Hotel Chain Performance: A Gravity-DEA Approach

Generally speaking, competitiveness is a comparative concept of the ability and performance of a firm, sub-sector or country to sell and supply goods and/or services in a given market. At an operational level, instead, competitiveness is viewed in terms of the size of the market share secured by the firm, sub-sector or country considered. Moreover, in an operational context, while identifying that efficiency is a vital factor in competitive markets, it should also be acknowledged that it is, by itself, an insufficient determinant of competitiveness. Indeed, while competitiveness has more to do with “pursuing the correct strategy” towards the conservation and/or increase of the market share, operational efficiency is mainly a measure of how well the firm, sub-sector or country under study processes inputs to achieve its outputs, as compared to its maximum potential for doing so as represented by its production possibility frontier.