The scope and context of hospitality industry
The term Hospitality refers to the way of welcoming or taking care of the strangers or guests away from their home (Brotherton 2013). However, the entire spectrum of hospitality is even bigger than the simple explanation. Hospitality Industry is closely related with the tourism industry. The industry comprises of a wide variety of services. This industry takes care of all basic needs of travelers coming in the country. A well-developed hospital industry is promised to provide facilities of food and beverages, accommodation. Apart from basic needs, the arrangements are also available for relaxation like gaming, entertainment and other related facilities. Thus, a prosperous hospital industry helps to boost the travel and tourism industry.
Some of the basic characteristics of the hospital industry are mentioned below (Shani et al. 2014)
Product mix: In this industry, the prices charged on the customers are never for on particular service but for the entire package of service (Talk 2016)
Two-way communication: A two-way communication between customers and service providers ensure good means of service with customer satisfaction (Kim, Lim and Brymer 2015)
Relationship building: A good relation with the customers provides long-term benefit. The concerned organizations need not to worry even in the slack seasons if it has a steady customer flow (Bowie, Buttle, and Brookes 2016)
Diversity in culture: People engaged in hospital industry come across with guests having different culture, different religious belief and different food habit belonging from different region. In order to build a good relation the staffs working there should be able to adjust with diverse people ( Kandampully, Zhang and Bilgihan 2015)
Labor intensive: Manpower is a crucial factor for the industry. Given the service- oriented nature of the industry abundant labor supply is needed for delivering proper services to the guests (Talk 2016)
The scope of the hospital industry coincides with that of tourism industry in certain aspects. However, hospital industry serves tourists as well as non-tourists. The core components of hospitality service are accommodation and food services (Airey, Dredge and Gross 2014). In addition, several other industries grow along with the hospitality industry. For offering accommodation and food and drinks lodges, resorts, hotels and restaurant business are spreading across the world at a rapid pace. Easy transportation is a by -product of concerned industry. It also provides support to other fields of tourism like theme or amusement park, cruise line, event planning and so on.
The business solely depends on the free time of the people and their willingness to pay for travelling or relaxation. This again depends on the spendable portion of their income. The quality services might influence the demand here. This is an industry having several sub industries within it. Being a labor-intensive industry every year it generates employment for thousands of people. A wide variety of job available to look after different needs of the customers. Some people have the responsibility for proper maintenance of the facilities offered; some are engaged with providing direct service to the customers such as housekeepers, kitchen workers, servers, porters and so on. People are also engaged in jobs like marketing and management, human resources. Depending on the skill requirement, workers are employed in different segments of the industry.
With increasing global income people, tend to spend more to enjoy their leisure time. The global demand is gradually moving from the tangible goods to intangible service demand. Tourism and Service industry comprise a major part of service sector. The tourism and hospitality industry has attained a new height of growth in last five years. The growth in tourism, hotel, amusement park and other sub sectors together indicate the growth of hospitality industry (Lopes 2016).
First, consider the growth of hotel industry. Global hotel industry is showing a continuous upsurge. Market analysis indicates greater volume global investment in the industry. The positive outlook of the investors, favorable supply to match the growing demand, simplicity in booking mechanism and improvement in the fundamental facilities propel the growth in this sector. At the beginning of 2016, it was predicted that the industry would reach up to $550 billion US dollar globally over the year. The corresponding value in 2011 was $457 billion US dollar (Niewiadomski 2014).The growth is also expected to continue in the next five years. The employment proportion is also rising though slowly but steadily. Most speculative growth is exhibited in Europe and Asia Pacific. The occupancy rate of hotel is high at 69%. On the other hand with a high average rent for hotel room both Middle East and Africa have a very less occupancy ratio. The involvement of social media has further boosted the growth of hospitality industry. The most visited sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter influence consumer demand across the globe.
Tourism and hospitality industry in England is experiencing astonishing growth figures in last few years. This is evident from the fact that the industry is offering various job openings for the graduates and the proportion is increasing at an exponential growth rate. Jobs are opened for various posts like finance managers, event organizer, business managers, contract caterers and others. The growth of tourism industry in UK has increased investment in the hotel industry. As indicated by British Hospitality Association there are nearly 127,000 business associated with hospitality industry. Approximately 1.6 million are currently engaged in the industry.
