Local and International Trends in Hospitality and Gastronomy

Conclusions

In the hospitality sector where the majority of companies are SMEs, one possible way to become more competitive is to follow an imitation strategy (Ding and Chung 2014). The owners of KönyvBár & Restaurant, however, have decided on a distinctively different strategy, and have become successful thanks to the creativity and personal commitment of all involved in this venture: factors that would be rather difficult to reproduce by competitors (Rátz 2017). Since its opening in 2015, the restaurant has undergone a number of changes: improved interior design, less frequently changing literary menus, a shift towards fine dining with consequently increasing price level and higher proportion of foreign guests. Its position as a specific and well-defined niche in the otherwise increasingly saturated Budapest restaurant market has been consolidated. Considering the four identified success factors, the company’s future success is mainly dependent on the quality of its employees, both in the kitchen and in the restaurant: since the creativity manifested
in the literary theme mainly acts as a pull factor attracting first-time customers, repeat visits can only be generated by consistently high food and service quality.

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