Effect of Innovation, Knowledge Sharing and Trust Culture on Hotels' SMEs Growth in Eswatini

Abstract

Innovation, knowledge sharing and trust culture contribute significantly to hotel small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the leisure and hospitality industry. However, most SMEs are family-owned, and staff cannot explore and contribute to business growth. This article describes the effect of innovation, knowledge sharing, shared value and trust culture on hotel SMEs growth in Eswatini (former Swaziland). The study used a mixed explanatory method where data collection and quantitative analysis occurred first, and followed by qualitative research. Overall the results revealed that innovation shared based, knowledge sharing, and trust culture have an impact on small and medium hotels growth in Eswatini. The in-depth follow-up interview provided reasons for these effects. The study's empirical findings also suggest that the innovations, knowledge sharing and trust culture contribute to the growth of the hotel small and medium sector in Eswatini. The implications of the findings in this study for the growth of this sector are that the sector should develop policies and strategies that would enhance growth in the business. The limitation of the study was that it only focused only on purposefully selected small and medium entrepreneur’s hotel establishments in Eswatini. The study contributes to empirical studies on the hotel and tourism SMEs sector in developing countries.

Keywords

• innovation
• shared value
• knowledge sharing
• trust culture
• smes growth