The Routledge Handbook of Hospitality Management

Ioannis S Pantelidis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317804239
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Management

Hospitality is an industry characterised by its complex nature and numerous sectors including hotels, hostels, B&Bs, restaurants, pubs, nightclubs and contract catering. However, despite its segmentation, there are key issues that are pertinent to all subsectors. The Routledge Handbook of Hospitality Management adopts a strategic approach and explores and critically evaluates current debates, issues and controversies to enable the reader to learn from the industry's past mistakes as well as future opportunities.Especially relevant at a time when many sectors of the industry have to re - evaluate and reinvent themselves in response to the economic downturn the Handbook brings together specialists from both industry and academia and from a range of geographical regions to provide state-of-the-art theoretical reflection and empirical research. Each of the five inter related sections explores and evaluates issues that are of extreme importance to hospitality organisations, many of which have not been adequately explored before: external and internal customers, debates surrounding finance, uncertainty risk and conflict, sustainability, and e-Hospitality and Technology.This book is an invaluable resource for all those with an interest in hospitality, encouraging dialogue across disciplinary boundaries and areas of study. It is essential reading for students, researchers & academics and managers of Hospitality as well as those of Tourism, Events, Marketing, and Business Management.

1

Editorial introduction

An alternative approach to appreciating hospitality management

Ioannis S. Pantelidis

---

Introduction

Hospitality is a wonderful albeit chaotic world. Full of turns and twists, it is as difficult to navigate its many sectors as it is to fully comprehend the real essence and magnitude of a concept that is much more than a mere industry.

So when I was first asked to lead the development of this volume, I had no idea that I would embark on a philosophical Odyssey, in search of the very essence of hospitality. My early concerns about such a volume were focused on the magnitude of composing a ‘handbook’ about an industry that is so difficult to understand that multitudes of attempts at a definition have yet to yield one that truly captures hospitality’s essence and is acceptable by all its key stakeholders. After all, an attempt to complete such a volume using a traditional approach had already been undertaken by Wood and Brotherton (2008). But I was never in favour of a traditional approach because I felt it prevented us from fully exploring the quintessence of our industry. I also believed that those of us who study, research and lead in hospitality cannot be ‘experts’ of our industry but merely the ‘guides’ that can help others better understand the learning we have accumulated and deciphered up to now. In hospitality there is only one expert, the consumer. Armed with these beliefs I embarked on the adventure of bringing together contributors from as many regions as possible, focusing on debates of strategic importance that are likely to shape our understanding of hospitality during the next decade.

Of course, the task was not as easy as you might believe. Asking someone to compose a handbook of hospitality management is, to me at least, akin to asking someone to write the ‘complete handbook on how to raise children’. Consider your childhood for a moment and the mischief you caused your parents, and how different you were from your siblings. Who might even read such a volume and how much help could it be? Still, even for raising kids there are books that provide general principles and advice without been too dictatorial about the micro-detail. Now consider your hospitality knowledge and understanding as if it were your ‘child’ and imagine yourself as the ‘parent’ that requires some insights to help you raise it. I hope this volume provides you with some eureka moments and assists your cause.

We offer no definitions of hospitality of our own since that is often the very heart of the problem. Hospitality specialists may occasionally find themselves arguing over definitions and approaches to hospitality, creating dichotomies that enhance the very gaps the debate was hoping to bridge. An example of this is the debate by Slattery (2002; 2003) and Brotherton (2002; 2003) over hospitality definitions and approach in Lashley and Morrison (2000) In Search of Hospitality. Jones (2004) attempts to resolve the disagreement but almost a decade later we still have our work cut out for us in bridging that gap, not only between academia and industry but also between the various sectors of our industry.

As an editor of an extensive volume that deals with a complicated subject, I had to make some hard choices. What to include and what to exclude has not involved easy decisions. My compass has always been how best to help the readers get one step closer to understanding hospitality. My hope is that by adopting a strategic rather than an operational approach the reader will gain insights that can be more easily transferred to different departmental situations or sub-sectors. Even though I was lucky enough to be born into the world of hospitality, surrounded by hospitality entrepreneurs, and emerged in operations at a young age, I often stray from operations in my own research of hospitality. This is because I could always see that the absence of a clear vision and planned strategy has remained unswervingly the Achilles heel of hospitality management. This absence in our industry often transcends whole sectors and results in a cacophony of voices that do not appear to share a common goal. If a clear strategy is needed for success then I felt that this volume could best serve its readers by taking a strategic approach. Furthermore, moving away from a sectorial approach means that we do not have to deplete our energies debating definitions of the industry and its sectors but instead can highlight key strategic issues that enhance readers’ understanding of hospitality management and help them hold on to examples and approaches of best and worst practice. After all, it is in the extremes that we often discover the most fertile ground for learning.

The design of this volume also allows for insights and approaches from industry captains who share their understanding of key issues and debates in the hospitality industry. Theory without practice is like the bragging sailor who has never been on a boat. Industry insights further enhance the debates set by academics even if they are not in scholarly language.

But let us go back to the very heart of the problem with hospitality. Let us briefly examine some existing definitions and then reflect on an alternative way of looking at the industry that moves beyond the definitions and boundaries that restrict our understanding of hospitality management practice.

Beyond defining hospitality: philoxenia, the essence of hospitality

It is understandable that governments need to define industries and sectors so that they can monitor and measure their economic contribution. But as scholars do we need to come up with new definitions of hospitality? We already have diverse interpretations of the industry sectors, often within the same country. Imagine the variations across the Atlantic or even in European countries in close proximity to one another. What might work for the UK doesn’t necessarily work for France or India, or Australia or the USA. Do we need to come up with even more definitions that may be out of date in less than a decade from today? I’m not sure, but I’m also not blind to the fact that we need a good starting point.

