Culture and creativity in the hotel industry

Academics’ have always had an interest in creativity, although the literature on this subject began to develop once the rate of progress in science, technology and other fields started to increase. Currently, it is generally considered that the countries with a less creative population will fail to be competitive at an international level. This principle can easily be applied in the business environment, where creativity is needed in order to innovate and to gain competitive advantage. The paper focuses on creativity in a specific economic sector: the hotel industry, aiming at highlighting the way this extremely needed ability is influenced by cultural values. As a result, the paper presents the influence of three of Hofstede’s sociocultural values (individualism, power distance and long term orientation) on employees’ creativity in the Romanian hotel industry.