Do hotel chains stimulate globalisation?

The paper contributes to the literature on globalisation by empirically investigating the impact of hotel chains' presence in a country on a country's level of globalisation. Hotel chains' presence is modelled by the number of hotels affiliated to hotel chains, the number of rooms in affiliated hotels, the share of affiliated hotels in the total number of hotels, and the share of rooms in affiliated hotels in the total number of rooms in the country, while globalisation is modelled by the composite, economic, social and political globalisation indices. The impact is measured through a set of 16 cross-section regression models with data for 132 countries. The findings show that the presence of hotel chains in a country does not influence a country's level of globalisation, regardless how chains' presence and the level of globalisation are measured. Tourism policy implications, limitations and directions to future research are also discussed.