Resumen de The Time of Experience in the Innovation of hotel firm. Customer experience and Systemic Co-Evolution
This paper aims to analyze the integrated management role of time and knowledge factors, in order to help a cultural trend to the firm-environment coevolution which is the assumption to activate enhancing innovative dynamics (Paniccia, 2002). The basic idea is that consistent, therefore successful, delivery services (goods), are primarily the result of and ongoing, complex dialectic firm-environment confrontation. At this point the firm must not only be able to boost the environment but also to provoke changes especially in customers behaviour. These customers then become co-actors in their own value system (Gronroos, 2008). Especially we refer to the hotel SME, prevailing in the italian tourist sector (Rispoli and Tamma, 1991; Touring Club Italia, 2008). These firms represent an important and problematic component in the national economy, especially when related to the current progressive loss of competitiveness within the Italian tourist sector, which would require more adequate answers for a renovation hospitality service.
Such management is seen as a important capabilities required to the hotel firms for a recovery of competitiveness in the global system. This requires above all a sense of tension in the management of the firm.
The analysis is developed from a conceptual base emphasizing the value of historical perspective of time in the recursive setting of firm knowledge, here called time of experience.
In the hotel SME competitiveness, an effective learning, allows the firm to develop its autonomy also in respect of its evolutionary identity within an hospitality principal considering both the social and natural value of its environment. Hence the need to synchronize the firm to the environment variability under pain of anachronistic actions.
The time-knowledge interaction will help to improve both the quality of relations within firms, preserving its systemic unity and integrity (Thompson, 1967; Saraceno, 1978, Golinelli, 2008), and above all, the firm�s osmosis with the social and economic environment, which is true source of value.
Valuable developing courses for a lasting success, are rooted in the ability of rationally planning business processes. In short, firms management need a method so to integrate creativity, rationality, timely and well-timed (Cafferata, 2009).
The appropriateness of this analysis is motivated by the observation of evolutionary dynamics emerging in this sector. This compared to a competitive pressure which is always stronger in terms of both quantity and quality and "globalized." As a result of a positive trend in the national and international demand, the touristic customers is increasing compared to the business one (Touring club, 2008). This kind of tourist is evermore an �élite� tourist not a �mass� one. The tourist has increased sensitivity to cultural issues and expertise of their lives, testing the ability of offer of the hotel firm (Mutch, 1995; Morrison et al., 1999;
Hanaoka and Sakano, 1999; Rayman-Bacchus and Molina, 2001; Rullani, 2007; Cafferata and Cherubini, 2008). Also, to a reduced time of residence there is a proliferation of holiday periods in the year.
This change, unthinkable just a few years ago, concerns the very way of making an hotel firm Wei et al., 2001; Paniccia, Pechlaner and Valeri, 2007b).
Parallely, we may find innovative hotel formulas which assume importante changes in the hotel service production/allocation modality. The epiphenomenon is now representad by the development of the �alberghi diffusi� where an entire village has become an hotel, and further more an �experience context� (Carù, Cova, 2003) where its villagers, peasents and artisans are part of the tourist offer. These are people with whom the guest co-generates specific consumer experiences, enhancing the offer of the firm. This is an Italian phenomenon - still limited - but interesting in relation to competitive dynamics in the hotel sector and to developments in the studies of marketing management on customer experience (Resciniti, 2005).
In respect of such scenario, the most important factor for Italian hotel firms is not only to be able to offer a location, although well structured, where to host undifferentiated tourists. The hotel firm does not need to be homologated or flattened; it requires functional differentiation, personalisation, ability to be a valuable complement and to push the action well beyond the limits of the, indeed important, inner qualities of the estate.
Important management implications derive on both tourism and real estate side, even though stressed recently in Europe. The coevolutionary perspective (Lewin, Long and Carrol, 1999) well fits with this analysis purpose. It also allows to appreciate and evaluate the effects of some relevant sector business convergences regarding the competitiveness of hotel firms (Koza and Lewin, 2001).
Real estate and touristic sectors must have a common goal: the respect for the environment and its exploitation: This, obviously includes the territory that has always been a valuable source for both sectors and for all tourist destinations (Keller and Bieger, 2008; Pechlaner and Weiermairn, 2000).
The paper combines theory and practice with a made in Italy case study, the Sextantio �albergo diffuso�, appreciated throughout the world for its innovative business. This considering the satisfaction of the customer / guest with innovative and organizational solutions of the real estate and touristic matrix to the competitiveness of the firm and touristic Abruzzo destination.
This paper is structured in three parts. First of all, we will define the time-knowledge link, analyzing the coevolutionary potentials and their implications for the hotel SME competitiveness.
We will then analyze the �albergo diffuso� model, epiphenomenon of an evolutionary view of the hotel firm, assessing the fallouts in terms of firm competitiveness and tourist destination. Finally, we will present the Sextantio case study, useful to test the theoretical analysis.
