Ekspansja międzynarodowych systemów i łańcuchów hotelowych do Europy Środkowej i Wschodniej po roku 1989

Abstract

The above analysis may be presented in the form of the following conclusions: – as an integral element of the consolidation of the hotel industry, the expansion of international hotel groups into Central and Eastern Europe is one of the most distinct geographical trends in the worldwide development of hotel groups; – an exceptional character of this expansion results from the specific context of the political and economic transformations in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989; – due to the lack of stabilisation caused by rapid transformations, the slow process of expansion initiated in the 1960s was in the beginning of the 1990s even hampered; in longer terms, however, it was the transformations which through privatisation and internationalisation accelarated the expansion later on; – initial scepticism of foreign investors led to the development of a few relatively strong domestic hotel groups in Central Europe; – two general patterns of expansion may be distinguished: the collective expansion basing on acquiring previously state-owned hotel chains (preferred by groups already present in the Central and Eastern European market e.g. Accor in Hungary) and the organic growth, basing on gradual adding new hotels to portfolio; – spatial patterns of expansion derive directly from two general patterns: whereas acquisitions of previously state-owned hotel enterprises comprise of hotels in both primary and secondary locations, the organic growth usually focuses on primary locations only and targets already developed markets; – both patterns influence the regional development in a different way: whereas the collective expansion fosters regional development through cooperating with local institutions and engaging in the mosaic of local contexts and thus fostering also the globalisation of the hotel sector, the organically growing hotel groups rather separate themselves from local communities and through participating in mere internationalisation, they seem to drift upon the surface of presumably uniform global market thus rather deepening existing unevenness; – the hotel sector is thus just another manifestation of economic unevenness in Europe on each of three levels distinguished; – further extensive research on the influence of the expansion into Central and Eastern Europe on regional development is still required.