Dissertação de mestrado, Direcção e Gestão Hoteleira, Escola Superior de Gestão, Hotelaria e Tursimo, Universidade do Algarve, 2014This project involved the creation and real-life evaluation in four hotels, of a functional
prototype of a performance management system specific for the hospitality industry,
with the objective of testing the viability to develop a commercial service.
This system can be defined as a set of dashboards that enable the systematic
monitoring of business information (goals, metrics and indicators - constructed from
multiple data sources) that facilitate management decision-making.
To assert its viability, a three point evaluation criteria was established: (1) that there
were no technical obstacles that could limit the system’s scope or performance; (2)
that users would identify the benefits of using the system; and (3) that quantifiable
improvements could achieved.
The system was designed based on distributing computing and agent architecture
and its development followed the Design Science Research methodology, which also
demonstrated its suitability for management research projects.
With the prototype’s development and its use by four hotels, it was possible to
confirm that no technical aspects would condition the commercial viability of the
system. The same can be said about the users’ perception of the system’s benefits,
as they identified a long list of benefits and situations where the system could be
used with better results than traditional decision making routines.
Although it was possible to verify that three of the participating hotels improved their
operational indicators when compared to the previous year, due to calendar
constraints and the inexistence of benchmarking data sets it was not possible to
produce evidence that those performance improvements could be attributed to the
use of the system.
Globally, these results - complemented by the request of all the participating hotels to
continue to use the prototype and their willingness to pay in the future for a
commercial service that provided the same information as the prototype - confirmed
it’s viability and commercial relevance