Proceeding from the challenges and the fierce global competition that have emerged in today's business environment especially in the hotel industry, it was bound to shed light on the subject of strategic management that can be perceived as an issue of great importance for the management of profit and non-profit organizations equally. On the other side, fivestar hotels play crucial role in supporting the tourism industry and the investment in Egypt. Therefore, current study aimed at exploring the scope of application of strategic management practices in five-star hotels in Egypt. Simple random sampling technique was employed to select the sample from the target population and accordingly 48 five-star hotels were surveyed from Sharm El-Sheikh, Cairo and Hurghada cities. The results of the study showed that most of the five-star hotels in Egypt apply the principles of strategic management in its different stages. The results also showed that external barriers have the greatest negative impact on the implementation process, in contrast to internal barriers that have limited impact. The results also showed that most of the strategic management tools are applied in surveyed hotels. Finally, the results have proved that hotel chains are more in line with strategic management principles and more widely used for strategic management tools than independent hotels.

In view of the role of strategic management, the current study aims to identify the impact of three elements of strategic management on innovation practices in the hotel industry. Through applying stratified random sampling techniques, data was collected from 77 hotel managers via a structured questionnaire, and the hypothesized relationships were tested using SPSS software . Results emphasized that each element of strategic management namely; strategy formulation, strategy implementation and strategy evaluation has a positive and significant impact on innovation practices. Despite the relevant findings, there is a future need for more in-depth research on the impacts of strategic management on innovation and how barriers can be overcome within this industry. Indeed, such findings contribute in providing implications for hotel seniors and middle-level managers and recommend them to formulate and implement and evaluate strategies effectively at corporate level in order to gain high levels of innovation that keeping their hotels competitive.