Improving Hotel Industry Processes Through Crowdsourcing Techniques

Abstract

Innovation plays a critical role in the competitiveness of tourism organisations, especially in an environment which has changed radically as a result of advances in information and communication technologies, which are deeply transforming the tourism industry. Firms are being forced to create new business models and original techniques across their value chains in order to meet these new challenges, improve their results and in some cases, simply survive. One of the newest and most relevant activities being used by organisations is crowdsourcing, an activity defined as taking a specific task and outsourcing it to a large group of people via the internet, through an open call. This technique is particularly popular in marketing and although its development in other company areas is also relevant, few studies, especially in tourism literature, have researched its use for other purposes, such as improving the different processes in the value chain. In this paper, we delve into the concept of crowdsourcing as an element of a new business model. In this vein and after close examination of the previous literature, we analyse relevant examples of crowdsourcing in different firms so as to study and implement it to improve different processes in the hotel industry’s value chain. The results show that crowdsourcing techniques can be used throughout firms, as they are useful in improving the diverse activities of hotels.