Internationalization and financial health in the US hotel industry

Seoki Lee, Yoon Koh, Qu Xiao

Research output: Journal article publicationJournal articleAcademic researchpeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This study examines two main hypotheses regarding the internationalization and financial health of publicly traded US hotels from 1990 to 2010. First, the study hypothesizes that international US hotels are financially healthier than domestic US hotels. The findings support the hypothesis after controlling for other potential confounding factors: a firm's growth opportunity, profitability, size, leverage, capital intensity and economic conditions. Next, the study tests the second hypothesis, that international US hotels face a great challenge in terms of their financial health as they enter foreign markets due to the many unknown factors in such international settings. However, it is expected that the internationalization strategy will gradually provide more benefits as the firm increases its degree of internationalization, and thus that benefits will eventually outweigh costs, leading to a U-shaped relationship. The study's findings support this curvilinear U-shaped relationship within the dataset of internationally operating US hotels.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)87-105
Number of pages19
JournalTourism Economics
Volume20
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Feb 2014

Keywords

  • Financial health
  • Franchising
  • Internationalization
  • US hotel industry

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Geography, Planning and Development
  • Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management

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