International Dictionary of Hospitality Management

Abraham Pizam, Judy Holcomb

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781138432802
• eBook ISBN: 9781136394225
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

The International Dictionary of Hospitality Management is the must have companion for all those working or studying in the field of hospitality management. With over 728 entries, it covers everything you need to know, from a concise definition of back office systems, to management accounting and yield management. It covers all of the relevant issues in the field of hospitality management from both a sectoral level: * Lodging * Restaurants and Food service * Time-share * Clubs * Events As well as a functional one: * Accounting and Finance * Marketing * Strategic Management * Human Resources * Information Technology * Facilities Management An abridged version of the successful International Encyclopedia of Hospitality Management, its user friendly layout provides readers with quick and concise answers across this diverse area of industry.

Aa

À La Carte

The literal interpretation of à la carte is ‘from or off the card’ to order. The à la carte menu is designed to enable guests to choose the meal according to their needs and tastes. This classical format is based on the original French à la carte menu form, which in former times comprised 16 courses – with or without a choice in each course for guests to choose from. The classical French à la carte chronological course structure is as follows: appetizers; soups; farinaceous dishes; eggs; fish and shellfish; entrées (main course in the USA, appetizers or starters in the rest of the world); grills; roasts; vegetables; salads; cold buffet items; sweets; ices; savories; cheeses; and chocolates, fruits, and bonbons.

Accommodation, Demand For

Development of the accommodation sector comes as a result of a healthy tourism industry attracting both domestic and international tourism that arrive at a given destination for leisure and/or business purposes. There have been fundamental changes in the demand for hospitality accommodation during the past two decades. These have been in response to general socioeconomic trends, in particular:

• Increasing prosperity and/or increased leisure time in developed economies (e.g. the introduction of the 35-hour working week in France in the 1990s has impacted directly on the demand for hospitality, as customers are taking short-break holidays starting on a Thursday evening).

• Changes in the structure of family life (e.g. dual careers, smaller families holidaying together).

• Increasing urbanization.

• The transition from an industrial society to a knowledge-based society.

• Need for specialized business facilities to serve the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events (MICE) markets.

• ‘Mass customization’ and ‘personalization’, in the business accommodation sector resulting in guests turning to boutique hotels in preference to the standardized product offered by hotel chains.

Accommodation, Supply of

Hospitality accommodation may include hotels, motels, timeshares, guest-houses, lodging-houses, bed and breakfast, inns, pensions, and ‘auberges’. Accommodation may be commercial, non-commercial, or social in character, and may include holiday camps, holiday villages, sanatoria, and villas and apartments for rent.

In recent years, several major trends have affected the supply of accommodation and therefore the structure of domestic and international hotel companies, including increasing concentration and consolidation, the increased importance given to branding, and the impact of technology. The major companies are indeed getting bigger and international companies now control an increasing proportion of the worldwide hotel supply. Owing to the effects of globalization, the industry has seen increasing competition, but with the continued dominance of major brands through companies emanating from the USA, UK, and France.

Account Aging

Accounts receivable represents money owed to a hotel by its customers. To monitor how customers are paying their bills, hotels need to age the accounts and perform an aging schedule. This schedule is a table that lists the names of the customers, the unpaid account balances, and the number of days the accounts are outstanding. Unpaid account balance is the amount of funds that customers owe or have not paid to the hotel. The aim of the hotel is to keep all accounts ‘young’ so that they will not be aged. Generally speaking, aged accounts have a higher probability of becoming delinquent account.

Account Allowance

A reduction in a hotel guest account folio for unsatisfactory service, a rebate on a discount voucher, or if a correction is to be made to a posting, which has been made the previous day (after the night audit).

Account Correction

In a hotel, account corrections are normally made on the same day that a transaction has been posted (before the night audit). It corrects errors that have been made to postings (e.g. if a wrong charge was posted to a room). Depending on the error it can either increase or decrease the guest account balance.

Account Posting

When guest make either payments or charges to their accounts the process is known as posting. It is the procedure used to record transactions made by the guests.

Account Settlement

A term used to describe a situation that occurs when a guest account folio is brought to a zero balance (i.e. when the guest pays their account). Guests can pay their account in numerous ways namely: by cash, by credit card, by direct billing arrangement (normally arranged before the guest stay), or a combination of the above.

Account Transfer

Involves transferring transactions from one hotel account to another. An example would be if one guest offers to pay for restaurant charges for another guest, the posting would have to be transferred from one account to the other account.

Action Learning

The process whereby individuals learn skills through involvement in a team focusing on organization-specific problems. This is achieved through the use of questioning, analysis, and problem-solving techniques. As the individuals using this process are often working out with their normal area there is the added advantage of learning about other processes or areas of the business whilst developing interpersonal skills and, of course, improving organizational effectiveness. For example, a member of the front office team in a hotel may work in an action group with individuals from the sales and reservations teams to consider how to improve communication between the departments. The front office team member will learn about the other departments and assist in the creation of a solution for more effective communication; thus learning has taken place.

Activity-Based Pricing

A pricing method that combines market research data with cost accounting information to establish prices for products and services that result in designed profits. The activity-based pricing (ABP) concept emphasizes that profits can be maximized through knowing how much of a product’s price is profit and through the elimination of pricing errors. For example, one method that the lodging industry uses to maximize room revenues is yield management. This technique forecasts demands for market segments that will generate the highest room rates, but it does not incorporate precise product and customer costs. ABP can improve a company’s profitability by providing the marketing and accounting departments with information that allows them to cooperatively establish accurate prices.

