HOSPITALITY LABOUR FORCE

Hospitality Labour Force

Hospitality Labour Force

Introduction

The hospitality sector contains businesses in the arts, entertainment, recreation, spectator sports, accommodation, and food service industries. This includes performance venues, gambling outlets, golf courses, amusement parks, arcades, hotels and other lodging sites, food service establishments, and privately funded exhibit spaces and historic sites. In 2005, employment in hospitality accounted for 9.6% of all employment, broken down as follows: accommodation and food services (8.2%) and arts, entertainment, and recreation (1.4%). This sector employed 12.8 million people in 2005, up steadily from nearly 10.8 million people in 1996. Employment in this field has been predicted by the BLS to increase by 17.7% between 2004 and 2014. The 2005 unemployment rate among those most recently employed in hospitality was 7.8% (Piso 2009, 1).

The hospitality industry is one of the oldest industries in the world. In a broad sense, the term Hospitality Industry refers to a group related to the tourism, training, transportation and accommodations, including, among others, cruises, airlines, trains, car rental companies and operators excursions. This industry ranks seventh among the world's largest industries having accommodation establishments, which include hotels, convention centres, resorts, motels and inns. The career in hospitality is extremely challenging and requires the highest expertise.

Hotel management involves active people with high levels of motivation that feel proud to join a career in hospitality services. The hospitality industry generates billions of dollars annually plus thousands of jobs. However, its demand is increasing and is situated in an increasingly competitive and saturated market. The term "hotel" limits us to a cottage industry, where some family businesses managed hotels and restaurants. Creativity in the advanced countries, transformed the concept and now 25 companies that dominate the food industry and five most commonly known chains (Holiday Inn, Sheraton, Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, Ramada and Quality) dominate the hotel industry (Miller 2003, pp. 117).

Discussion

Hospitality has been one of the most pervasive metaphors within tourism studies, referring in one sense to the commercial project of the tourist industry (such as hotels, catering, and tour operation) and in another sense to the social interactions between local people and tourists—that is, hosts and guests. The last decade has seen a renewed interest in the concept of hospitality, in ways of researching and understanding hospitality, and in the intersections of hospitality. This renewal sits at the confluence of two intellectual trajectories:

A “critical turn” in hospitality studies, away from the solely functional, vocational emphasis of hospitality management or “hotel and catering” education and training, and towards a diverse, social science analysis; and

The take-up of the concept and practices of hospitality across a range of social science disciplines, where it is being used to critically explore key contemporary debates, such as those centered on immigration, asylum and refugees, and more broadly to understand diverse forms of “hospitable” interaction of labor force catered by HRM (Houque 1999, 419).

Tourism as a Business

All tourism companies offer different types of products. There are companies which have successfully added an additional ingredient with good ...