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This study explores the role of international tour operators as the agents assuming the governance and the upgrading of the tourism global value chains (TGVCs), with a special focus on their influence on the development of technological capabilities (TCs) in the hotel industry.

The data used in this article originates from a survey carried out in 2016 on Spanish small and medium-sized hotel companies. An ordinal regression analysis is employed to test the hypotheses proposed in this research.

This study finds that tour operators exert a positive effect on the technological upgrading process in the hotel industry by stimulating small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to invest in TCs. The causal mechanisms through which these effects take place differ across the various stages of the relationship between hotel companies and tour operators.

The results have implications both for hotel management in terms of how hotels take advantage of technological upgrading to become more competitive, and for public administrations in terms of what measures can boost the development of hotel TCs in order to increase their added value.

To date, very few studies have analysed the tourism sector based on the influence on the development of TCs of SME hotels by combining GVC concepts and the resource-based view. It is also the first time that the causal mechanisms are shown to explain such influences.