Tourism

Benchmarking is one of the most common business features in the modern days thereby many definitions have been proposed by the researchers. Recently it has been observed that awareness regarding this business necessity has been increasing but still there are many ambiguities. Benchmarking is often thought of as comparative comparison studies which is in fact a part of benchmarking. This paper will overview any previous studies conducted on benchmarking along with its advantages and disadvantages, its growth and barriers especially in cases of small businesses as small hotels. In the final section of the paper, a set of strategies will be proposed that can help implementing benchmarking in small businesses.

Introduction
Recently it has been observed by Motwani, and Sower, (2006) that there are many businesses that face difficulties in implementing benchmark processes and reason have been given. Most importantly, these reasons are associated with the size of business. It has been observed that larger businesses have started implementing benchmarking realizing the fact that it offers many competitive advantages. It has been argued by Zhu, (2008) that bigger businesses are more aware of the quality control mechanisms thereby implementing the methodologies of benchmarking is easy as compared to smaller business. Many researches including Francis, and Humphreys, (2005) have indicated small business being unable to implement benchmarking as an indicator of performance measurement. Small business  in case of implementation of benchmarking have realized that many barriers are associated with its implementations and these include cost of implementation, lack of time and proper resources along with one of the most important issues, lack of proper knowledge.

Dudden, (2007) argued that small and bigger business have realized an importance of benchmarking but it has been argued in addition that along with some key barriers there are some key advantages that can be gained by implementing benchmarking. Some of these advantages include understating the main needs and demands of customers and pooling a collection of innovative ideas that can help in increasing customer base in the market. this paper will highlight that for smaller businesses, benchmarking has been considered as a complex task, implementation of whish is rather complex and costly but it can be more advantageous than anticipated and it will be highlighted in case of smaller hotels.

It has been mentioned by Wber, (2002) that since 1970s, concept of benchmarking has gained more popularity in business. In the case of largest business, it has been observed that benchmarking has been a part of total quality management. Largest business on a global scale are more aware of the advantages of benchmarking but it has been observed that  benchmarking is generally avoided to be implemented in many business because of cost and time related  issues. Christopherson. (2009) argues that larger business can gain advantages while implementing benchmarking but in the case of small businesses face difficulties in implementing behchmarking as it is seen to be harder to bring up newer ideas integrate higher levels of innovation in the small businesses as compared to larger business.

Literature Review
Pyo, (2002) argues that Japanese are known to be the fathers of benchmarking, as previous Japanese businesses are known to send out their managers to other companies in order to learn about successful and practical business practices.

Many researchers including Wireman, (2004) have identified the importance of benchmarking for hospitality industry as hotels and there is an extensive literature available in which benchmarking has been considered important for hotels. Research has highlighted an importance of implementation of benchmarking in microstructure hospitality business realizing the fact that there has been a limited use of benchmarking in small-scaled hospitality businesses. Benchmarking is one of most important business practices and it has been observed to penetrate many small-scale businesses because of rapid growth. Extensive research has proved that benchmarking is not being implemented in most of the small businesses and main reason is an information and knowledge gap in these businesses. Sadgrove, (2005) has argued that small business managers are in a need to realize the barriers being faced thereby helping in implementing benchmarking. Spendolini, (2005) argues that although many small businesses are still seen to be unaware of advantages of benchmarking but there are many small-scale hotels who have worked on an implementation of benchmarking realizing that benchmarking has most important roles to play in hotel quality. Different researchers have argued benchmarking in relation to different levels of discounting found in different companies.

