Management accounting practices in the Greek hospitality industry

Abstract

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to report the level of adoption and the benefits derived from traditional and contemporary management accounting practices in the Greek hospitality industry. Design/methodology/approach-An empirical survey via questionnaires was conducted on a sample of 85 leading hotels in Greece. Descriptive statistics on the adoption level, the relative benefits and future emphasis of individual practices provide the basis for discussion. Findings-The adoption rates for many recently developed practices were very satisfactory. Overall, traditional management accounting techniques (e.g. budgeting practices, profitability measures, product profitability analysis, customer profitability analysis absorption costing, and nonfinancial measures for performance evaluation) were found to be more widely adopted than recently developed tools. It is concluded that traditional management accounting is very much alive and well. Many hotels intended to place greater emphasis on more recently developed techniques in the future, particularly activity based costing techniques (activity based costing, activity based budgeting, and activity based management), balanced scorecard and benchmarking. Research limitations/implications-The study, examined a large array of items since, as with all surveys, it is possible that respondents may have misinterpreted some elements. Second, the findings of this study should be interpreted bearing in mind that the survey included the largest Greek hotels and not the general population of hotel enterprises. Finally, this research was limited to the Greek hotel sector. Originality/value-The survey provides a unique detailed examination of the management accounting practices and an indication of future trends.

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“…Moreover, studies conducted in Arab counties confirm the same conclusion (Rababa'h (2014); McLellan and Moustafa (2013)) Furthermore, Pavlatos and Paggios (2009) concluded that traditional absorption costing and variable costing are the most used cost accounting practices.…”

The Impact of Strategic Management Accounting and Cost Structure on ABC Systems in Hotels

“…Α possible reason for this is that larger organizations have relatively greater access to resources to experiment with the introduction of more sophisticated accounting systems. Pavlatos and Paggios (2009b) report similar results in the hospitality industry.…”

“…Tai interviewed a range of industry personnel in order to identify the reasons for this and found that, although there was considerable knowledge of the theory of ABC, there was a low understanding of how it might be used in hotels (Burgess and Bryant, 2001). Despite the aforementioned results, Pavlatos and Paggios (2009b;2009c) found that Activity Based Costing diffusion in the hospitality industry in Greece is considered very satisfactory. Pavlatos and Paggios (2009c) found that ABC systems in hospitality industry are not excessively detailed, as they include a small number of cost drivers and calculate the cost of a rather small number of activities, such as housekeeping, check in/out, reservation, food production/service, marketing and general administration.…”

“…Moreover, Pavlatos and Paggios (2009b) found that hotels which have adopted some new developed management accounting practices face a higher percentage of indirect cost, higher sales revenue, and higher price competition than those that have not adopt them. Anderson (1995), Bjornenak (1997), Innes andMitchell (1995), Al-Omiri and Drury (2007) and Krumwiede (1998) noted that organizations that face more competition tend to adopt ABC.…”

The Contingency Factors Affecting Management Accounting in Czech Companies

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