Benefits of networking for small hospitality businesses :|the case of Istanbul’s Sultanahmet area

Abstract

Considering its contribution to economy through tourism revenues and employment, tourism is among the important industries in Turkey. However, the industry has faced serious problems in recent years due to the political and economic fluctuations in the country. During this period, a large number of small and medium sized hotels (SMHEs) have faced difficulties in sustaining their operations due to this fluctuations and, unfortunately, some had to cease their operations. Considering all these difficulties faced by small hotels, this study is undertaken to understand how they deal with these problems and use networking in running their operations and the perceived benefits of their networking activities. Thus, networking structure of these small hotels; frequency and purpose of their formal and informal networks and the benefits, if any, of networking activity are investigated in this study. Istanbul Sultanahmet area is selected as the context of the empirical study. Data is collected during the period April 27, 2019 - July 17 2019 using a questionnaire administered to owner/managers of 71 small hotels and four in-depth interviews with four owner/managers. Results indicate that although hotel owner/managers state the difficulties that they face in reaching resources, such as human resources and guests; the formal and informal networks that they utilize for gaining access to the resources remain insufficient in solving their problems. Rather than formal and informal networks of owner/managers, the results suggest the need for establishing specificpurpose networking platforms that involve relevant stakeholders.