The Impact of ESG Factors in the Credit Assessment of Tourism Enterprises: A Possible Perspective for Customer Relationships
Abstract:
Tourism is a significant economic sector in Italy, accounting for 13.2% of national GDP. It had been steadily rising since 2014, averaging 2.1% per year and 1.7% since 2009. In contrast, the Covid-19 epidemic had a severe impact in the first five months of 2020, resulting in a 63% drop in hotel overnight stays compared to the same period in 2019. Despite developing global competition, Italy nevertheless draws traveler flows, persever ing with the tremendous trend and selling employment and neighborhood development. As there is a diversity of services in the tourism sector, we concentrated on the hotel industry, which includes companies that are homogenous in production and competitive setting. The hotel management theory highlights the complexity of managing diverse activities within a hotel, such as accommodation, food and beverage, and laundry, while si multaneously providing customer service. Hotel managers often face criticism for taking on multiple roles, and problems with underperforming hotel restaurants are attributed to the differing core competencies required in hotels and restaurants. Outsourcing is seen as a solution to manage this diversity problem. Firm performance is affected by both external and internal factors. External influences include industry and market competition, whereas internal elements include daily operational decisions and resource allocation. Performance in ser vice organizations is measured not just by financial statistics but also by intangible elements such as human resources, quality, image, and brand awareness. In the hotel industry, performance indicators are measured by both financial outcomes and non-financial indicators. There has been a shift towards more integrated per formance measurement systems that combine financial and non-financial indicators. This shift highlights the indirect link between performance and customer satisfaction and quality; the same link, most directly, we can f ind in EBA-LOM Guidelines, concerning especially the ESG factors. Indicators such as average occupancy rate, total operating revenues, and average output value per employee can be used to assess hotel industry success. In the hotel sector, performance is investigated by looking at the links between performance and both external and internal factors. This study focuses on the performance determinants in the hotel business and gives empirical data on the role of performance factors. The purpose of this study is to look into the link between performance and its economic-financial drivers in the Italian hotel business and in the difficult of the banking system, facing the importance more and more relevant of the ESG’s factors, in investigating the firm creditworthiness.