It has been mentioned by Zhu, (2008) that for a successful implementation of benchmarking in small hospitality industries, a kind of managerial tool has been designed which is known as the strategic planning index or marketing planning index. These two managerial level tools are known to help in better marketing or strategy planning that can be more helpful in the implementation of benchmarking process. It has been mentioned by Pizam, and Holcomb (2008) that hotel managers in UK realizing three important aspects of hotel management have implemented these managerial strategies, and these include adaptability, effectiveness and efficiency. Benchmarking has been applied in small hotels in UK realizing the fact that the customer base can be increased by the implementations of benchmarking with an increase in effectiveness. It has been mentioned by Scott, and Laws, (2006) that three ratios measure effectiveness, occupancy percentage, average room rate and sales of rooms on an average.  These ratios also include measurement of efficiency measurement by rate of return on investments and margins of profits, adaptability in case of newer services given by the hotel management or products along with recorded percentage of sales of newer products and services offered by the hotels. It has been argued by Matias, Nijkamp, and Neto, (2007) that many studies have observed that performance is one of the most important measures in small hotel business after implementation of strategic planning index or marketing planning index. Another factor that has been given an importance is adaptability that can enhance performances of these businesses by increasing chances of survival in competitive markets along with an increased advantage on performance.

It has been additionally argued by Guilding, (2002) that important roles are played by benchmarking in case of an increase in the quality of business processes. It has been seen that many studies of benchmarking are related to accommodation sectors. Benchmarking methodologies have been applied to tourism in order to measure regional tourism management along with an increase in efficiency in hotel business.

Berman, and Evans, (2001) argue that small hotel managers have problems in the absence of benchmarking to measure competitiveness, efficiencies and effectiveness. In this case there are two basic questions that need to be answered and realized. Firstly, these managers are in a need to realize the factors that create competitive advantages and because of the reason of not realizing an importance of these advantages on the hotel efficiency and effectiveness, wring strategies are designed by these managers. Chase, (2006) argues that measurement of competitive advantage is the most important part and for this, hotel managers are in a need to explore for more reliable tools to enhance competitive advantages.

Methodology
In order to conduct a research on the level of implementation of benchmarking in smaller hotels, following research questions were highlighted.

Research questions
Following is a list of research questions that are to be analyzed in this paper.

An analysis of formal and informal levels of benchmarking in smaller hotels is needed in order to measure the
performance and efficiency in these hotels.

Approaches and practices that are under process to be bench marked are in a need to be analyzed.
All hotels on the global scale are linked with a certain level of corporate culture that makes benchmarking more important for implementation  there here the main question is the link and effect of this corporate culture with benchmarking practices in these hotels.

Every hotel, especially the small hotels have a strategic orientation and in some ways these orientations highly effect the benchmarking strategies of these business and these levels are to be analyzed.

Importance of strategies of managers in regards to implementation of benchmarking along with strategies that highlight the importance and implementation of quality in relation to benchmarking is analyzed.

Strategies related to implementation of benchmarking emphasize on the fact that use of benchmarking in smaller hotels is more important than realized.

These strategies include a comparison of benchmarking standards is in need to be compared with international small hotels.

Data Sources
These four questions are highly important to be analyzed on the level of small hotels thereby data was collected from 100 small hotels serving the customers for more than a decade. This sampling excluded those hotels that recently started working.

For an analysis of these research questions and in order to collect data from sampled small hotels, the technique of four-wave mail questionnaire survey was used. Questionnaire was mailed to managers and owners of small as well as medium hotels. Hotels included in sampling were small hotels composed of 5 to 50 rooms and medium hotels composed of 50 to 200 rooms. Thereby on the basis of accommodations, small hotels provide lesser than 50 units of accommodation.  This criterion was also based on the definitions of small companies given by accounts law and trade laws. Three basic criterions have been given that define small companies and these companies are required not to exceed any of these definitions.
Annual income before balances should be around US16 million.

After all balances and loss of deductions this amount should total to US 8 million on an average.
As an important part of the methodology, it is important that respondents are properly informed about purpose of this study thereby consent of all respondents was gathered and they were briefly informed about the research. In addition to this, it was made clear that all information shared by them will be kept anonymous and confidential.

Collection of Data
Out of a 100 hotels, 50 small hotels responded to the questionnaire thereby providing a response rate of 50 and this percentage accounts for adjustments after any returns of questionnaires along with refusals. Questionnaire highlighted important issues related to benchmarking.

