The chief executive officers (CEOs) of 96 multisite, U.S.-based hotel owner/operator companies were interviewed and asked to describe the dominant upcoming threats and opportunities they perceived for their segment. Responses converged in describing two major threats (overbuilding and economic downturn) but were far more divergent in descriptions of opportunities. This pattern may emerge from the nature of threats and opportunities, from quirks of information dissemination and processing in the hotel industry, or from systematic biases in the perception of CEOs. Our data provide strong evidence of the impact of segment on threat and opportunity perceptions, as is appropriate to a rational model. Tests of potentially influential factors at the CEO and team levels provided no evidence of bias.
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