INTRODUCTION

The hotel and tourism world has long been known for its high competitiveness. However, the challenges posed by the health situation caused by COVID-19 have posed significant challenges to the viability of hotel companies, prompting a reassessment of the effectiveness of different strategies (^{Hafsa, 2020}; ^{Indrianto et al., 2020}; ^{Jain, 2020}; ^{Villacé-Molinero et al., 2021}). In the context of the Colombian hotel industry, the pandemic caused the tourism sector to experience the most severe crisis ever recorded. In 2020, average occupancy rates plummeted to 6,4% and 50% of hotels were forced to close temporarily or permanently (^{Asociación Hotelera y Turística de Colombia [Cotelco], 2020}). In addition to this complex context, other latent problems have emerged in recent years, such as the unregulated room prices between hotels or the constant competition from digital platforms such as Airbnb, which have caused both large hotel chains and small independent hotels to suffer severe effects on their occupancy levels (^{El Blog Universidad Externado de Colombia, 2015}; ^{Facultad de Administración de Empresas Turísticas y Hoteleras [FAETH ], 2019}; ^{Harvard Real Estate Review, 2019}). Hence, such circumstances lead to the fact that the tactics and strategies that hotels can adopt become highly relevant for their economic and financial sustainability (^{Radut, 2015}; ^{Sarwari et al., 2020}).

Although there is a wide range of strategies applicable to the hotel industry, their implementation is subject to different factors and barriers that entrepreneurs should considered. In this sense, ^{López-Gamero et al. (2011)} warn that the consolidation of a strategy in the hotel sector faces constraints such as environmental legislation, regulatory context, competition, stakeholder pressure, industrial barriers, and uncertainty. This creates a hostile environment, especially for firms that are not properly prepared. Hotels, when operating in highly competitive environments, generally enhance their levels of differentiation and competitiveness compared to those that do not experience constant pressure to improve (^{Imrie & Fyall, 2001}; ^{Leonidou et al., 2013}). Similarly, according to ^{González-Rodríguez et al. (2018)}, despite large fluctuations and seasonality in hotel demand, factors such as differentiation through service innovation stand out as a competitive advantage in competitive hotel conglomerates.

Conversely, while being located in highly competitive clusters can enhance differentiation and innovation, the effectiveness of strategies may vary depending on the classification of the hotel. For instance, if a cluster is dominated by low- to midscale hotels, those with higher standards may be constrained in their pricing strategies. On the other hand, if a lower midscale hotel is located in an area with predominantly upper-midscale hotels, it may benefit from the overall rate increase, even if it does not offer the same level of service (^{Enz et al., 2008}). This uneven and changing context leads to strategies within hotels to differentiate according to their classification level and developed capabilities, with other tactics based on criteria such as demand, secondary services, consumer perception, discounts or upgrades that can represent improvements in performance and revenue management (^{Jönsson & Devonish, 2009}; ^{Jabela et al., 2016}; ^{Bernal et al., 2021}).

In the face of these challenges, hotel operators must adapt their processes to meet the current quality standards, to provide an agile and proactive response to market needs (^{Sánchez-Ollero et al., 2011}; ^{Franco, 2017}). Therefore, these firms are tasked with formulating policies and strategic positions, taking into account the competitive environment in which they operate and the advantages they may have over their competitors (^{Meidan & Lee, 1982}; ^{Basar, 2021}). Moreover, before proposing a strategy in the hotel industry, it is essential to analyze its sustainability in the medium and long term, given the diverse number of stakeholders and the potential impact of the environment on business success (^{Brackett & Carr II, 2015}). In this context, the different functional areas and managers play a pivotal role. Once the strategy aligning with the hotel's objectives is identified, they should coordinate their activities following the same common purpose and anticipating potential changes that could affect them (^{Soriano, 2005}; ^{Forgacs & Dimanche, 2016}). Even if there is no single strategic position at the global level due to the multiple factors involved in the hotel context, the success of the strategy adopted must be based on the correct selection of the segment, the implementation of innovation in services, and the maintenance of high quality in all activities (^{Sila & Ebrahimpour, 2004}; ^{Guo et al., 2013}; ^{Goryushkina et al., 2016}).

