The article highlights the problems of innovations in the sphere of service industry and particularly in the hospitality industry. The research is topical due to the lack of development of methodological aspects of the hospitality industry and due to the lack of innovation classifications in Russian scientific literature with allowance for service type of business of these companies. The article analyzes publication activity in the sphere of service innovations researches and presents the peculiarities of innovative activity of services sphere companies, describes the assimilating and differentiating approaches to the definition of methodology of innovations in the services sphere and their correlation with industry, proposes the synthetic approach as the most acceptable in modern conditions of´servicization " of production sphere and "industrialization" of services sphere — the approach which combines both above described approaches and admits the importance of services and service sectors for all branches of economy, proposes directions of innovative development of hospitality industry companies.