Purpose

Portugal has been experiencing a continuous growth in tourism activity, with hospitality industry as one of the main tourism sectors. Therefore, the assessment of hotel companies’ performance is very important to assist decision processes. The purpose of this paper is to assess the financial performance (FP) of 570 hotel companies operating hotel units in Portugal in 2017. To explore the question of brand affiliation, a comparison was made between hotel companies with similar stars rating and market orientation. In addition, this paper intends to fill a gap in literature studying the Portuguese reality on the subject of brand affiliation.

Design/methodology/approach

The present study uses a methodology based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess the overall performance for each company, which further decomposed into the within-group performance and the technological gap. The performance of the hotel company is assessed through the aggregation of multiple financial indicators using the composite indicator (CI) derived from the DEA model. A bivariate analysis based on the Tobit regression to test the robustness of brand effect on FP of hotel companies (HC) was also included.

Findings

The empirical results show that branded companies, on average, have significantly better overall FP than non-branded companies. On the one hand, the brand effect tends to improve the within-group FP of HCs and the brand presents a statistically significant positive effect on the FP. On the other hand, the best practices are observed in both branded and non-branded companies.

Practical implications

The results of this study illustrate that, globally, the better FP of the branded companies is because of their individual relative companies’ performance and a better model of operation given by the brand effect. Brand affiliation will generally allow for a better FP and essentially a better profitability for invested equity, a higher return on sales and a higher value added per employee.

Originality/value

The study provides important theoretical and practical contributions that can assist the strategic decision of the HCs in choosing to operate independently or to adopt brand affiliation. Also, it is innovative because the FP of branded and non-branded HCs is measured not using a set of individual financial ratios but through a single CI that aggregates those financial ratios, using a DEA model.

中文翻译：

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品牌和非品牌酒店公司的财务绩效评估。葡萄牙案分析

目的

葡萄牙的旅游活动一直在持续增长，酒店业是主要的旅游部门之一。因此，对酒店公司业绩的评估对于辅助决策过程非常重要。本文的目的是评估 2017 年在葡萄牙经营酒店单位的 570 家酒店公司的财务绩效 (FP)。为了探讨品牌隶属关系的问题，对星级和市场定位相似的酒店公司进行了比较。此外，本文旨在填补有关品牌隶属关系主题的葡萄牙现实研究文献的空白。

设计/方法/方法

本研究使用基于数据包络分析（DEA）的方法来评估每家公司的整体绩效，并进一步分解为集团内绩效和技术差距。酒店公司的业绩是通过使用源自 DEA 模型的综合指标 (CI) 汇总多个财务指标来评估的。还包括基于 Tobit 回归的双变量分析，以测试品牌效应对酒店公司 (HC) FP 的稳健性。

发现

实证结果表明，平均而言，品牌公司的整体 FP 明显优于非品牌公司。一方面，品牌效应倾向于提高HCs的组内FP，并且品牌对FP具有统计上显着的正向影响。另一方面，在品牌公司和非品牌公司中都观察到了最佳实践。

实际影响

这项研究的结果表明，在全球范围内，品牌公司的 FP 更好是因为它们各自的相关公司的表现以及品牌效应给出的更好的运营模式。品牌隶属关系通常会带来更好的 FP 和实质上更好的投资股权盈利能力、更高的销售回报和更高的每位员工附加值。

原创性/价值

该研究提供了重要的理论和实践贡献，可以帮助HCs选择独立运营或采用品牌隶属关系的战略决策。此外，它是创新的，因为品牌和非品牌 HC 的 FP 不是使用一组单独的财务比率，而是通过使用 DEA 模型汇总这些财务比率的单个 CI 来衡量的。