Affiliate Resort

A resort with which a timeshare exchange company has a contractual agreement to offer rooms for exchange. The basic premise underlying the exchange process is that a collection of timeshare resorts, either single site or multi-site enter into an agreement with an exchange company to offer their owners the option of exchanging their interval (commonly a week) with another member that is seeking to swap their interval. It is this agreement between the timeshare developer and the exchange company that is known as an affiliation agreement. The affiliation agreement simply means that the developer has the right, at the point of sale, to offer the exchange company’s services to this new owner as an additional service. Therefore, the owner makes a voluntary decision to buy into the exchange process by paying an annual fee to this exchange company for their services.

Agency Theory

A theory of corporate behavior that describes the contractual relationship between principals and agents. In the context of hospitality, the appropriate framework for understanding the contractual relationship, for instance, between a hotel operating company and a hotel owning company, is agency theory. The agent is represented by the operating company, the principal is represented by the owning company, and the two parties’ relationship is mediated by a hotel management contract. Agency theory explains how to best organize these relationships in which the owning company (the principal) delegates the work to the operating company (the agent) who performs that work. More specifically, the focus of the theory is on the contract between the principal and the agent and the ways in which the contract can be made most efficient from the point of view of the principal.

Alarm Annunciators

Annunciator panels or terminals are used to pinpoint the specific location of a fire. The alarm annunciator panel is located in a control center, such as the security office, engineering office, or at a main entrance to allow trained personnel to identify the exact location, or zone, of the fire. Annunciators can monitor from 8–64 points and can be mounted on racks, panels, walls, or desks. Some annunciators are flame or explosion proof and most of them come with standby power supply. The alarm annunciator at the control center is required to be audible and visible to alert employees, who might be away from their desk or concentrating on another task. Regulations in the Life Safety Code limit the size of the floor area that can be included in an alarm zone.

Alliances

An umbrella term for a wide range of cooperative arrangements that can encapsulate suppliers, buyers, and competitors. As such, it covers many collaborative organizational forms including franchising, management contracts, joint ventures, marketing, and purchasing consortia. Primarily, hospitality and tourism alliances offer organizations a basis for creating a degree of stability in their external relationships and a method to secure access to resources or competences possessed by other organizations that support the attainment of strategic objectives. Alliances may function on the basis of formal or informal agreements and can be classified into two categories: equity and non-equity alliances. Equity alliances demonstrate a mutual financial commitment and often imply a long-term commitment to the partnership. On the other hand, non-equity alliance allows for greater strategic flexibility as partners may decide to terminate an agreement and either act on their own or form an alternative alliance without the need to deal with shared equity.

Application Service Provider

An information technology service firm that deploys, manages, and hosts remotely a software application through centrally located servers in a rental or lease agreement. The service provision is made usually through the Internet or virtual private networks (VPN). Usually the client pays a flat fee to sign up and a monthly fee for access to the application, training, expert support, and upgrades. Other payment schemes are based on usage rates (fees per transaction, number of screen clicks, or amount of computer time). Initially hospitality and tourism firms were reluctant to adopt the application service provider (ASP) model mainly due to the perception of data control loss, current telecommunication infrastructure problems, interface challenges with legacy systems, and data transfer security. Problems are gradually being overcome and the model seems to receive greater acceptance.

Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship involves on-the-job training and work experience while in paid employment with formal off-the-job training. Traditionally, formal apprenticeships (membership in Guilds) started in Europe during the Middle Ages. These were restricted to trade occupations (i.e. tailors, blacksmiths, etc.) and were of multiple years’ duration. Hospitality apprentices can learn in fields such as front office, housekeeping, food and beverage, or culinary. Apprentices enter into formalized agreements with employers known as ‘training agreements’. In some countries apprentices are paid a training wage adjusted to reflect the amount of time spent learning off the job and employers have access to public training funds to assist with training apprentices.

Arbitration

A method of dispute settlement in which an independent third party or group (e.g. industrial or labor tribunal) considers the arguments of both sides in a dispute and then makes a decision that is legally binding on the parties. This third party or group is appointed by mutual consent or statutory provision. The difference between arbitration and other forms of dispute settlement such as mediation or conciliation (where an arbitrator attempts to find a compromise) is that decisions are legally binding. Hospitality and hotel employers generally join employer associations (such as hotel associations) that represent their interests during arbitral proceedings in industrial tribunals, though larger hotels are increasingly using their own internal human resource management (HRM) departments to conduct tribunal work.

Architectural Plans

Drawings developed by architects, engineers, or consultants to provide instructions for contractors and trades personnel. They may also be used to determine the amount of construction materials needed and to evaluate the travel patterns of building inhabitants. There are several types of architectural plans:

• Plan view: The plan view is obtained when a building or room is cut horizontally 3 above the finished floor.

• Elevation: An elevation is a vertical view of an exterior wall or an interior room.

• Section: A section view is generally a vertical cut through a building or piece of equipment.

• Plot/survey: A plot view is a horizontal view of an entire property showing the location of the building, contour lines, and landscaping.

• Detail: A detail view is used to show specific features of construction, such as cabinet drawers, decorative trim, or furniture design.

ARDA International Foundation

The American Resort Development Association (ARDA) was founded in 1969 to represent the interests of the resort industry in the USA. The ARDA International Foundation serves the professional and educational needs of the resort industry. The foundation provides two professional designations, the Associate Resort Professional (ARP) and the Registered Resort Professional (RRP). Other programs offered by the ARDA International Foundation are the conduct of consistent, on-going surveys, and research studies of the industry such as the Worldwide Timeshare study, and the US Economic and a Financial Performance study.

ARDA Resort Owners Coalition

One of the American Resort Development Association’s (ARDA’s) programs that brings together opposite sides of the timeshare industry, the developer and th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• List of entries
• Entries A–Z
• Index
• Contributing authors to the International Encyclopedia of Hospitality Management