β ∑ k n ω = .A ranking of ITHs’ competitiveness could be conducted according to the size of the grey relational ∑ k 1 k =1 correlations. The processes of computing are listed in Table 3 as an example for the property asset theme.

Table 3: An Example for Computing the Rank of Property Asset Theme Step 1 Original sequence Grand Hyatt Grand Formosa Sheraton Howard Grand Hi-Lai max min Taipei Regent Taipei Taipei Plaza Hotel Hotel Property asset 303.28 107.51 59.8 245.08 1056.95 1056.95 59.8 Total rooms 873 569 686 606 436 873 436 Employees 912 739 858 812 734 912 734 Step 2 Coefficient after grey correlation generation Property asset 0.244 0.048 0.000 0.186 1.000 max =1 Total rooms 1.000 0.304 0.572 0.389 0.000

Employees 1.000 0.028 0.697 0.438 0.000 Step 3 Calculating the absolute value Property asset 0.756 0.952 1.000 0.814 0.000 ∆ = − Total rooms 0.000 0.696 0.428 0.611 1.000 0i (k) x0 (k) xi (k) Employees 0.000 0.972 0.303 0.562 1.000 Step 4 Grey relational correlation Property asset 0.398 0.344 0.333 0.380 1.000 Total rooms 1.000 0.418 0.539 0.450 0.333 ζ =0.5 Employees 1.000 0.340 0.622 0.471 0.333 Step 5 Calculating grey relational correlation and rank Property asset 0.158 0.137 0.133 0.151 0.398 Total rooms 0.398 0.166 0.214 0.179 0.133 Employees 0.398 0.135 0.248 0.187 0.133 W k =0.398 Total 0.954 0.439 0.595 0.518 0.663 Rank 1.000 5.000 3.000 4.000 2.000

RESULTS

Overview We list among the top and bottom 5 in terms of overall competitiveness in Table 4. The top 5 ITHs are located in the commercial districts of cities of northern Taiwan except for Grand Hi-Lai Hotel in southern Taiwan. Most of the top 5 hotels with the business-type and member of international chain are competitive. As most of these hotels have been listed in the bottom 5 which were founded in the 1970s, outdated equipments and non-chain operated. The bottom hotels do not have the advantage of being a member of a domestic or international chain, such as sharing of market information, centralized reservation system, advertising and promotion, as well as brand reputation. Compared to these historically-rich ITHs, new hotels own famous brand, new equipments, updated market information and advanced management. The new hotels attract lots of tourists which reduces the sales of old hotels.

Table 4: Results of the Ranked Top 5 and Bottom 5 Hotels Top 5 Bottom 5 (1)Grand Hyatt Taipei, (2) Grand Formosa Regent (1) Emperor Hotel, (2) Hibiscus Resort, (3) Overview Taipei, (3) Sheraton Taipei, (4) Grand Hi-Lai Astar Hotel, (4) The Grand Hotel, (5) Hotel, (5) Far Eastern Plaza Hotel Taipei Marshal Hotel

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(1) Grand Hyatt Taipei, (2)Grand Formosa Regent (1) Emperor Hotel, (2) Hibiscus Resort, Management Taipei, (3) Sheraton Taipei, (4) Far Eastern Plaza (3) Astar Hotel, (4) Taoyuan Hotel, (5) performance Hotel Taipei, (5) The Westin Taipei Marshal Hotel (1) Grand Hyatt Taipei, (2)Hi-Lai Hotel, (3) (1) Hotel Landis China Yangmingshan, (2) Property asset Sheraton Taipei, (4)Howard Plaza Hotel, (5) Emperor Hotel, (3) Astar Hotel, (4) The Grand Formosa Regent Taipei Grand Hotel, (5) Gloria Prince Hotel (1)Howard Plaza Hotel, (1) Howard Plaza Hotel (1) EmperorHotel, (2) San Want Hotel, (2) , (1) Howard Plaza Hotel , (1) San Tos Hotel, (2) Hotel Riverview Taipei, Howard Beach Resort Kenting, (1) Hotel Royal (2) Han Hsien International Hotel, (2) Plaza Class and scale Taipei, (1) Hotel Royal Chihpen, (1) Hotel Royal International Hotel, (2) Marshal Hotel, (2) , (1) Hotel Royal Chiao-Hsi Chinatrust Hotel Hualien, (2) Astar Hotel, (2) Taoyuan Hotel, (2) Hotel Tainan (1) The Westin Taipei, (2)Brother Hotel, (3) (1) Howard Beach Resort Kenting, (2) Communication Tainan Hotel, (4) Hotel Royal Taipei, (5) Grand Caesar park Hotel Kenting, (3) Lalu Sun distance Formosa Regent Taipei Moon Lake, (4) Hibiscus Resort, (5) Grand Formosa Taroko Note: 1.The rank order is in the bracket. 2. The ranks of hotels in class and scale theme do not show evident difference and we list limited the top 1and bottom 1 and 2 hotels.

