Competences and managerial profile: drivers of hotel internationalization

Literature indicates that internationalization is a phenomenon influenced by firm specific and environmental factors. However the international entrepreneurship literature has recently attributed to entrepreneur manager a prominent role in the internationalization decision. In addition to explaining the main internal and external motivational factors that leads to the decision to internationalize and its influence on international marketing strategies this study also proposes to explore the role of the entrepreneurial manager as moderator between the firm´s competencies and the market opportunities. Since the research focuses on understanding and explaining the internationalization process of Portuguese hotel firms a comprehensive multi-case study was applied as a research method. Evidence shows that stimulus responsible for internationalization were mainly competence based within a strong managerial pull component evidencing the appropriateness of resource-based-view and international entrepreneurship fundamentals as most appropriate theories to explain the initiation of international engagement.