Outsourcing in terms of hotels business activities and its impacts on the financial performance

ABSTRACTDoctoral ThesisOutsourcing in Terms of Hotels Business Activities and Its Impacts on the FinancialPerformanceOsman Nuri ÖZDOĞANDokuz Eylul UniversityInstitute of Social SciencesDepartment of Tourism ManagementIncreasing competition due to globalization has forced the companies to be more consciousand to use scarce resources in a more productive way. In order to meet the conditions ofcompetition, many modern management approaches such as total quality management,benchmarking, organizational learning and reengineering are applied. Outsourcing is a popularstrategic management approach which is preferred by companies which apply these modernmanagement approaches.Today, increasing competition has negative managerial and financial impacts on hotelindustry. Lodging enterprises, whose profit margins used to be much higher in the past, haveharder time to reach these profit margins today. In order to compete within the severecompetition conditions and to protect their profitability, they have to focus on their costs andsales productivity. In this respect, hotel owners and managers benefit from outsourcingapplications to reach their managerial objectives such as gaining a comparative advantagewithin the severe competition, using hotel?s resources more productively, decreasing costs,gaining flexibility and minimizing the risks.In this study, dimensions of outsourcing applications in hotels and its impacts on theirfinancial performance have been examined. The study constitutes of three parts. First part ofthe study is a literature review and constitutes topics of; outsourcing and terms related withoutsourcing, historical development of outsourcing, its advantages and disadvantages, types,process and application areas of outsourcing and general knowledge on outsourcing. In thesecond part, outsourcing applications in the hotels and hotel business activities and academicstudies on this subject are covered. In the third part, the results of a survey -conducted inMuğla region- on outsourcing in terms of hotel business activities and its impacts on thefinancial performance are evaluated.Key Words: 1) Outsourcing 2) Financial Performance 3) Hotels