An evaluation on the internationalization of accommadation enterprises: Antalya sample

In the study, the internationalization process, method and the factors which affected the selection of that method were evaluated.The aim of this descriptive study is to determine the basic characteristics of the accommodation enterprises, to present the ways which they followed during internationalization process, i.e., whether they followed the steps of traditional internationalization theories or they were born global.The population of the study was composed of four and five star hotels and holiday villages located in Antalya and their senior managers. In the study, the questionnaire, which was developed through literature, was used. The number of target enterprises located in Antalya was 310 in June 2008, which was the starting date of survey. 82 enterprises were selected as the sample. The obtained data were presented by descriptive tables, the basic characteristics of the enterprises and the demographical and occupational information of senior managers were given by frequencies and percentages. Also, t-test or ANOVA analyses were conducted according to the independent variables, and the error level was taken as 5%.Some basic characteristics of the enterprises like the place and date of their incorporation, the date they first started to host foreign visitors, the number of the foreign markets they sold to, the sizes of those enterprises, and the degree that they adapted their services according to their customer profile, and whether their senior managers received education abroad or not, those managers' time of experience, knowledge level of foreign languages, and perceptions about their enterprises' inner and outer environment, the network the enterprises belonged to and foreign markets were surveyed. According to the obtained data, whether the enterprises were born global or not were evaluated by determining the enterprises' internationalization behaviour, and which characteristics of the enterprises and their senior managers affected this internationalization method were also evaluated. Also, results of the study were compared with related literature, and the impact of those results to related literature and importance of them for government and decision makers were emphasized. For the future studies, increasing the number of studies about the research subject by taking different samples according to the location of establishments and the network which they belong to was recommended.