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Hospitality Industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the world. Mainly incorporating—in a blend of services—cafes, restaurants, accommodation, clubs, hotels, bars, etc., this is a high-opportunity job market for the highly mobile and youthful workforce as a chef, cook, kitchen-hand, restaurant, and catering manager, cleaner, or a bar attendant. As an equal opportunity employer, it hires women in an agreeable manner as men (SafeWork SA 2007).
Service-wise generally divided into two major types, Hospitality Industry has entertainment and accommodation. Entertainment includes clubs and bars, restaurants serving fast foods, and nightclubs. Accommodation means public houses, resorts, inns, campgrounds, hotels, hostels, serviced apartments, and motels.
However, in this industry, there are certainly more risks involved than any other field, which accounts for the fourth highest workers compensation claims.
In the workforce, the industry faces some challenges coming in different shapes (United States Department of Labor 2006):
Image: Like other service sectors, this is hard to maintain a high image. Due to low-wage usually at entry-level employment, there is little opportunity for advancement of career.
Recruitment: Employment of youth in this industry for intense work challenges demands new strategies by employers to provide incentives and other benefits.
Retention: High turnover is always a challenging issue for this industry. Retaining skilled employees for a longer duration means devising new plans and strategies as per the economic and social problems of the current period.
Language skills: English sometimes becomes an issue when workers skilled in services are unable to communicate with tourists or guests. In that case, special training programs are planned to increase the communication skills of the employees.
Employability/Soft Skills: Along with the technical knowledge and experience in the field of the Hospitality Industry, service providers need to have a cluster of personality traits, social graces, facility with language, personal habits, friendliness, and optimism to please the customers and make quality performance.
Consistent training models and skills certifications: Not dissimilar to other service sectors, entry-level employees are not trained according to a set model consistently, which every time arises the issue of bringing modification in the training mode and increasing investment in devising skill programs for certification and further training.
In Hospitality Industry, tourism especially is more open to changing cultural and social values, presented in the material form of arts, music, or crafts. However, in this fast-changing world with unprecedented advances in technology and easy communication and transportation, cultural influences on tourist behavior and tourist decision-making are studied in isolation and not in the background of cross-cultural issues (Reisinger 2008, p. 22). For the last two years, this cultural effect on the industry of tourism has become more prominent in an international scenario with changing the style of international behavior and cross-cultural issues.
Also, as compared to other industries, it has a tendency to react more strongly to economic fluctuations (EconomyWatch). According to World Travel and Tourism Council, travel and tourism surpassed other industries like autos, steel, electronics, and agriculture in a high revenue-generating context. Furthermore, as it was mentioned earlier, the industry is highly responsive to social and cultural changes in any part of the world; in the olden days, small boarding houses and other services of hospitality were offered on small scale, which has by the passage of time grown enormously to include offering services on the Internet, in flights and other traveling facilities to accommodate more tourists and to cater to their diverse needs and desires of comfort and traveling and recreational pursuits.
In a study at Cornell’s Center for Hospitality Research, it was found that customers enjoy innovations in new technologies to provide better services (Dixon, Kimes & Verma 2009). Among eleven technologies, they found preferably virtual menus with nutritional information highly agreeable, and then online reservations and pagers to order services. However, researchers found that customers are hesitant in using new technologies for better availability of services. Once after using some innovation in technology in Hospitality Industry, they stick to that and avoid trying new modes, a sort of catch-22 situation for service providers. The study was conducted on 1,737 US residents by getting survey responses from a broad-based national database. Dixon, one of the researchers and a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration, said: “Based on our study, we recommend that restaurants encourage customers to try new technologies. But restaurants should avoid forcing technology use and implement new technologies with considerable support and demonstrations. I should note that our respondents were more likely to use pagers and online reservations than the other technologies we tested. On the other hand, they were not supportive of payment technologies involving cell phones or smart cards.”
It was also found that technology users more frequently visited restaurants than others. Furthermore, young people more used technologies than older ones although there was not found significant difference according to gender.
Mark Wynne Smith, the European CEO of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels, is of the view that the European growth rate for Hospitality Industry will remain slow in the coming years. However, the tourism industry is going to flourish with new visitors from economically growing ‘BRIC’ countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China (An Uncertain Future – Hotel Management 2007)
Hudson Crossing is a strategic advisory firm in the USA which helps business owners raise travel, tourism, and hospitality assets by providing consultation. Michael W. McCormick, Managing Partner, Hudson Crossing, believes there is a marked drop in the economic turnover of the Hospitality Industry which will continue in the second quarter of this year due to the economic recession observed all over the world (Hospitality Trends 2009). In a report “Q2 2009 Travel Industry Insight” currently issued, McCormick, however, hopes big adjustments are being made and more creative solutions are planned to enhance revenue-generating options for the 3rd and last quarter of the year. He made a few predictions regarding the future of the industry in this year:
The decline in business travel will see another phase of continued persistence till the new budget cycle by the end of the year 2009.
Business owners in the industry will issue loyalty programs and aggressively priced packages for the consumers to attract them.
Online booking fees for traveling will not be charged by booking agencies such as Obitz.com and Travelocity to lure international travelers.
References
An Uncertain Future – Hotel Management 2007, An Uncertain Future, SPG Media Limited, London, Web.
EconmyWatch, Hopsitality Industry, Stanley St Labs, 2009, Web.
Hospitality Trends 2009, Travel Industry Expectations: The Decline of Business Travel and Other Insights, Hospitality Trends, Web.
Dixon, MJ, Kimes, SE & Verma, R 2009, Customer Preferences for Restaurant Technology Innovations, Hospitality Trends, Web.
Reisinger, Y 2008, International Tourism: Cultures and Behavior, Butterworth-Heinemann, Philadelphia.
SafeWork SA 2007, Hospitality Industry, Government of South Australia, Web.
United States Department of Labor 2006, Innovative Workforce Solutions to Help the Hospitality Industry Address Hiring, Training, and Retention Challenges, US Department of Labor, Washington DC, Web.
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