The impact of knowledge sharing on Hotel Industry effectiveness in UK Literature review

The impact of knowledge sharing on Hotel Industry effectiveness in UK - Literature review Example This, in turn, can have positive implications for London hotels, restaurants and the tour operators and increase their overall profitability. However, the number of hotels keeps increasing and the competition becomes tougher as the market share gets divided among a large number of players, which decreases profitability of individual hotels. From the current trend, it transpires that the hospitality market shows a mixed response and factors such as region and sector do exercise a crucial influence in determining the trends in profits. Similarly, the profitability in certain regions and sectors may be reflecting the impacts of certain temporary phenomenon such as some major events and the consequent surge in tourist flow rather than a sustainable change in market structure. On the other hand, the advent of computer and internet technologies has facilitated an environment where hotels have access to about â€Å"1000 times more data than a decade ago† and hotels can make use of it for furthering their business (Toedt 2013:15). In a market condition, which remains uncertain and volatile due to its dependence on a variety of variants, companies have to look for appropriate strategies to cushion the risks and set off possible failures in the market. Thus, they have to integrate all possible management concepts in their day to day functioning to ensure their smooth operation and optimizing their potential in the marketplace. This becomes especially relevant in the case of companies in the hospitality and hotel industries because of their unique characteristics that make them susceptible to seasonal fluctuations apart from conditions that apply to other industries. Similarly, some of the major management concepts that are being integrated to other industries are not being implemented in hospitality industry. A good example of this is Knowledge Management (KM), which emerged in the recent years as a management concept to enable companies to attain optimum efficien cy and â€Å"sustainable advantage† over their competitors (Isa et al 2008:103). Hotels need to explicitly manage their â€Å"intellectual capital† by incorporating knowledge management principles into their day to day functioning (103). With the advancement in information and communication technologies, major changes have occurred in all spheres of management, to stay compatible to the ever evolving technologies and to update employees with the emerging innovations. Similarly, there is an imperative requirement for employees engaged in the hospitality industry to keep themselves abreast of the latest developments in technology and other fields so that they can understand the effects of such changes in different â€Å"elements of business† and easily adapt to the changes occurring the society around them (Carina Antonia Hallin & Einar Marnburg 2007). Christensen (2003) argues that in the recent years, knowledge has become the significant component of business op erations to achieve as well as â€Å"sustain competitive advantages† (2). He defines knowledge management as process that involves several â€Å"mechanisms and structures† necessary to handle knowledge as well as understanding various aspects and stakeholders of such knowledge that one pursues (3). In the backdrop of a dramatic