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SUMMARY This paper discusses the importance of innovation as a key component of business strategy in tourism, as well as determinants of innovation processes in the small and medium sized hotel industry in alpine tourism destinations of Europe. Initially, the paper delivers a literature overview on innovations as prerequisites for competitive advantages. Furthermore, the authors shed more light on the measurement of innovation in the tourism industry. The empirical study has been carried out in alpine tourism destinations focusing on the assessment of innovation activities in small and medium sized (SMEs) hotels. Diverse functional areas of hotels have been analysed and the results show rather low degrees of innovation in all areas of the hotel value chain.
Pikkemaat et al. (Wed,) studied this question.