The Colombian hotel industry faces ongoing challenges, such as the health crisis, digital disruption, and limited price regulation. Given the diversity of strategic responses, this paper aims to identify and evaluate the most favorable competitive strategies for Colombian hotels post-2020. Specifically, it seeks to determine the optimal approaches to address the COVID-19 pandemic, informal competition from sharing platforms, and unconstrained pricing dynamics. To achieve this objective for the Colombian hotel sector, the study proposes an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) model to assess strategic preferences and performance among a defined set of options.

This paper is divided into five sections. It begins with the introduction of the difficulties of the Colombian hotel sector. The second section explores the literature review concerning the contexts of hotel strategies. Then, the third section provides a detailed description of the methodology employed in the study. Subsequently, the fourth section presents the main findings of the proposed model, comparing them with other references in the field. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of the main contributions of the study, recommendations, and future lines of action on the subject.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

The hospitality industry struggles with constant change to remain competitive. This review examines studies on hotel strategies. First, we explore theoretical frameworks on strategic archetypes for tourism firms and find that combinations of innovation, cost control, differentiation, and focus represent dominant strategic postures. As information technology transforms guest expectations, hotels increasingly adopt omnichannel digital tactics critical to contemporary success factors such as brand interaction and loyalty. Likewise. external shocks also force adaptation, as seen during the severe demand declines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, emerging policy responses to sector informalities, such as price regulation, shape hotel strategic priorities in unique regional contexts.

METHODOLOGICAL PROCEDURE

To achieve the objective set for this research, a descriptive quantitative methodology was used to determine in a precise and comparable manner the proportion of importance of the strategies to be analyzed as well as their effectiveness in the face of certain problems identified in the Colombian hotel industry. Therefore, the methodology is divided into three sections. The first section deals with the definition of the strategies to be measured. Then, the second section explains in detail the sampling process carried out, the characteristics of the participating hotels and the measurement scales used. Finally, the third section explains the steps involved in the methodological application of the multi-criteria method chosen for the study.

Analytic Hierarchy Process

The AHP technique was the main tool for data analysis since it is an appropriate mathematical model widely used in the literature to evaluate problems with multiple alternatives by decomposing them into successive levels according to their degree of importance In this sense, the model created by ^{Saaty (2008)} focuses on establishing a hierarchical order, both at a general and specific level, for the factors and sub-factors constituting a given complex context based on the relative importance that experts assign to them. Thus, the ratings given by the hotels allow the structuring of a paired matrix for each of the general and specific categories where the final proportions are obtained by solving the eigenvalues and eigenvectors proposed by ^{Saaty and Kearns (1985)}. Once these proportions are obtained, the level of consistency of the judgments over the strategies is measured, using a consistency scale between 0 and 1, as proposed by ^{Saaty (2008)} according to the size of each matrix. Finally, as suggested by ^{Forman and Peniwati (1998)}, the results of the hotels selected for the study are grouped using the geometric mean to succinctly gather the criteria considering the wide heterogeneity of the judgments. More specifically, the steps in the application of the AHP model are described below:

The judgments given on the 9-point scale are used to create a paired matrix, whose resolution of eigenvalues and eigenvectors allows to obtain the general and specific proportions of strategies, as shown in Equations [1] and [2].

Once these proportions are obtained, the level of consistency of the judgments that each expert gave to the strategies is measure, using the Consistency Index over Xmax value obtained from matrix and eigenvector solution, Randomness Index according to the size of the matrix being [0.00, 0.00, 0.52, 0.89, 1.11, 1.25, 1.35, 1.40, 1.45] and, finally, Consistency Ratio (CR) to stablish a 0 to 1 scale over matrix of judgments.

Finally, the results of each expert are grouped using the geometric mean to gather the criteria in a concise manner in the face of the wide heterogeneity of the ratings, as shown in Equation [3].

