6. Corporate, Portfolio and Growth Strategy

Introduction and Context

Strategic management in hospitality is not confined to the performance of an individual hotel, restaurant, resort, or travel business. Large hotel groups must also decide what businesses to own, which markets to enter, how activities across the value chain should be controlled, and when capital should be withdrawn from underperforming or strategically unsuitable operations. These are corporate-level questions. They concern the scope, composition, and direction of the organisation as a whole.

A hotel group may operate economy hotels, luxury resorts, serviced apartments, restaurants, cruise businesses, loyalty platforms, and vacation ownership products. It may manage properties without owning them, franchise its brand internationally, acquire a regional chain, form a joint venture, or sell a business that no longer fits its strategic priorities. Each choice affects risk, capital requirements, brand reputation, organisational complexity, and shareholder value.

Corporate, portfolio, and growth strategy therefore require more than ambitious expansion. They require disciplined assessment of strategic fit, financial attractiveness, organisational capability, stakeholder consequences, and implementation risk. This chapter examines the principal choices available to hospitality corporations and the criteria used to evaluate them.

Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, the reader should be able to:

1. Distinguish business-level strategy from corporate-level, portfolio, and growth strategy.

2. Explain diversification, vertical integration, internationalisation, alliances, mergers, acquisitions, and divestment.

3. Apply portfolio and corporate-parenting frameworks to hospitality businesses.

4. Evaluate growth options using strategic, financial, operational, and risk criteria.

5. Assess the role of synergies, economies of scope, brand architecture, and organisational capability.

6. Identify governance, ethical, regulatory, and implementation issues in corporate expansion.

7. Use analytics and digital technologies to support portfolio and growth decisions.

8. Formulate recommendations for a hotel group facing alternative corporate strategies.

The Corporate Strategy Question: Where Should the Organisation Compete?

Business-level strategy asks how a particular business competes. A luxury hotel, for example, may compete through personalised service, distinctive design, and premium pricing. Corporate strategy asks a different question: in which businesses and geographic markets should the parent organisation participate, and how should those businesses be related?

Corporate strategy creates value when the whole is worth more than the businesses would be worth separately. This can occur through shared distribution systems, a common loyalty programme, purchasing power, managerial expertise, brand reputation, data capabilities, or access to capital. However, corporate ownership can also destroy value when headquarters imposes unnecessary bureaucracy, subsidises weak businesses, creates brand confusion, or pays excessive acquisition premiums.

Three related ideas are important. Scope refers to the range of products, services, value-chain activities, and geographical markets covered by the organisation. Strategic fit describes the degree to which businesses share resources, capabilities, customers, technologies, or channels. Corporate advantage is the additional value created by belonging to the corporate group rather than operating independently.

Growth is not automatically a corporate advantage. A larger hotel group may gain bargaining power and visibility, but it may also experience integration difficulties, cultural conflict, financial strain, and diluted managerial attention. Consequently, growth should be treated as a means of achieving strategic objectives, not as an objective in itself.

Strategic Scope in Hospitality

Concentration and related expansion

A concentrated strategy focuses resources on a relatively narrow set of related activities, such as operating and franchising hotels in selected segments. Concentration can support strong brand expertise, operating consistency, and efficient systems. Its weakness is exposure to a limited demand base, economic cycle, regulatory system, or tourism destination.

Related diversification extends the organisation into activities connected with its existing capabilities. A hotel group might develop serviced residences, boutique properties, conference venues, or vacation rentals. These businesses may share customers, reservation technology, loyalty members, procurement systems, and property-management expertise. Related diversification is generally more defensible when the relationship is based on transferable capabilities rather than superficial similarity.

Unrelated diversification places businesses with limited operational connection under one corporate owner. The rationale may be financial control, risk spreading, or use of surplus capital. It is difficult to justify when headquarters has no distinctive ability to improve the acquired businesses. In hospitality, unrelated diversification may expose management to unfamiliar operating models and regulatory environments.

Vertical integration

Vertical integration involves ownership or control of activities before or after the organisation’s primary stage of production. Backward integration may include ownership of a procurement company, linen operation, food production facility, or technology platform. Forward integration may involve travel distribution, tour operations, transportation, or direct booking channels.

