This article has discussed service
innovation including characteristics of service
innovation and sources of innovation in the
multinational hotel groups. Innovation in the
multinational hotel groups is often small and
incremental. Due to customers’ expectation and
needs, service offerings cannot be too alien to
customers. New services and processes tend to
be gradually improved. Innovation in the three
cases is a customer-driven one. The multinational
hotel groups innovate with an aim to produce
and deliver new value to customer. Therefore,
customers’ comments or ideas are vital to
generate innovation that satisfy cusotmers. As
the front-line staff directly interact with customers,
they know customers’ needs, expectations or
problems. Solutions or suggestions from the
front-line staff help generating innovation in the
multinational hotel groups. The cases also show
that new ideas, services and processes come
from several actors in the multinational hotel
groups. However, HQs and General Manager in
affiliated hotels play a decisive role to finalise
innovations, mostly, based on a scope of a brand
standard. With a bottom-up and top-down
process, the organisation of innovation activities
can be called a dual form.