The UK hotel industry is growing day by day. The occupancy rate is as high as 80 percent. The hotel industry in London has accounted remarkable growth in 2015 and 2016 and the trend will continue in future as predicted by PWC. The rise of online travel company has made a positive contribution toward this trend. The installation of advance technology in newly opened hotels has attracted large pools of tourists (Chapman and Light 2016)
Another growth indicator of hospitality industry is the growth of Amusement parks and Theme park. The growth is contributed from increasing spending on leisure, growth of tourism in UK and increase in population belonging to middle class group income group. These places easily attract tourists and visitors. The special attractions for some visitors are various kinds of rides available here. Planning is made for building new amusement park in different regions of England. The newly developed parks will provide new and better leisure opportunities. Some famous and mostly visited amusement parks in England are Thorpe Park, Drayton Manor, Warwick Castle, Alton Towers, Lego Land and many others (Balloffet, Courvoisier and Lagier 2014)
a) . Environmental Impact of Hospitality Industry
The growth of hospitality industry gives rise to issues related to environment and sustainable development. Hotels are one of the key sectors of hospitality industry. However, operation of large-scale hotels affected the environment in several ways (Molina-Azorín et al. 2015). The key issues to be taken into consideration are:
To tackle the environmental impacts organization need to take care of the above-mentioned issues.
The problem of excess water usage arises because the use of water in hospitality industry is not only for necessary purpose but also for luxury oriented. For example, facilities of swimming pool, in room bathing, golf course and so on. The providers face difficulty in making the choice whether to supply the water to these hotels or to the local residence for their domestic use. The growth of different sub industries within the hospitality industry is putting threat to the availability of energy in the concerned locality. Excessive electricity is used for various purposes like lighting, cooking, heating or cooling. Large-scale use of energy crates load on local resources. This also increases the cost of energy use even for necessary purpose. During the peak seasons, the hotels are crowded with tourists. Huge waste generated in these hotels and released to the locality without any treatment. Thus, they should respond appropriately for waste management (Solnet, Kralj and Baum 2015)
The environmental consequences have successfully brought under the focus of major organization and measures to protect the environment have taken by many of them. The ‘Atholl Palace Hotel’ has implemented its environment management policy to counteract adverse impact. The Environmental Development manager and the Committee of Green Management have designed the policy (Murphy 2014) Followings are the core areas of the policy:
Employees:
The employees in every stages of the hierarchy are provided with environment education on regular basis. The training is conducted either in the pre shifts or through emails and signs. Awareness is spread for proper recycling of cell phones in order to get rid of the harmful chemical release. The burden of huge amount of disposable cup is reduced by providing the associates coffee mugs that are reusable, tumblers made with stainless steel.
Guests:
The guests in the hotels are invited to participate in the environmental programs. On special occasion like Earth Day or Earth hour, the hotel authority discloses their initiatives to the guests with distributing gifts indicating their environmental goals.
ii) Waste Reduction:
The recyclable wastes are recycled and reused. The authority also donates the some items. Papers, batteries, cell phones, cooking oil, plastic and aluminum bottles, computer appliance are recycled. Toiletries like shampoo, conditioner, soap, unused stewarding equipment, furniture and other unused items are given to donation. To reduce the paper use E-fax is used in place of regular fax, printing is made on both side of the paper, scrap paper is used if possible.
The new and efficient ones replace old electronic equipments. New and more energy efficient bulbs, sensor lightning are used in all the offices. For lightening the hotel, property light dimmers are used. There are electronic thermostats in the guest rooms. All these efforts resulted in a considerable energy saving in the last few years. Power Consumption is reduced by 6%, steam use in the hotel is also decreased by 6% and finally there is a 42% reduction in gas use.
To prevent wastage of water low flow aerators are installed throughout the hotel premise Water dispensers are provided to the guests to reduce the waste generated from bottled water. In order to prevent damage from sudden electric shock control through automatic faucet is allowed in bathrooms. Arrangement for proper maintenance of pipelines is taken care of by the authority, hotel’s internal staff look after repairing leakages.
