Value-creating assets in tourism management: Applying marketing's service-dominant logic in the hotel industry

Value-creating assets are recognised as critical in today's tourism management field. However, empirical research to date has not yet developed a useful conceptual framework for managing and marketing such assets. This paper presents service-dominant logic (S-D Logic) as a framework for advancing our understanding of intangible assets within the hotel industry. The research used S-D Logic to analyse intellectual capital (IC) disclosures of 20 publicly-listed European and US hotels. Results showed hotels acknowledge IC assets; in particular, the value embedded in their brands. However, the hotel companies' disclosures on generic items of Guest and Employees indicate they are overlooking the capacity for value-creation from such IC. This research, which makes a unique contribution by applying S-D Logic to examine hotel IC disclosures, recommends developing more sophisticated constructs for effective management of hotels' intangible assets. Finally, the S-D Logic framework has potential application in other areas of tourism management.

► We use S-D Logic to interpret hotels' intellectual capital disclosures.
► Hotels disclose the intellectual capital embedded in their brands.
► Generic disclosures of Brand, Guest, and Employees overlook latent value-creation.
► We highlight the capacity for co-construction of value within a hotel's network.
► Hotels' IC development depends on value co-construction and relational processes.