In this paper, the theoretical part of innovation is presented on the example of innovation in the hotel "Valamar Riviera d.d." in Poreč. The goal of the work is to investigate what kind of innovations exist and how people apply them. The concept of a hotel company is briefly described, as well as the conceptual definition of innovation, in which all types of innovations that a company encounters and also applies them are described. Then there is the process of innovation and how innovation is managed. In all of this, the effects of innovation on the company's operations also appear. The role of innovation in the hotel industry, as the title of the diploma thesis says, refers to the importance of innovation in hotel companies and the benefits of technological innovation, innovation in hotel services, innovation in booking hotel services and innovation in promotion. In it, we classified some of the examples of innovation in Croatia and described these examples. After all that to the theoretical part, since the emphasis is on the hotel "Valamar Riviera d.d." in Poreč, which is very well known on the market for its introduced innovations and also for being one of the innovative hotels on the Adriatic, which every year receives an award for any area such as innovation, socially responsible business, environment, employees, etc. We have researched and described what kind of innovations Valamar Riviera has. Valfresco Direkt is a central system of procurement, production and distribution of domestic food and beverages for Valamar guests and local residents in the destinations where Valamar operates. The leading hotel company on the Adriatic proudly presents its innovative application My Valamar, which will take tourists' vacation to a whole new level. Data for Valamar Riviera d.d. I also found sustainable business for 2021 in the Integrated Annual Report. After the theoretical part, we conducted research by creating a survey questionnaire in which we had 64 respondents. The questions mostly related to the importance of innovations in the company where the respondent is employed. It was designed to analyze and research how much people are familiar with innovations and also how much they use them in the company where they are employed.