An analysis of how government support, entrepreneurship, service innovation, and e-readiness affect a Thai SME hotel's competitive advantage

Essential elements of economic development are small and medium enterprises (SMEs) which are considered the primary mechanism for enhancing income and employment of countries around the world. In Thailand, most hotels function within the spectrum as SMEs, which therefore are a crucial element in providing a memorable experience to Thailand's 40 million foreign visitors and domestic Thai tourists. Therefore, the authors undertook a study of the opinions of 280 SME hotel owners, managers, and advisors to investigate their opinions concerning their hotel's competitive advantage (CA). LISREL 9.1 was used to analyse the owners and managers opinions on how a Thai SME hotel's CA was affected by government support (GS), entrepreneurship (EN), service innovation (SI), and electronic e-readiness (e- RE). Results from the five-province sample revealed that all the causal variables positively influenced CA, as the combined variance of influence was 77% (R²). Also, from the study's eight SEM hypotheses results, the factors most relevant to a Thai hotel entrepreneur's CA when ranked in importance were SI, e-RE, EN, and GS. Finally, SI was determined to ne most essential to a hotel entrepreneur's CA, which included the manifest variables product innovation, process innovation, and marketing innovation.