THE INTERNATIONALIZATION STRATEGIES OF SMEs: THE CASE OF THE SLOVENIAN HOTEL INDUSTRY

Abstract

The paper presents the theoretical background to internationalization strategies for the case of the hotel industry. However, although the hotel industry’s internationalization has already been analyzed, the paper presents a rare example of its application to small and medium-sized hotel firms. In order to reveal the distinctive internationalization development strategies of SMEs we propose a framework for analyzing and understanding the four main internationalization dimensions: operation, market, product, and time. The characteristics of the proposed dimensions were analyzed by examining four Slovenian small and medium-sized hotel firms. Our findings imply that internationalization is a necessary step for small and medium-sized hotel firms, but each hotel company should find the proper combination of all four dimensions that matches the resources available to it