Integration can improve supply reliability, quality control, data access, and bargaining power. It may also reduce dependence on online travel agencies or other intermediaries. Nevertheless, ownership brings fixed costs and managerial responsibilities. An activity should not be internalised merely because it is important; the organisation must be able to perform it more effectively than specialised external providers.

A useful decision compares the total cost of internalisation with market contracting costs. Managers should consider transaction costs, asset specificity, service quality, flexibility, capital requirements, innovation speed, and the risk of supplier or distributor opportunism. Hybrid arrangements—long-term contracts, preferred partnerships, franchising, or joint ventures—may provide many benefits of integration without full ownership.

Portfolio Management: Managing the Collection of Businesses

A corporate portfolio is the set of businesses, brands, properties, and strategic investments controlled by the organisation. Portfolio management allocates capital and managerial attention among these elements. The objective is not simply to retain profitable businesses, but to construct a balanced portfolio that supports long-term value creation.

Portfolio analysis commonly considers market attractiveness and competitive strength. Market attractiveness may include demand growth, margins, barriers to entry, regulatory stability, customer trends, and capital intensity. Competitive strength may include brand equity, location, cost position, service capability, customer loyalty, distribution access, and management quality.

The BCG growth-share matrix classifies businesses according to market growth and relative market share. Although its categories—stars, cash cows, question marks, and dogs—are simplified, the matrix can stimulate discussion about cash generation and investment needs. A mature city hotel with strong occupancy and limited growth may generate cash to fund a developing resort brand. A rapidly growing but weakly positioned digital accommodation business may require investment before its strategic potential can be judged.

The GE/McKinsey matrix provides a more flexible assessment by using multiple indicators of industry attractiveness and business strength. It is especially useful in hospitality because market growth alone does not reveal destination risk, seasonality, asset intensity, or brand compatibility. Portfolio tools should support managerial judgement, not replace it. Numerical scores can create false precision if the underlying assumptions are weak.

A further approach is the parenting advantage framework. It asks whether the corporate parent understands the business, possesses relevant capabilities, and can create more value than alternative owners. A corporate centre may add value through brand management, revenue management, talent development, digital systems, financing, or international relationships. It may destroy value through slow decisions, standardisation that damages local differentiation, or excessive reporting requirements.

Portfolio decisions usually fall into four broad categories:

• invest to build a promising position;
• selectively maintain a business that generates attractive returns;
• restructure or reposition a weak but potentially recoverable operation; and
• harvest or divest when future returns do not justify continued commitment.

The categories are not mechanical prescriptions. A low-growth business may be strategically essential because it protects a brand ecosystem or supplies stable cash flow. Conversely, a high-growth business may be unattractive if it consumes capital without producing adequate returns.

Growth Pathways and the Logic of Expansion

The product-market growth matrix distinguishes market penetration, market development, product development, and diversification.

Market penetration seeks greater share in existing markets with existing offerings. Hotel groups may use loyalty incentives, improved direct booking, revenue-management systems, corporate contracts, or service improvements. The risk is comparatively low, but aggressive discounting can damage brand positioning and profitability.

Market development takes existing brands or services into new geographic or customer markets. A business hotel brand may enter secondary cities, while a resort brand may target new international source markets. Market development requires adaptation to local regulation, culture, labour conditions, distribution systems, and demand patterns.

Product development introduces new offerings to existing customers. Examples include wellness programmes, co-working facilities, long-stay accommodation, culinary experiences, or digital concierge services. Product development can deepen customer relationships but may create operational complexity.

Diversification combines a new offering with a new market. It carries the greatest uncertainty because the organisation must learn both a new customer context and a new operating model. Diversification should be supported by a clear capability advantage, credible demand evidence, and a realistic path to profitability.

Growth can also be organic or acquisitive. Organic growth allows gradual learning and cultural continuity but may be slow and resource intensive. Acquisition provides rapid access to properties, brands, talent, contracts, and markets, but it involves valuation risk and integration challenges. Franchising and management contracts enable asset-light expansion, reducing capital requirements while increasing dependence on partner quality and contractual governance.

Internationalisation and Global Hospitality Strategy

Internationalisation is more than geographical expansion. It involves transferring a business model across institutional, cultural, economic, and competitive environments. A hotel concept successful in one country may fail elsewhere because of different service expectations, labour practices, land regulations, ownership rules, or distribution structures.