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The results of the AHP model show both the effectiveness and the proportion of the use of competitive strategies to address the weaknesses within the studied sector. In general, intensive (0.3069), generic (0.2244) and defensive (0.2170) strategies show the highest preference in both importance and frequency of use. On the contrary, integration (0.1485) and diversification strategies (0.1033) are reported as the least useful and effective, as depicted in Table 4. In this regard, it could be argued that such a preference stems from the fact that increasing the frequency of regular customers results in reduced costs and increased positive perception of services received by the current market niche (^{Alshourah et al., 2018}). Another revealing finding is how generic strategies provide an advantage for tourism firms with low financial capacity and highly competitive pressure. These firms could offer a distinctive service using differentiation strategies (^{Bordean et al., 2010}; ^{Becerra et al., 2013}; ^{Agyapong & Boamah, 2013}). Similarly, in the case of defensive strategies, they can be very useful in managing crises when there are few alternatives and the hotel is under significant external pressure, as is the case with the current pandemic emergency (^{Bernal et al., 2021}; ^{Villacé-Molinero et al., 2021}).

It is noteworthy to mention that after identifying the general strategies, the AHP analysis emphasizes the specific strategies of each dimension, revealing marked preferences for strategies such as service development-SVD (0.3633), backward integration-BCI (0.5054), liquidation-LQD (0.4199), concentric-CCD (0.4954) and differentiation-DFF (0.6859), as shown in Table 4. These results show how, within the generic strategies, differentiation scores with a superlative level of importance, while other dimensions, such as intensive and defensive, do not present major differences among the set of specific strategies that comprise them. Another notable fact is that the integration strategy BCI was the most relevant in its respective dimension, as it is directly associated with control over suppliers, and could have an impact on the quality of services and the reduction of costs in areas such as food, beverages, external tourist services, transport, and other factors inherent to tourism (^{Sila & Ebrahimpour, 2004}; ^{Auzair, 2011}). Similarly, in defensive strategies, the preferred tactic to face the current situation is liquidation, evidencing the serious situation derived from the pandemic, the low expectations of recovery in the short term and the absence of proposals to mitigate the dire financial impact on the sector.

Following the quantification of the general and specific proportions of the strategies highlighted, it is also possible to highlight from Table 5 the global weightings of the 17 specific strategies proposed for this study. Thus, at the global level, differentiation (0.1539) is consolidated as the preferred strategy to mitigate current challenges, followed by service development (0.1115) and liquidation (0.0911). Conversely, the least valued strategies include divestment (0.0191), conglomerate tactics (0.0240) and cost leadership (0.0262).

These overall results confirm the favoring of differentiation-focused strategies. This can be attributed to the inherent benefits of differentiation in terms of price stability, brand building, authenticity, and improved market position (^{Abrate et al., 2012}; ^{Moro et al., 2018}). Notably, several entrepreneurs, when responding to the questionnaire, claimed to obtain adequate rates of return and retention when offering differentiated services, directly mitigating the effects of poor price regulation and the presence of informal digital platforms, as supported by previous studies by ^{Jabela et al. (2016)} as well as ^{Franco (2017)} who recommended that if the hotel industry wants to deal with such informal platforms, it should concentrate efforts on staff training to ensure that the level of service in hotels generates new experiences for customers, optimizes costs in all tasks, and implements technological tools in the conduct of operations. However, despite these recommendations, none of the respondents reported its implementation in the face of the constraints caused by the COVID-19 crisis.

In the same vein, market development and penetration strategies, pertinent to the dimension of intensive strategies, exhibit preference revealing how the sector focuses on the specialization of its services and quality management as a means to increase the degree of interaction, attraction and retention of customers. However, for this approach to serve as a possible solution for price regulation and informal digital platforms, it must be complemented by efforts to meet consumer expectations. This involves ensuring that opinions and overall service improvements are evident in digital channels, contributing to an increase in external ratings and the number of stars as a symbol of quality and reputation of hotels, as recommended by ^{Goryushkina et al. (2016)} together with ^{Aznar et al. (2018)}. Despite these recommendations, the effectiveness of these strategies in the current health situation could not be confirmed.

Finally, regarding the least preferred strategies, some aspects stand out. Notably, the low proportion of cost leadership is consistent with the preference for differentiation and service development as measures to avoid reducing the profit margin of new customer acquisition, as described by ^{Leonidou et al. (2013)} and ^{Kaliappen and Hilman (2017)}. Strategies related to strategic and conglomerate alliances to mitigate the current juncture are not deemed viable, as evidenced by the low scores that position them among the last 5 global rankings. Once again, the liquidation strategy achieved high relevance in the overall weightings, suggesting that, given the persistence of the economic lags caused by the pandemic, a significant percentage of hotels will be forced to close permanently.

