from HotelNewsNow (July 10, 2015)

Now is the time to gain a competitive advantage, because soon it will be time to draft your 2016 business plans and budgets. Will you be ready?  

The classic model of competitive advantage is Michael Porter’s five forces shown below. This is still a useful model for the hotel industry.

The most interesting part of this in 2015 is the “substitute” portion of the grid.

This is what Airbnb is all about and it will have had a huge impact on our industry by the time most people wake up to it.

According to Porter, “the existence of products outside of the realm of the common product boundaries increases the propensity of customers to switch to alternatives.” –

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