The purchasing policies favoring the environment protection have implemented to all the departments and sub departments of the hotel. The mangers of each department need to purchase the products that are environment friendly. All the offices try to provide recycled stuff. The lunch boxes used for clients are made from recycled materials and are reused as possible. In drinks and beverages department machines with applied technology like natura water is used. It filters the tap water and comes with added facility of carbonation where it seems necessary. Uses of organic ingredients, frozen goods are encouraged in the food section. The initiatives are not limited up to the implementation of different measures. Evaluation is also made by colleting the data on sustainable purchasing from all department to measure the effectiveness of the policy
All the products for hotel use are purchased from the Eco Lab. Some products that are considered as green product both from chemical and packaging standard are Clean N Smooth, Oasis pro 43 G Glass, Wash and Walk. Apex chemical is purchased which further contribute achieve sustainable environment goal by reducing the rack count. Focus has given to reduce packaging, improvement of utility and production usage by improving efficiency (Tamani et al. 2015).
The Grand Green team has taken initiatives to make the local people aware of 3R namely reducing, recycling and reusing.
All the associates fulfill the commitments of the authority towards environment. The efforts are expected to be more strengthen with continuous communication. All the actions will be continued to achieve an even bigger environmental goal.
There is lot more to do to be famed as a green hotel. However, the continuous efforts move the organization to get closer to this. The hotel currently holds certification of Energy Star, LEED for existing building, and five keys certification in Green Key Eco-Rating Program, Gold Travel Life Award.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) captures the ethical responsibility of the business house. It is something beyond the financial objectives of the business. The business houses operating nationally or globally have some responsibility towards the environment and society. CSR also includes plan that will do something good for the society in future as well. Obviously, the firms are not generally interested in thinking above their personal interest and choosing social or environmental goal. Therefore, the corporate law enforces it. The objective of the responsible action is to restore, conserve or protect environment, securing ethical behavior towards all the company staff and customer and induce firms to make some investment for betterment of the community. With a better understanding of environmental and social impact of business, corporation different stakeholders like common people, NGOs, Consumer and government are increasingly demanded business to operate in line with CSR (Carroll 2015)
Hospitality industry is one of the fastest growing sectors worldwide. With growing business, the concerned industry has important impact on environment and society. Therefore, implementation of a well-planned Corporate Social Responsibility is necessary for every organization of the industry. The related consequence of CSR is to smooth the path towards a sustainable development goal. A positive CSR also affects the Company reputation. Clients may prefer to choose business that gives more importance towards its social responsibility. External environment plays crucial role for success of any business. Organization cannot directly influence these factors. Appropriate strategies are needed to control them. One such factor is stakeholders that affect the operation of any business. In hospitality industry that is largely depend on customer satisfaction stakeholders are most important factor for business reputation. In extreme case where the organizations fail to meet customers’ expectation, it may force to shut down its business. Thus, the strategies are to be designed catering all the needs of majority of stakeholders.
In the hospitality industry there are different stakeholders each having separate objective. The stakeholders here are the customers or guests, company staff, local community and investors. The industry’s share of the organization depends on the ability to balance different stakeholders’ interest (Martínez, Pérez and Rodríguez del Bosque 2013) The most complex factor here is to understand the perception of the guests. Rightly anticipating the trends of consumer demand actually establishes consumer loyalty for the esteem organization. The additional force in achieving the financial goal is the ability to serve the need of local community while also keeping in mind business interest. Strategy covering social, environment and financial aspect is needed for long term business success. In the hospitality industry a strategy called 3Ps ( Profit, People, Planet) should be promoted instead of strategy like Net Operating Profit (NOP), Stakeholder Value (SV), Return on Investment (ROI) and separate policies of social, environmental and human capital.
In UK, the hospitality industry is a core service industry having huge investment. The industry is currently providing employment opportunities to millions of people across the world. The growth will be accelerated at an even faster rate in the next few years. The numbers of tourists are forecasted to reach 1580 million by 2020. With growing spectrum of tourism, the hospitality industry in UK needs to be more attentive towards the sustainability goal. The changing perception of different stakeholders of the industry such as Non Government Organization, government and tourist is putting pressure on the industry to adapt a sustainable strategy. Beyond their personal interest, growing concern is observed on the organization’s perspective towards the community and local environment. The future perspective of the industry has been also taken into consideration. The owners of the hotel have to show their concern and initiatives to fulfill the social and environmental goal. The goal of sustainability involves increasing operation cost and has become a critical objective to be achieved. With increasing pressure to practice CSR, most of the companies in UK have published articles on CSR every year taking it as a part of their primary activity (Cheng, Ioannou and Serafeim 2014)
In response to growing concern towards social and environmental issues the international organizations have taken well-planned CSR strategy. One such organization serving the whole world is Marriott International (www.marriott.co.uk, 2017). To benefit the stakeholders the organization has committed to provide an environment comprising the interest of every stakeholder.