Analysis Of Results
From the survey conducted by the help of questionnaire, and after analysis there are many findings that need highlighting. The questions included in the questionnaire were based on inquiring small hotel managers about quality standards in terms of benchmarking and competitiveness being followed. These questions were about acquisition of a quality certification from ISO or HACCP quality standard certification and its links with the concept of competitiveness.

The questionnaires were mailed to a 100 small hotels and only 50 responses were received thereby there was an overall 50 response rate.  These 50 managers belonged to the small hotels having 5- 50 rooms and average earning per year was around US 6 million. The responses gathered from this questionnaire is such that managers indicated that rate of occupancy in their hotels was low, maximum 4 people and minimum 2 inhabitants per room. Another important question that was a key question related to the acquisition of quality  based certification and almost as high as 67 of teh managers responded in negative as they did not have any idea about the importance of these certifications.

Results from the questionnaire showed that only 28 of the managers and employees in these small hotels compare themselves with small hotels on a global scale, including domestic as well as foreign competitors. A large percentage of these small hotel owners, 50 of these do not consider comparison as an important factor. As high as 89 of the managers responded by saying that competitiveness is Improving hotel environment to attract customers thereby they were unaware of marketing strategies and quality standards being important identifiers.

Managers were asked to respond as to which was more important for the betterment and more customer base of the hotel quality control or managerial strategies to control infrastructures. In this case 78 of the managers responded by including quality control as being more important and only 22 highlighted an importance of infrastructures. When asked about awareness of relationship between competitiveness and quality certifications, 80 of the small hotel managers were unaware of such relationship.

Comparison markers between different hotels was an important questions and managers were asked about the comparing markers that were set by them for comparison with better earning hotels and almost as high as 90 of the managers compared indoors and customer dealing while a small percentage compared other hotels marketing strategies. 98 of the small hotel managers were unaware of the importance of quality control policies to be included in their strategies. One of the most important finding in this case was a high level of unawareness in case of benchmarking and its implementation in managerial strategies.

Discussion
For small hotels, other than interiors and marketing, important comparison markers should room prices, quality based certification, strategies for earning more, increasing customer base and arrangements of rooms along with flat rate comparisons. Results indicate that these markers are not considered as important for business and there is lesser awareness in these managers in case of these comparisons. It has been argued that in order to analyze benchmarking in qualitative and quantitative manner there is a need to take into consideration a set of factors that include structure of profits, losses, incomes and expenditures and mangers in these smaller hotels are less aware of importance of benchmarking for an improvement and success in business.

From the results it has been seen that quality has not gained too much attention as it should. In hospitality industry, a term known as special quality has been used. This term is defined based on entrepreneurs of the hotels along with the services provided. Special quality is measured in terms of contents, devices, services being provided to the customers.

In terms of quality implementation in these hotels it has been seen that small hotels in united sates do not qualify for HACCP standards as these managers are mostly unaware of such certifications and its relation with the business. In this case it  has been seen that most of the small hotel deal with quality related issues by themselves and these account for 93 of the hotels while a smaller percentage of these hotels use external consultancy services to increase and manage quality related issues. Although it is clear that managerial aims of these hotels include quality as an important highlighting factor but results clearly indicate that implications of these aims are only declarative.

Conclusion
In the modern business world, most important role is played by competitive advantage as it has an important role in economy shaping in developed countries as well as in developing countries. It has been realized that small hospitality industries are the basis of development, increase in export and economical improvement in most of the countries.  In this case importance has been given to the hotels including small hotels that can adapt in highly competitive markets having an ability to search for better solutions in order to increase competitiveness. In this paper smaller hotels in united states have been studied and these hotels still have not adapted to the monitoring, quality maintenance and quality assurance standards that are accepted worldwide.  Thereby it has been realized that benchmarking is important in increasing competitiveness and quality in small hotels.