Research: The meaning of hospitality: Do employees understand?

Paper (2017) by: Maria Golubovskaya, Richard N. S. Robinson and David Solnet. Source: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-11-2015-0667.

I have read the paper so you don't have to. The 5 biggest lessons that teach you about the essence of hospitality, tourism and leisure management.

Due to the nature of hospitality provision that involves both tangible and intangible service, one commonly applied lens in the literature for the context of hospitality management is service management (Kandampully and Solnet, 2015). This theoretical framework for the study of hospitality management, however, has a tendency to suppress the principles of hospitality. Thus, the nomenclature of hosts, guests, the host-guest relationship, generosity and altruism are being replaced by terms such as service providers (or employees), customers/clients, customer– employee interactions (or service encounters), value for money and ulterior motives.

These latter terms are characteristically transactional in nature. Thus, in this study, we conceptualize hospitality as an essence, or spirit, and service as a process. While these are not mutually exclusive, in other words are independent, we proffer that the latter (service) has become the dominant paradigm in the commercial hospitality context.

The hospitality industry may have become a laboratory for service management concepts and principles, thereby threatening core hospitality values.

Ritzer (2007) highlights a tendency of the hospitality industry to prioritize money-making, rationalization, McDonaldization and efficiency, which makes the notion of hospitality more problematic with the spirit of commerce replacing a spirit of hospitality. Moreover, with the commercialization of the hospitality industry, the main focus of all hospitality operators shifted from hospitality and hospitableness toward the managerial issues that would facilitate business prosperity and allow the industry to further develop.

The service management paradigm takes “hospitality” into the industrial commercial domain and equates hospitality to hospitality “management”.

Overemphasis on high standards and professionalism as the main focus in employee performance might foster predictability in products and services. This may create a “destructive trend” for the hospitality industry toward its standardization, from a long-term perspective (Ritzer, 2007), thus disregarding the importance of hospitableness and the host-guest relationship.

With growing acceptance of “service-dominant” logic and value cocreation (Vargo and Lusch, 2004) along with customer centricity (Shah et al., 2006), the importance of establishing relationships with customers is growing significantly for academics and practitioners.

Companies which recognize the importance of the customers’ role, try to establish valuable relationships with them through effective service encounters (Grönroos, 2011). Quality service interactions can determine perceived service quality and customer satisfaction and, consequently, repurchase intentions (Kandampully et al., 2011). In turn, this results in a growing level of importance of the employees’ roles in service provision and places more pressure on their behavior during the service encounter.

Power asymmetry eliminates reciprocity in the host– guest relationship (King, 1995; Sahlins, 1972).

Interestingly, we did not find evidence of a relationship between response and education level or area of study of the participants.

Instead, findings suggest that employee perceptions of their relationship with guests can determine the level of hospitality they provide – if an employee does not perceive himself/herself as a service provider, but rather as a host, the power dynamic changes and employees are more easily able to become genuine and hospitable.

Service is seen as the technical performance, while hospitality is more representative of an attitude and spirit with which service is performed. While service is an integral component of the hospitality industry, this paper argues that service provision in hospitality must be more than just service – that it must be “hospitable service” to define its eponymous industry.

It is noteworthy, that while service was recognized as a compulsory prerequisite of hospitality, hospitable behavior and genuine care toward guests appeared not to be mandatory, rather dependent on circumstances. In particular, hotel regulations and the environment itself were found to present limitations for hospitality.

As this paper reveals, there is an emerging gap between theory and practice such that hospitality organizations tend to name the essence of hospitality as an “exclusive service”, while scholars label it “hospitableness”.

Findings from this study suggest that the industry has some great opportunities to enlighten its workforce about the nature of the hospitality industry, and by so doing, alter actions and attitudes of the workforce about what hospitality means.

While frontline employees are the ones who represent the company, face the guests and deliver the experiences, products or services, the literature lacks clear insights into employees’ perceptions of hospitality, their degree of understanding of this phenomenon per se and what constitutes hospitable behavior.

[The] overarching research question is how do hospitality frontline workers interpret hospitality? This is divided into three sub-questions.

How do frontline hospitality employees:

1. Convey their understanding of the essence of hospitality?
2. Explain distinctions between hospitality and service?
3. Describe hospitable behaviors they use in their work?

Findings:

• [The] participants agreed that hospitality is embodied in customer– employee interactions, and, in alignment with Grönroos (2011), the service encounter is perceived by many as an opportunity, and the means, by which hotels approach customers and deliver their products and services.

But the presence of the guest is important – hospitality cannot be delivered when you do not interact or see the guest […]. You do not care about their feelings unless you see them.

• The participants believed that fair and equal attention to all guests can be guaranteed if employees behave professionally and in compliance with the organization’s culture and values (Crotts et al., 2005). However, the participants stressed aspects such as efficiency, speed and promptness, tending to underestimate the values of hospitable behavior, such as welcome and warmth.
• Inferences to the private domain of hospitality (Lashley, 2000) were noted. Some participants view themselves as a “host” and referred to the purpose of hospitable behavior as making the guest “feel as at home”.
• There were notable polarized opinions regarding how power influences behaviors toward customers. The majority of participants recognized the power asymmetry and acknowledged the need to “put yourself a bit down”.
• Mutual respect is noted as an important attribute in relations between frontline employees and customers.
• To ensure the “spirit of hospitality”, some employees perceived themselves as hosts, and their relationship with guests as equal and based on mutual respect.
• Despite the unfolding of themes, the majority of participants were neither able to accurately describe hospitality nor differentiate it from service. In fact, only the minority (6 of 22 participants) were able to define and describe hospitality and hospitableness; yet, this group still often referred to service management terms and concepts, which suggested a suppression of hospitality and foreshadowed a deeper challenge about the way workers understand and practice the essence of hospitality in the commercial domain.
• Inconsistent and often misunderstood interpretations of hospitality among front-line employees and a predominant reference of those to “services” support the proposition that the hospitality industry may be biased toward service management as the guiding paradigm and appear to largely ignore what it means to be hospitable. Our findings also indicate that the host– guest model may be misunderstood or misstated in practice.