The gentle approach towards social responsibility of Marriott is known as SERVE with every initial having a broad goal. ‘S’ stands for Shelter and Food. ‘E’ stands for Environment. ‘R’ denotes Readiness to join hotel careers. ‘V’ and ‘E’ stands for vitality given to Children and Embracing inclusion and global diversity. ‘SERVE’ indicates their initiatives towards the community. The organization has provided arrangement for providing shelter and food to community even at times of disasters. They have also taken care of sick children to improve their health condition. Apart from this, focus has given to provide work opportunities worldwide.
On the environment aspect, also the organization has come forward. Significant steps are taken to conserve water and energy. In order to achieve sustainable environment goal following strategies are designed:
In addition, enforcement of human rights, laws relating to legal and ethical standard has been implemented in all branches of the organization.
References
Airey, D., Dredge, D. and Gross, M.J., 2014. Tourism, hospitality and events education in an age of change (Doctoral dissertation, Routledge).
Balloffet, P., Courvoisier, F.H. and Lagier, J., 2014. From museum to amusement park: The opportunities and risks of edutainment. International Journal of Arts Management, 16(2), p.4.
Bowie, D., Buttle, F. and Brookes, M., 2016. Hospitality marketing. Taylor & Francis.
Brotherton, B., 2013. Hospitality and hospitality. In Search of Hospitality.
Carroll, A.B., 2015. Corporate social responsibility. Organizational Dynamics, 44(2), pp.87-96.
Chapman, A. and Light, D., 2016. Exploring the tourist destination as a mosaic: The alternative lifecycles of the seaside amusement arcade sector in Britain. Tourism Management, 52, pp.254-263.
Cheng, B., Ioannou, I. and Serafeim, G., 2014. Corporate social responsibility and access to finance. Strategic Management Journal, 35(1), pp.1-23.
Kandampully, J., Zhang, T. and Bilgihan, A., 2015. Customer loyalty: a review and future directions with a special focus on the hospitality industry. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 27(3), pp.379-414.
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Lopes, M., 2016. The hospitality industry (Doctoral dissertation).
Martínez, P., Pérez, A. and Rodríguez del Bosque, I., 2013. Measuring corporate social responsibility in tourism: Development and validation of an efficient measurement scale in the hospitality industry. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 30(4), pp.365-385.
Molina-Azorín, J.F., Tarí, J.J., Pereira-Moliner, J., López-Gamero, M.D. and Pertusa-Ortega, E.M., 2015. The effects of quality and environmental management on competitive advantage: A mixed methods study in the hotel industry. Tourism Management, 50, pp.41-54.
Murphy, A., 2014. Scotland Highlands & Islands Footprint Handbook. Footprint Travel Guides.
Niewiadomski, P., 2014. Towards an economic-geographical approach to the globalisation of the hotel industry. Tourism Geographies, 16(1), pp.48-67.
Shani, A., Uriely, N., Reichel, A. and Ginsburg, L., 2014. Emotional labor in the hospitality industry: The influence of contextual factors. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 37, pp.150-158.
Solnet, D., Kralj, A. and Baum, T., 2015. 360 degrees of pressure: The changing role of the HR professional in the hospitality industry. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 39(2), pp.271-292.
Talk, O.M., 2016. Operations management.
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Tamani, N., Mosse, P., Croitoru, M., Buche, P., Guillard, V., Guillaume, C. and Gontard, N., 2015. An argumentation system for eco-efficient packaging material selection. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 113, pp.174-192.
www.marriott.co.uk. (2017). Corporate Responsibility. [online] Available at:https://www.marriott.co.uk/corporate-social-responsibility/corporate-responsibility.mi [Accessed 21 Jun. 2017].
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