Based on the results obtained from the proposed methodology and the direct perception of the group of experts regarding the usefulness of the strategies to mitigate the challenges of the sector, it can be inferred that the set of strategies within the intensive and generic dimensions would be highly suitable for this purpose. On the other hand, dimensions such as integration and diversification strategies, were perceived as suitable only for certain problems or contexts, not fully applicable at a general level, as shown in Table 6.

In contrast to the aforementioned, even though the effectiveness of applying such tactics was presumed and the experts showed some favor for those framed in the intensive and generic dimension, the entire group of experts unanimously affirmed that, given the restrictions and the almost total closure of the economy, it is not possible to confirm the effectiveness that their real application would have in mitigating the effects of the pandemic.

CONCLUSIONS

In addition to the turbulent dynamics of the hotel sector, the current situation of COVID-19, the informal competition of digital platforms such as Airbnb, and the lack of price regulation in the sector (^{Jabela et al., 2016}; Cotelco, 2020), are factors that collectively threaten the stability and profitability of hotel firms and further validate how the choice of strategies and their proper implementation play a decisive role in the survival of these firms. This study successfully determines, based on the perception of Colombian hoteliers, the preferred and most effective strategies to confront these challenges. To this end, a conceptual framework is constructed, comprising a robust set of competitive strategies and their assessment using the AHP model and their decomposition into successive levels according to proportions of importance.

The general results show a preference for intensive strategies aimed at increasing the purchase frequency of regular customers through the expansion of services and hospitality packages. Differentiation emerges as the most used strategy to mitigate the challenges related to price regulation and informal competition, in line with previous studies (^{Forgacs & Dimanche, 2016}; ^{Franco, 2017}; ^{Aznar et al., 2018}). However, it is also recognized that traditional competitive strategies alone may not be sufficient to address the challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis in the hotel sector (^{Hafsa, 2020}; ^{Indrianto et al., 2020}; ^{Jain, 2020}). Thus, this study contributes by demonstrating the need for a combination of approaches, including hygiene protocols, digital channels, and alternative packaging. From a practical perspective, the findings provide guidance on prioritizing customer loyalty and ancillary services.

Given the similarities with other studies, it is recommended to prioritize development and market penetration strategies, since through the reinvention of operational and commercial activities it will be possible to propose tourism and lodging alternatives to mitigate the current health situation. At the same time, to address the ongoing situation, this study adds to the recommendations of ^{Sarwari et al. (2020)}, which focus on keeping calm and planning each decision in detail regarding the strategy to follow. Additional recommendations include avoiding excessive discounts to attract customers, not restricting marketing budgets, prioritizing digital strategies, and expanding the portfolio of services with activities such as food and beverages, beauty services, spa, transport, training and customized tourism packages. It is recommended for government institutions that pay increased attention to the hotel sector through the formulation of local, departmental, and national policies and strategies. This proactive approach aims to reduce 'hotel mortality' and provides support for the implementation of reactivation strategies within the sector.

While this analysis enriches our understanding of strategy selection in Colombian hotels, it is true that this single-country perspective limits the generalizability of our findings. Some limitations offer opportunities for future research. The analysis extends to different regional contexts within Colombia, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of crisis management strategies across the country. In addition, while the AHP method proved valuable in evaluating hotel strategies, its subjective nature must be considered. The reliance on managers' perceptions could be supplemented with profitability data. Likewise, the use of quantitative methods or a hybrid combination of techniques alongside AHP in future studies could strengthen the objectivity and robustness of our conclusions, especially when assessing the effectiveness of specific strategies against the current hotel crisis. Finally, longitudinal data could show how preferences and COVID-19 impacts change over time.

Overall, this study makes significant theoretical and practical contributions to the hospitality literature and management through the application of multi-criteria modeling. There remains significant potential to build on these findings by addressing limitations through expanded samples, metrics, methods, and continuity of strategic analysis. This will assist the hospitality industry in addressing competitive and diverse event challenges worldwide.