Management Performance Theme The top 5 hotels’ average income shows an upward trend. It is possible for this that consumers judge the quality of an international tourist hotel by the price of product. Also, the major business customers who demand better higher quality are with higher income bracket and less sensitive to prices. The weight of management performance themes (0.457) is the highest that means this performance theme is the most influential factor in the model. The average daily rate of the top 5 is relatively high by servicing comprehensive software, fine equipments, and distinguished objective customers strategies. Most less competitiveness ITHs in management performance are located outside of Taipei with relatively low sales. The bottom 5 hotels also show negative pre-tax rate of investment returns. Comprehensive software and novel equipments are important influential factors of ITHs (Hsu and Chen, 2002). It is an example for Emperor Hotel founded in 1975 with easy to reach but outdated equipment which demonstrates a fallen ranking.

Property Asset Theme The property asset theme is the second highest weight (0.398). ITHs with 300 rooms or more show evidence that confirms the advantage of ITHs to expand their size (for example, 873 rooms in Grand Hyatt Taipei, 436 rooms in Grand Hi-Lai Hotel, 686 rooms in Sheraton Taipei, 606 rooms in Howard Plaza Hotel, 569 rooms in Grand Formosa Regent Taipei). Among the hotels list in the top 5, even the number of employees keeps decreasing, the number of employees is still higher than the number of rooms for maintaining service quality. Those hotels with higher number of rooms and employees attend management efficiency. The rooms of bottom 5 are between 100 and 300 (for example, 50 rooms in Hotel Landis China Yangmingshan, 97 rooms in Emperor Hotel, 168 rooms in Astar Hotel, 107 rooms in The Grand Hotel, 220 rooms in Gloria Prince Hotel ). The number of employees is lower than the number of rooms. The employee/room ratio of resorts should be 1.5, city-type hotel 1.2, and business-type hotel at least 0.6 for competing with the rival hotels (Tzan, 1992). The less competitive hotels exhibit a low employee/room ratio.

Communication Distance Theme The weight of communication distance theme is low (0.086) but significant strongly (p<0.000). Consumers choose the preferred hotels by considering the transportation service. Those bottom 5 ITHs are mostly located in scenic areas where is not available to be reached.

Class and Scale Theme The chain-managed ITHs performs better in overall efficiency and scale efficiency themes than non-chain ITHs (Chen and Huang, 2001; Wang et al., 2004). Hotels in a chain can share market information, reservation system, advertising, promotion, group capital and standard operating procedures and thus decrease the operating cost.

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DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

Our findings match the conclusions of Hsu and Chen (2002) which the hotel reputation and location are important factors of a hotel’s overall business image. Meanwhile, in contrast to Chang and Hwang (2006), this paper draws the same result that hotels management performance is the most important factor that can be referred to competitiveness. However, we further find more other factors, such as property asset, communication distance, class and scale, location and reputation those are the elements of hotels competitiveness monitor. Those less competitive hotels should replace outdated equipments. The higher ratio of employee/room enhances service quality and boost competitiveness, while the associated cost could be reflected by raising daily rates. Meanwhile, that can also boost hotel sales by raising the daily rate. Hotels with a poor long-term performance could consider to join into the chain system and reenter into the market with a new brand. By joining chains, ITHs can take advantage of the professional management system to elevate reputation, service quality and competitiveness. At the same time, the hotel share with other members under the same brand, reservation system as well as advertising cost. Empirical results also show that ITHs located in the northern region are more competitive. Similar to southern Taiwan’s Grand Hi-Lai Hotel, all of these hotels are business-type hotels located in commercial districts. The location and transportation environment are important competitive factors that should be emphasized.

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