Organisations may use exporting of concepts, licensing, franchising, management contracts, joint ventures, strategic alliances, acquisitions, or wholly owned investment. Franchising and management contracts offer relatively low capital exposure. Joint ventures provide local knowledge and legitimacy but require agreement on control, investment, standards, and dispute resolution. Acquisitions provide speed and market access but may inherit hidden liabilities and incompatible systems.

International strategy requires decisions about standardisation and adaptation. Core elements such as brand promise, safety standards, reservation technology, and financial controls may be standardised. Service rituals, menu design, staffing practices, communication styles, and marketing messages may require local adaptation. The challenge is to protect brand consistency without imposing culturally inappropriate practices.

Country analysis should include political and regulatory conditions, currency exposure, taxation, labour availability, infrastructure, tourism demand, competitive intensity, security, and repatriation of profits. Scenario analysis is particularly useful where demand, exchange rates, or regulations are uncertain.

Strategic Alliances, Mergers, and Acquisitions

A strategic alliance is a cooperative arrangement between independent organisations for a defined strategic purpose. Alliances may involve co-branding, distribution, loyalty programme reciprocity, technology sharing, procurement, destination marketing, or joint development. They are attractive when partners possess complementary resources and when full ownership would be costly or unnecessary.

Successful alliances require strategic compatibility, clearly allocated responsibilities, performance measures, information-sharing rules, intellectual-property protection, and exit provisions. Many alliances fail because the partners pursue different objectives, measure success differently, or underestimate the difficulty of coordinating service standards.

A merger combines organisations, while an acquisition gives one organisation control over another. In hospitality, acquisitions may provide access to brands, hotel contracts, loyalty members, geographic coverage, development pipelines, or specialised capabilities. The acquisition case should distinguish between stand-alone value and synergy value. Synergies may arise from cost savings, incremental revenue, improved distribution, better asset utilisation, or reduced duplication. They should be quantified realistically, assigned to responsible managers, and timed according to an implementation plan.

Financial assessment normally includes discounted cash flow analysis, comparable company or transaction multiples, earnings effects, leverage, return on invested capital, and sensitivity analysis. The maximum price should reflect the value of expected cash flows and synergies, not the emotional appeal of a prestigious brand. An acquisition can increase accounting earnings while reducing economic value if the purchase price, integration costs, or risk-adjusted capital requirements are excessive.

Due diligence should examine financial statements, property condition, contracts, franchise obligations, litigation, labour relations, tax exposure, data protection, cybersecurity, environmental liabilities, brand reputation, and the quality of the management pipeline. In hospitality, management and franchise agreements are especially important because their change-of-control provisions may affect the value of the target.

Post-merger integration should address systems, reporting, procurement, brand architecture, talent retention, culture, customer communication, and operating standards. Integration may be absorptive, preserving selected target practices; symbiotic, combining strengths from both organisations; or transformative, replacing the existing model. Speed is valuable in some areas, but premature standardisation can destroy local knowledge and employee commitment.

Divestment, Restructuring, and Exit Decisions

Divestment is the sale or closure of a business, property, brand, or investment. It may be prompted by weak performance, strategic misfit, capital scarcity, regulatory pressure, a change in ownership priorities, or the availability of an attractive sale price. Divestment is not necessarily an admission of failure. It can release capital for stronger opportunities and simplify the portfolio.

Managers should assess whether the asset is better owned by another party, whether performance can be repaired, and whether its strategic contribution exceeds its opportunity cost. Relevant financial measures include cash flow, return on invested capital, residual value, maintenance capital expenditure, debt obligations, and the net proceeds of sale. Strategic considerations include brand coherence, customer relationships, employee effects, destination commitments, and the possibility that the business may become a future competitor.

Common mistakes include selling during a temporary downturn without recovery analysis, retaining an asset because of sunk costs, ignoring separation costs, and communicating the decision poorly. Ethical divestment requires honest disclosure, fair treatment of employees, compliance with contractual commitments, and responsible handling of customer data.

Evaluating Corporate Options: A Decision Framework

A practical evaluation can follow five tests.

