Family Ownership, Asset Levels, and Firm Performance in Western European Hospitality Companies

This article uses a comprehensive sample of companies from 16 Western European countries over the period 2004 and 2016 to examine the relationship between blockholder ownership, asset levels, and corporate performance in the hospitality industry. We find evidence that both family and nonfamily blockholders display a higher use of assets in the lodging industry, but only nonfamily blockholders do so in the food and beverage industry. At the same time, nonfamily blockholders tend to display a poor performance in both industries, while this is only true for the lodging industry in the case of family-owned businesses. Finally, we show that asset levels moderate the observed ownership–performance relationship. Our results hold both for static and dynamic asset measures and taking the global financial crisis into account