Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 (2013) 701 – 710 1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the International Strategic Management Conference. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.541 ScienceDirect 9 th International Strategic Management Conference Architectural innovations are competitive advantage for hotels in tourism industry?: What customers, managers and employees think about it? a b c d a * a,c,d Adnan Menderes University, 09800 Turkey b Akdeniz University, 07400 Turkey Abstract This study aims to find an answer for the question that is whether architectural innovations are supplying an advantage for hotels in tourism sector. So, the study focuses on measuring and comparing the perceptions of tourists, managers and employees about architectural design advantage of tourism hotels. And Granada, a five-stars and 12-months servicing hotel in Alanya destination, was selected as a research hotel because of its interesting and modern architectural design. Also, satisfaction level of tourists and (interior) design was examined in the study. At the end of the survey completed in December 2012, a total of 297 completed questionnaires were returned, 200 (20.3 percent response rate) from 771 customers (tourists) staying at the hotel, and 97 (32.3 percent response rate) from 300 hotel staffs. Research results indicate that customers, employees and managers believe that architectural innovations are advantage in competition for hotels in tourism decorative (interior) design. Furthermore, T-Test results do show that there are statistical differences between the evaluations of hotel staffs and customers with some research items. Keywords: Architectural innovations, Tourism industry, Alanya 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the 9 th International Strategic Management Conference 1. Introduction Innovation has become one of the most important issues for all organizations to acquire new technological capabilities and explore new business process for staying profitable in the long run. Because living in an environment characterized by rapid change, variety of customer requirements and severe competition force the organizations to create innovation that is able to meet customer requirements and introduce new products or processes (Vanhaverbeke competition environment (De Jong and Vermuelen, 2006). Innovation is not only strategic for organizations but also * Corresponding author. Tel. + 90-256-347-7013 fax. +90-256-347-7016 Email address: hdogan@adu.edu.tr Available online at www.sciencedirect.com © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the International Strategic Management Conference. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.