Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to analyze the website-declared vision and mission statements of 149 five-star hotels in the largest cities of Turkey, Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir, based on certain criteria. The outcomes of the research indicated that only 24% of the hotels had a mission statement and 21% had a vision statement. Hotels with the least number of statements were those in Istanbul (17%). It was determined that hotels provided highly limited information on the product/market area component in their mission statements (19%). Moreover, it was determined that although hotels fully reflected their basic ideology in vision statements, almost half of them (48%) failed to place an emphasis on the future in their statements.
TopIntroduction
Over years, Turkey presented a highly rapid development in the tourism industry. Turkey was ranked 17th in the world with 13.2 million tourists in 2002, and this figure increased to 39.8 million tourists and Turkey was ranked 6th in 2014. Based on the The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) data, Turkey had 37.6 million foreign tourists in 2017 and was ranked 8th among the world countries that attracted the highest number of international tourists (UNWTO, 2008). The reports of the World Tourism Organization indicate that the development and growth of the tourism in the world and in Turkey continues to increase rapidly and world tourism will become the emerging industry of the future during the beginning of the new century. The significance of accommodation establishments cannot be ignored during the development of tourism. Therefore, accommodation establishments should take strategic management into consideration, in order to adapt themselves to changes in the existing conditions in the tourism industry (Tokgöz, 2012).
Number of accommodation establishments in Turkey is increasing rapidly. According to data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey, in Turkey in the last five years, 27% of the total number of hotels, the number of luxury 5-star accommodation businesses serving the tourism market increased by 23%. This rapid increase has led to an increase in competition among accommodation companies. The strategic management practices of accommodation companies have become compulsory due to the increasing competition environment. In order for the accommodation businesses to carry out the strategic management process in a healthy manner, they must understand the mission and vision concepts and formulate the declarations they will prepare correctly. However, an effective strategy can be developed with such vision and mission statements.
Mission and vision statements are the most commonly used management procedures utilized by managers worldwide (Bart, 1996). There exist more than one reasons to the fact that mission and vision statements are often preferred as a management technique. The first reason is that the mission and vision statements explain simple yet organizational questions (i.e. why do we exist? what is our goal? what do we intend to achieve?). The other function of mission and vision statements is providing a framework or boundary for the formation of the organizational strategy (Thompson & Strickland, 1992). Moreover, these two concepts play an important role in resource allocation decisions that are considered critical for an organization (Iraland & Hitt, 1992).
Research on vision and mission has been made mostly for industrial enterprises (Acuner & Genç, 2008; Ay & Koca, 2012; Doğan, 2000; Eryılmaz & Eryılmaz. 2016; Karabulut, 2007). The studies focusing on the mission and vision statements in tourism industry generally targeted airline companies (Castro & Lohmann, 2014; Kemp & Dwyer, 2003; Orhan et al., 2014), and only a limited number of studies investigated the mission and vision statements of accommodation establishments (Oruç & Zengin, 2015; Şentürk, 2012; Yurtseven, 2003; Yüzbaşıoğlu et al., 2016).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Digital Marketing: It is the marketing process conducted by a corporation in digital media.
Competitive Strategy: A set of strategic decisions that determine how a company would enter the market and compete with its competitors.
Vision Statement: It is the document that indicates the goals that the business plans to achieve as a result of its activities.
Service Marketing Mix Elements: When service providers implement marketing principles, they often organize their marketing plans around the marketing mix. Marketing mix; product, location, price and publicity. When it comes to service marketing, these elements are not enough. Therefore, three more items are added to the service marketing mix. These items include; human-personnel, physical facilities and process management.
World Tourism Organization: The United Nations World Tourism Organization is the organization responsible to promote sustainable and universally accessible tourism and to support the economic development of member countries.
Mission Statement: It is the document that contains the reason d’être of a business, principles and common values to achieve its vision.
Service Industry: It is the industry that includes corporations that earn their revenues by offering intangible products and services.
Strategic Management: It is a set of decisions to take inter-functional decisions that would allow the business to reach its goals, to conduct applications and to assess the outcomes.