In recent years, academics have shown great interest in studying innovation.
However, research of innovation in the hospitality industry is still in its beginnings.
Taking this into consideration, after describing innovation in general, the paper presents
the main findings on the typology of hospitality innovation, focusing afterwards on the
determinants of innovation in hotel organizations. Furthermore, after presenting the
importance of innovation-customer relationship, the theoretical framework ends with
considerations on technology in the hospitality industry. Given these guidelines, the
purpose of the paper is to measure the role of innovation and creativity in the decision
to purchase services provided by organizations in the hotel industry. To this aim, a
survey was conducted using an online questionnaire distributed to Romanian hotel
customers. The pilot study, with 105 respondents, indicates that innovation is one of the
factors determining the purchase of hotel services, for the population preferring
standardized establishments. Although the study indicates that creativity and innovation
in hotel services is important for hotel customer’s satisfaction, the respondents are only
somehow willing to pay higher accommodation fees in order to benefit of creative and
innovative services. Several conclusions have been drawn.