First, the strategic fit test asks whether the option supports the organisation’s purpose, brand architecture, capabilities, and competitive position. Second, the industry attractiveness test examines demand, profitability, rivalry, regulation, and long-term structural trends. Third, the capability test asks whether the organisation can manage, finance, integrate, and govern the option. Fourth, the financial test evaluates cash flows, capital expenditure, risk-adjusted returns, valuation, liquidity, and downside exposure. Fifth, the stakeholder and sustainability test considers employees, guests, communities, regulators, investors, suppliers, and environmental consequences.

Options should be compared through scenarios rather than a single forecast. A base case, optimistic case, and stress case can expose sensitivity to occupancy, average daily rate, wage costs, interest rates, exchange rates, construction delays, and integration savings. Real-options thinking is useful where management can stage investment, delay commitment, expand after evidence of demand, or abandon a project if assumptions deteriorate.

The decision should also identify implementation milestones. Examples include achieving a specified level of direct bookings, completing systems integration, retaining key managers, securing regulatory approvals, or reaching a target return on invested capital. These milestones turn strategy into a process of controlled learning.

Digital Tools, Analytics, and AI in Portfolio Strategy

Digital systems increasingly influence corporate decisions. Portfolio dashboards can combine occupancy, average daily rate, revenue per available room, customer acquisition cost, loyalty activity, labour productivity, energy consumption, guest sentiment, and property-level cash flow. Geographic information systems can assess demand corridors, competitor density, transport access, and development opportunities.

Predictive analytics can support demand forecasting, scenario modelling, acquisition screening, and maintenance planning. Machine-learning tools may identify factors associated with guest retention or forecast the effect of pricing and distribution changes. Generative AI can assist with document review, market research synthesis, and integration communication, but its outputs require human validation.

Data governance is essential. Corporate systems must protect personal information, control access, maintain data quality, and comply with applicable privacy laws. Algorithms may reproduce bias in pricing, recruitment, or customer classification. Technology should improve strategic judgement rather than create an illusion of objectivity.

Governance, Ethics, and Risk

Corporate expansion raises governance questions concerning conflicts of interest, executive incentives, related-party transactions, disclosure, and board oversight. Directors should challenge optimistic synergy estimates and ensure that risk is not hidden through excessive leverage or complex off-balance-sheet arrangements.

Hospitality strategy also affects communities and natural resources. Resort development may generate employment and infrastructure but can create pressure on water, housing, land, and local culture. International growth may involve labour-rights risks, corruption exposure, or weak regulatory enforcement. Responsible strategy requires due diligence, transparent standards, grievance mechanisms, and monitoring beyond legal minimums.

Brand acquisitions create reputational risk if the target has poor labour practices, unsafe facilities, misleading marketing, or weak data protection. Corporate parents are increasingly judged not only by their own conduct but also by the conduct of franchisees, suppliers, and investment partners.

Illustrative Case: Meridian Hospitality Group

Background

Meridian Hospitality Group is a fictional regional company operating 42 midscale hotels in three countries. It owns 12 properties and manages or franchises the remainder. Its portfolio is concentrated in business travel and domestic leisure. Meridian has strong operational expertise, a recognised loyalty programme, and moderate debt capacity, but limited experience in luxury resorts and international acquisitions.

Situation

A family-owned resort company offers Meridian a chain of six coastal resorts in a neighbouring country. The resorts have attractive locations and a loyal customer base, but inconsistent service standards, ageing facilities, seasonal demand, and several unresolved environmental compliance issues. At the same time, an online travel platform is offering Meridian a partnership that would improve distribution but would increase commission costs and provide the platform with valuable customer data.

Analysis

The acquisition offers market development, product diversification, and access to a new customer segment. Potential synergies include loyalty integration, central procurement, revenue management, and Meridian’s managerial systems. However, the target requires substantial refurbishment and may expose Meridian to environmental penalties. The acquisition price also assumes rapid growth in international leisure demand.

The distribution partnership offers faster and less capital-intensive growth, but it could increase dependence on an intermediary and weaken direct customer relationships. Vertical integration into a booking platform would be financially unrealistic for Meridian at its current scale.

A scenario analysis indicates that the acquisition produces an acceptable return only if refurbishment costs remain controlled, seasonality is reduced, and management contracts are renegotiated. A stress case involving currency depreciation and delayed renovation creates excessive leverage.

