The meaning of hospitality: do employees understand?

Purpose This paper explores how hospitality frontline employees understand, interpret and practice “hospitality” in a hotel industry context. Design/methodology/approach Framed by interpretivist and phenomenological approaches a dual-stage semi-structured interview study design was conducted. A samp...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:International journal of contemporary hospitality management 2017-01, Vol.29 (5), p.1282-1304
Hauptverfasser: Golubovskaya, Maria, Robinson, Richard N.S, Solnet, David
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:Volltext
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:Purpose This paper explores how hospitality frontline employees understand, interpret and practice “hospitality” in a hotel industry context. Design/methodology/approach Framed by interpretivist and phenomenological approaches a dual-stage semi-structured interview study design was conducted. A sample was drawn from hotel employees in Australia. Findings Findings support the proposition that the hospitality workforce tends to favor service management and service processes as the guiding paradigm. The essence of what it means to be hospitable, and the host-guest model, appears to be largely absent in practice. Research limitations/implications This paper contributes to a scarcity of literature exploring the understanding of hospitality, and how this understanding can translate into hospitable behavior, from the employee perspective. Our main implication is that service management terminology colonizes hospitality within a commercial context, while the essence of hospitality and the “hospitality” lexicon is concomitantly diminishing. The authors advocate for developing an inter-paradigmatic view of hospitality management. Practical implications While the study revealed that the majority of frontline hotel employees struggle with grasping and verbalizing their understandings and perceptions of the hospitality construct, although some acknowledged the importance of hospitality as being an integral component to service delivery. We identified consistent organizational practices and intrinsic employee traits that either enabled or obstructed hospitable behavior in hotel settings. Originality/value The study reveals tensions between the hospitality and service paradigms in hospitality literature and practice. We uncover hotel management practices that may help to conserve and foster the essence of hospitality in hospitality organizations.
ISSN:0959-6119
1757-1049
DOI:10.1108/IJCHM-11-2015-0667