Navigating Location Decisions in the Service Industry: A Focus on the Tourism Sector

Abstract

Despite the abundance of literature on manufacturing location decision-making and selection, there appears to be a significant deficit in research pertaining to service location, particularly within the tourism industry. Given the critical role that location selection plays in the feasibility and development of tourism, this paper endeavors to provide guidelines for positioning tourism sectors. It does so by focusing on service location factors, the process of making location decisions, and by analyzing two examples of locational choices in the hotel and restaurant industries. Key findings suggest that identifying factors influencing location decisions is a sequential process; in the service industry, volume and revenue are paramount factors; and the significance of location factors varies across different service and tourism sectors. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.