Approach and Strategy

Meridian’s board rejects an immediate full acquisition. It proposes a staged joint venture with an option to acquire additional ownership after two years. The agreement requires an environmental remediation plan, independent asset inspections, transparent capital budgets, performance milestones, and board representation. Meridian will introduce its revenue-management and loyalty systems but retain selected local service practices.

It also accepts a limited distribution partnership, subject to data-sharing provisions, commission ceilings, direct-booking protections, and annual review. Meridian will invest simultaneously in its own mobile booking capability to avoid permanent dependence on the platform.

Outcome

As an illustrative outcome, the staged approach reduces initial capital exposure and allows Meridian to test demand and management compatibility. The acquisition option is exercised only if the resorts meet agreed performance and compliance milestones. The case demonstrates that a strategically attractive opportunity may still require pacing, contractual safeguards, and capability development.

Learning Points

The case highlights five lessons: strategic fit must be distinguished from financial affordability; staged commitment can manage uncertainty; due diligence must include environmental and contractual issues; alliances require data and governance protections; and growth should strengthen organisational capability rather than overwhelm it.

Common Errors and Best Practices

Managers frequently confuse revenue growth with value creation, treat projected synergies as guaranteed, ignore integration costs, underestimate cultural differences, and use portfolio matrices without testing their assumptions. Another common error is expanding through franchising without sufficient franchisee selection, brand enforcement, or support capability.

Best practice involves maintaining a clear corporate parenting logic, linking investment to measurable returns, using independent valuation and due diligence, stress-testing assumptions, protecting brand integrity, and sequencing initiatives according to managerial capacity. Boards should review whether each business has a credible role in the portfolio and whether the corporate centre adds more value than it costs.

Current Developments and Emerging Trends

Asset-light growth remains important as hospitality companies seek scale without owning every property. However, asset-light models increase dependence on franchisees, owners, online platforms, and contract quality. Hospitality groups are also reassessing portfolio resilience in response to climate risk, geopolitical uncertainty, labour shortages, and changing travel patterns.

The boundary between hotels, serviced apartments, co-living, vacation rentals, wellness, and digital travel services is becoming less distinct. This creates opportunities for related diversification but also intensifies competition for customer data and loyalty. Sustainability-linked finance, renewable-energy investment, adaptive reuse of buildings, and technology-enabled personalisation are influencing portfolio decisions. The central strategic challenge remains unchanged: select businesses and relationships in which the organisation can create superior value responsibly.

Chapter Summary

Corporate strategy determines the scope and composition of a hospitality organisation. Portfolio strategy allocates capital and managerial attention among businesses, brands, properties, and markets. Growth may occur through penetration, market development, product development, diversification, franchising, management contracts, alliances, mergers, or acquisitions. Vertical integration can improve control but may increase capital intensity and complexity.

Effective corporate decisions depend on strategic fit, corporate advantage, industry attractiveness, organisational capability, financial returns, risk, and stakeholder consequences. Portfolio matrices provide useful structure but cannot replace judgement. Acquisitions require disciplined valuation, due diligence, synergy analysis, and post-merger integration. Divestment can release value when an asset lacks strategic fit or acceptable returns. Digital analytics can improve decisions, but data governance and human oversight remain essential. Sustainable corporate growth is selective, staged, and supported by a clear logic for how the corporate parent creates value.

Key Terms

Corporate strategy: Strategy concerning the scope, composition, and overall direction of an organisation.

Portfolio: The collection of businesses, brands, properties, and investments controlled by a corporate group.

Corporate advantage: Additional value created because businesses belong to a particular corporate parent.

Strategic fit: The degree of compatibility among businesses, resources, capabilities, markets, and objectives.

Diversification: Expansion into new products, services, industries, or markets.

Related diversification: Expansion into activities connected by customers, capabilities, technologies, or channels.

Vertical integration: Ownership or control of activities before or after the organisation’s primary value-chain stage.

Market penetration: Increasing sales or share in existing markets with existing offerings.

Market development: Taking existing offerings into new geographic or customer markets.

Product development: Introducing new offerings for existing customers or markets.

Internationalisation: Expansion and operation across national boundaries.

Strategic alliance: Cooperative arrangement between independent organisations for a strategic purpose.

Merger: Combination of two organisations into a unified organisation.

Acquisition: Purchase of control over another organisation or business.

Synergy: Additional value produced by combining businesses or resources.

Divestment: Sale, closure, or withdrawal from a business or investment.