However, consider the fact that we now live in the era of Web 2.0, an era of unparalleled speed of information sharing and a hospitality characterised by the co-creation and interactivity of guests with guests (Lugosi 2007), guests who contribute to the development of products and services as much as consuming them. Somehow, past attempts of defining hospitality which merely concentrate on the host-guest relationship (Lashley and Morrison 2000; Lashley et al. 2007) appear outdated.

I doubt we will ever have a definition of hospitality that will satisfy academics and industrialists alike; the complexity of our industry makes such a thing elusive. For example, Brotherton (1999: 168) defines hospitality as: ‘A contemporaneous human exchange, which is voluntarily entered into, and designed to enhance the mutual well being of the parties concerned through the provision of accommodation, and/or food, and/or drink.’

One year later, Brotherton and Wood (2000: 143), probably influenced by Brotherton’s earlier work, suggested that: ‘The hospitality industry is comprised of commercial organizations that specialize in providing accommodation and/or, food, and/or drink, through a voluntary human exchange, which is contemporaneous in nature, and undertaken to enhance the mutual well being of the parties involved.’

I cannot help but ponder on my days in the army when I had no choice but to eat the food and drink I was given. I would not call that a completely voluntary exchange on my part (I guess I could have chosen to not eat) and I am sure children in school often feel that they have entered into a non-voluntary exchange. Yet school, army and even prison catering is very much a part of the hospitality industry. There is even one prison restaurant (http://www.theclinkcharity.com/) that has turned the hospitality experience into a social experiment of positive change with a host-host exchange. The customer becomes a catalyst for the Clink management to focus on enhancing the well-being of inmates working at the Clink. The guest’s well-being is a by-product – needed of course to enable funding but most importantly a source of storytelling and positive PR. In hospitality, everything is possible and roles can be reversed: that is what makes our industry so profoundly beautiful.

My personal experience of the industry and my academic background make me more inclined to approach hospitality from an emotional and experiential angle, echoing in part what Hemmington (2007) attempts to develop. We are very different from retail operations in that our key goal is not just to manage resources, bottles, rooms or food. Our goal as hospitality managers has to be the management of the well-being of our customers, both internal and external. This is not a foolish strategic endeavour and does not suggest that the profitability of a commercial operation must be forgotten. On the contrary, what I suggest is a strategy towards sustainable profits through the quality of key products and services that deliver enhanced value to customers. Since the information-sharing power has shifted dramatically into the hands of the consumer, now more than ever to be a nice guy is nice for business!

For this reason we need to revert back to a more traditional philosophy of hospitality and draw lessons from antiquity. In Homer’s Odyssey (Butcher and Lang 2001), the level of a civilisation’s advancement is measured by the degree of hospitality it extends to strangers. The concept of ‘philo-xenia’ (friendship to strangers) is very much the essence of what hospitality is returning to. In The Odyssey, respecting the guest is akin to a religious duty; at the same time, disrespectful guests may pay the ultimate price (Odysseus kills the suitors who have disrespected Penelope’s hospitality), showing that philoxenia is a two-way relationship. There are expectations of the guest just as much as there are expectations of the host.

Such ‘suitors’ exist even today; for example, we hear reports of guests using the threat of a bad review on web portals such as TripAdvisor to get something for free. The retribution by hospitality professionals is blacklisting such offending guests and as technology evolves these blacklists will become easier to share.

Philoxenia is a code of honour that places kindness to strangers at the heart of every transaction, whether there is money involved or not. It is a sustainable philosophy of hospitality that transcends time and place and allows us to reflect on how we treat our staff, our suppliers, other professionals and ultimately our guests. It is a strategy that allows us to balance the well-being of all stakeholders in commercial hospitality. With philoxenia, people are placed first, products and services second and profits last – the natural by-product of great management of the first two elements.

The importance of the hospitality industry to understanding management

Hospitality is the fifth largest industry in the UK (BHA 2010) and in the USA the hotel industry is in its fourth year of continuous boom (Hobbs and Toscan 2013). But as well as the obvious importance of our industry to a nation’s economy, there is no other industry that can claim one of its operations as a microcosm that reflects a good number of other industries.

Take a restaurant, for example. We have manufacturing in the kitchen when raw materials are turned into products. In the front of house the exchanges between waiters and guests reflect customer service basics that are important to service industries such as banking. Take-away and delivery reflects the retail industry. A restaurant herb garden (some restaurants even rear chickens for fresh eggs) represents the essence of the agricultural industry, and the sale of herbal teas and certain menu items such as oysters even echoes the history of early medicine. You may think I am overselling the importance of our industry but no one can deny the amazing opportunities for learning and transferable skills it can give to graduates who retain an open mind.

The era of the ‘meeting and exceeding expectations’ mantra is past. Hospitality academics have a responsibility to ensure that future industry leaders and managers understand how to engage their staff in ways that can ensure that their employees ENJOY EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS. Well-travelled customers have reached their expectations ‘ceiling’ and it is only through employees who truly enjoy what they do that hospitality experiences are reinvented for customers who have seen it all. Think of all great managers as operating a CAFÉ! CAFÉ is an acronym that represents the four pillars of great management that transcends into leadership.

• Caring for your customers

• Alignment of customer expectations to perceptions

• Feel-good factor for all stakeholders

• Emotional empowerment for your employees

I hope that my toying with metaphors allows you to begin to imagine the learning opportunities that hospitality has to offer.

Although hospitality offers unparalleled opportunities for understanding other service industries and management, it seems to have remained underdeveloped as a d...