Demian Hodari

École hôtelière de Lausanne

Hotel feasibility studies play an important role in the hotel development process as hotel developers, lenders, and operators all require an analysis of a hotel’s projected operating performance and the ensuing financial returns. Such studies are rarely effective, however, at predicting future performance. Although scholars and practitioners have r...

Decision-making autonomy is often seen as a beneficial way to improve the operating performance of firms, but according to agency theory, principals may want to reduce agents’ autonomy to ensure that they act in the best interest of their firm’s owners or top executives. While hotels once tended to be owned and managed by the same individual, the i...

Hotel owners and managers are increasingly outsourcing their spas to specialist firms that oversee the spa's operations and personnel. In such spas the assume the role of boundary spanners as they are responsible for overseeing the operational relationship between the hotel and spa companies. In this role, they are responsible for trying to satisfy...

Using the hedonic pricing method, we study more than 400 hotel transactions in the United Kingdom between 2000 and 2015 to determine the impact of brands on hotel market values. We initially find that hotel brands are negatively associated with hotel values in our sample. However, after controlling for endogeneity, we find that brand affiliation pr...

The supply of soft brands is expected to grow as the industry has continued to see new soft brand launches by major hotel companies. But because the number of properties branded as soft brands is still relatively low, previous studies have not specifically isolated them in order to determine their possible benefits. This research attempts to fill t...

This study examines the degree to which hotel owners influence the operation of their hotels in both single- and multiple-agency scenarios. Key findings from a survey of 499 general managers are that: (1) owners influence financial property-level decisions to a greater extent than operational property-level decisions; (2) owners of independently op...

A principal-agent relationship exists between hotel owners and the management companies which often operate their hotels. In addition, they both act as principals to a mutual agent, the hotel's General Manager, who is tasked with trying to achieve each parties' objectives. Extensive research on hotel management agreements which govern the owner-ope...

Hotel owners have two fundamental concerns: the financial operating performance of their asset and its selling price. While they often contract a hotel management company to operate the hotel through a lease or management agreement, common industry perception holds that such encumbrance decreases the sales price of hotel real estate assets. This im...

This chapter examines the management contract and the key components that shape its success as an entry mode. Management contracts are increasingly popular among owners because they can gain ready access to the operational expertise required to operate a hotel without any need for operational responsibility. Alternatively, hotel chains find managem...

With the implementtion of the asset light strategy and the development of chains, most of the properties that a hotel corporation manages are, today, owned by other entities. In this setting, the partnership that hotel corporations establish with hotel owners becomes an essential element of their successful expansion. For that purpose, hotel chains...

Strategy tools are a common element of tourism and hotel management courses, journal articles and textbooks. In this paper we explore why practitioners do not find tools useful and hence reject their use as a strategy practice. Drawing on a cross-case analysis of qualitative data from three hotel companies, key findings suggest that strategy tools...

Max Sinclair had been the General Manager of his father Abraham's hotel, the Argentina Suites, in Buenos Aires, Argentina for nearly two years. Prior to his arrival, the hotel was very poorly managed by several of his cousins, who were more concerned with their own self-interest than operating a profitable business. During his tenure Max implemente...

In the late 1980s, and Argentine physician purchased an uncompleted apartment building in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He converted the property into a 160-room hotel, employed his children as managers, and various family members as department heads. The owner oversaw the hotel from his San Francisco, California home and visited the property approximat...