Corporate parenting: The ways in which a corporate centre creates or destroys value for its businesses.

Asset-light strategy: Growth based mainly on franchising, management contracts, or partnerships rather than property ownership.

Due diligence: Investigation of financial, legal, operational, strategic, and reputational conditions before a transaction.

Real-options thinking: Valuing flexibility to delay, stage, expand, or abandon an investment as information changes.

Review Questions

Short Answer Questions

1. What distinguishes corporate strategy from business-level strategy?

2. Define related diversification and provide one hospitality example.

3. What is meant by corporate advantage?

4. Identify two potential benefits and two risks of vertical integration.

5. Why is post-merger integration important?

Long Answer Questions

1. Explain how a hotel group can use portfolio management to allocate capital among different brands and properties.

2. Compare organic growth, franchising, management contracts, alliances, and acquisitions as hospitality growth routes.

3. Discuss the strategic and financial criteria that should guide an international expansion decision.

4. Explain the role and limitations of the BCG and GE/McKinsey portfolio frameworks.

5. Analyse the major governance, ethical, and stakeholder issues associated with corporate acquisitions.

Analytical / Application Questions

1. A hotel group has strong urban hotels but weak resort expertise. Should it acquire a resort chain, form a joint venture, or develop organically? Recommend an option using the decision tests in this chapter.

2. A profitable property operates in a market with declining demand but supports the group’s loyalty programme. How should management decide whether to retain, reposition, or divest it?

3. Design a due-diligence and integration plan for a hotel acquisition in a foreign country where labour regulations, currency conditions, and service expectations differ from those of the acquiring company.

22. Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

Question 1

Which question is most central to corporate strategy?

A. How should one hotel schedule its front-office staff?

B. Which businesses and markets should the organisation participate in?

C. How should a restaurant design its menu?

D. How should a guest complaint be resolved?

Correct Answer: B. Which businesses and markets should the organisation participate in?

Question 2

A hotel group enters serviced apartments because it can share its loyalty programme, reservation system, and customer base. This is best described as:

A. Unrelated diversification

B. Related diversification

C. Retrenchment

D. Backward integration

Correct Answer: B. Related diversification

Question 3

Which is a principal risk of vertical integration?

A. Guaranteed elimination of all operating costs

B. Loss of every form of managerial control

C. Higher fixed costs and reduced flexibility

D. Automatic improvement in service quality

Correct Answer: C. Higher fixed costs and reduced flexibility

Question 4

In portfolio management, market attractiveness and competitive strength are used most directly in the:

A. GE/McKinsey matrix

B. Value chain

C. Experience curve

D. PEST analysis

Correct Answer: A. GE/McKinsey matrix

Question 5

Which growth route involves taking an existing hotel offering into a new geographic market?

A. Market penetration

B. Market development

C. Product development

D. Harvesting

Correct Answer: B. Market development

Question 6

Why should acquisition synergies be treated cautiously?

A. They are always prohibited by competition law

B. They may be overestimated and difficult to realise

C. They are unrelated to cash flow

D. They eliminate the need for due diligence

Correct Answer: B. They may be overestimated and difficult to realise

Question 7

Which arrangement generally allows a hotel group to expand with less property capital investment?

A. Wholly owned development only

B. Management contracts and franchising

C. Purchasing all suppliers

D. Closing underperforming hotels

Correct Answer: B. Management contracts and franchising

Question 8

What is a key purpose of post-merger integration?

A. To prevent all local adaptation

B. To combine systems, people, processes, and capabilities effectively

C. To conceal acquisition costs

D. To avoid communicating with employees

Correct Answer: B. To combine systems, people, processes, and capabilities effectively

Question 9

A staged joint venture with an option to acquire later is particularly useful when:

A. There is no uncertainty about performance

B. The buyer wants to learn before making a full commitment

C. The target has no strategic relevance

D. Capital investment is unlimited

Correct Answer: B. The buyer wants to learn before making a full commitment

Question 10

Which consideration is most relevant to responsible international expansion?

A. Ignoring local labour standards if profits are high

B. Using one identical operating practice everywhere

C. Assessing regulatory, cultural, environmental, and stakeholder consequences

D. Relying only on projected occupancy

Correct Answer: C. Assessing regulatory, cultural, environmental, and stakeholder consequences