100% of regional hospitality companies say innovation is very important to their growth

The survey, which was commissioned by Leaders Present, the organizer of the upcoming Management Innovation Forum, reflects the opinions of over 200 business leaders and key decision makers from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

The survey found that 80% of the hospitality and 60% of healthcare companies that rank innovation as important have an Innovation Officer or department, and they have implemented an innovation solution or program within the last two years.

Throughout the survey, it was evident that innovation was widely seen by hospitality and healthcare companies as an important mechanism that can add value to a company's products or services and improve brand value. On the contrary, training agencies (20%), financial services (13%), IT (10%) and manufacturing companies (14%) were almost equally agreed that innovation is not as important for their growth as other factors.

"The importance of innovation as the key driver of sustained success has been well documented in the hospitality literature," said Purva Hassomal, the Conference Director.

"Investing in innovation and having a skilled workforce in the hospitality sector is vital to maintain a sustainable economy, especially for the UAE and Dubai in particular which is emerging as a major tourism destination targeting 170 million visitors by 2020."

The hospitality sector in the Gulf region is witnessing a notable growth, according to recent study, the region is investing around Dhs110bn ($30bn) in more than 120 new multiple hotel projects across the Arabian Gulf and Egypt. The study shows the United Arab Emirates clearly leading the way in the region with 66 hotel projects, followed by Saudi Arabia (17), Oman (13), Qatar (10), Egypt (7) and Bahrain (7).

The hospitality industry is continuously forced to look for ways of improving quality and reputation, cutting costs, and increasing sales and profits. Adding to these challenges is fierce competition among hotel organizations and changes in customer needs. In order to stay ahead of competition, the only approach the hospitality sector is left with is innovation.

According to Aubrey Ghose Founder and Chief Executive of AIS BrandLab, the leading branding company all businesses from hospitality to banking, fashion to food stores are taking a real shift towards Innovation. This is mainly because we live in a world where everything is available to everyone, all the time. Therefore, businesses are leaning on Innovation to differentiate themselves from their competition, build market share and to increase their profitability.

"However businesses here should understand that Innovation is not only about products, services and design, but it's about changing the culture of your business and driving it forward to deliver tangible benefits to people's lives," Ghose added.

Interestingly, the survey, which covered a wide cross section of industries with 46% from service industries and 54% from primary industries, has also found out that allocating research and development budget is more likely to produce innovation than to allocate time for employees to come up with ideas. The respondents however believe the other way.

Over half (58%) of the companies surveyed, said they encourage a culture of business innovation by allocating employee time for informal idea generation, while (53%) of the respondents said that their company allocated a budget to research fledgling ideas.

The Management Innovation Forum 2008 will be held between June 22nd and 25th at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel in Dubai. The event is sponsored by Etisalat and AIS BrandLab.