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According to O'Keefe (2008), small and medium enterprises in UK are difficulties to growth and explore new markets and that that 99.9% of UK businesses are SMEs which employed around 13.2 million people. Carter and Jones-Evans (2006) define SMEs as a company which employed a maximum of 249 staffs, with a small market share and limited products. For Gilmore et al (2001), the main characteristic of a SME is to have an unconventional marketing because off a limitation of resources. Dept. of Heritage (1998) adds that SMEs are important for the economy of a country (99% of all business in the EU are SMEs) and for the hospitality industry (81% of UK hotels have less than 252 employees). It is crucial to considerate that SMEs must be well managed to keep the economy high and efficient. Lasserre (2003) declares that SMEs have specific interested characteristic that large companies have not such as an adapted management, a flexible structure, a high reactivity and dynamism and finally, an extraordinary potential to innovate. Moreover, Hill (2001) announces that the SMEs in the hospitality industry need to improve their performance and be aware of different techniques to improve them such as strategic planning. Ward and Peppard (2002) acknowledge that strategy planning is a contemporary approach of planning strategies to have competitive advantages on the market place. Formal strategic planning became a strategic tool to achieve goals and objectives and measure achievement and expectation. Pasupathy (2010) affirm that formal strategy planning is not always a help for a company. For him, adopting an informal approach can be better. In fact, formal strategic planning is a systematic approach to planning and the owner/manager can be less stressed to use this methods. But this method not permits the innovation, the benefits can be marginal and the plans are rarely respected. It is clear for White (2004) that planning is important to set objectives, expecting good results and assess the competitiveness of the company. The debate on strategy planning within SMEs is always on the manager mind.

Carter and Jones-Evans (2006) affirm that it is important to define the difference between independent and subsidiary firms. The independent firms are essentially owned by individuals (owner/manager) such as a family business or a small restaurant. These sorts of firms are the majority of SMEs in the hospitality sector. Subsidiary firms are part owner of larger organisation (franchises within hotels, restaurant such as MacDonald's or Prêt a manger). According to Lasserre (2003) independent firms use less strategic planning than subsidiary firms because they have a better capacity to innovate and make investment decisions. Subsidiary firms have less authority to develop a personal strategy planning because they must respect the franchises agreement.

Trapp (2010) affirms that most of the SMEs encounter barriers on the deployment of strategic plan. One of the main barriers analysed by O'Keeffe (2008) is the lack of skills in UK such as low intermediate and technical skill than other countries (France or Germany). To achieve their goals and objectives, SME must be able to retain realistic plan to improve the productivity. According to Pasupathy (2010) this challenge became higher with the growth of India and China economy (50% of young people achieve first degree in STEM instead 25% in UK). For Kielnhofer (2010) the problem here is that most of SMEs employees and managers are not the specific skill to run a business properly. People are generally not professional and manger/owner must spend lot of time and money to provide adapted training or create efficient recruitment and selection system. Getz et al (2004) acknowledges that the major problem for smaller