Regular readers of The Hospitality Review will know that I have been heavily involved in advocating the study of hospitality from social science perspectives. On one level, I make no apologies for encouraging the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. That is what academia should be about.
I know this is unfashionable in the current climate where a higher education is seen from an instrumental perspective. That is, education is being seen as a step to achieving a better job and pay for an individual, better company profits, or international competitive advantage on a state level. I am afraid, I am too committed an educator to take too much heed of this superficial claptrap.
Education should be about stimulating thought and reflection, and in this light studying hospitality by reference to history, or to anthropology, or philosophy is good enough because it achieves that end. It assists educators in producing reflective practitioners. By encouraging the study of the ‘bigger picture’ we encourage thought and hopefully empower our students in the process. Great!
That said, there are some real benefits to be had from study of hospitality for commercial-hospitality provision. By modelling the service encounter through the interaction between host and guest. it is possible to recognise there is something unique which the standard service-management literature does not capture or deals with in a superficial manner. By studying acts of hospitableness, and those who are hospitable, it is possible to inform and shape expectations of hosting performance in commercial-hospitality settings.
Indeed this wider engagement with interactions between individuals as hosts and the interactions with those, who come from ‘outside’ as guests, can be used to study issues beyond hotels, restaurants and bars. Last year, I hijacked a debate at the cauthe conference to argue that tourism is merely one strand of hospitality, and not the other way round! All tourism situations involving a host community receiving individuals from outside that community involve hospitality. Indeed it is possible to argue that the relationship between educators and students could be seen as involving a relationship between academics as hosts and students as guests. Certainly the study of hospitality and hospitableness has much to say about commercial relationships and encounters in commercial-hospitality settings.
Historical and philosophical texts show that a concern for the relationship between hosts and visitors has been a feature of societies, religions and philosophers stretching back thousands of years. Definitions of hospitableness and expectations about the behaviour of both hosts and guests are found in some of the earliest writings in all societies based on agriculture trade and regular contacts with ‘outsiders’.
Writings in Greek, Roman and early Christian, as well as more contemporary, religious tracts and philosophy all identify hospitableness. Whilst the details vary a little, observations about hospitableness suggest that it should involve offering food, drink and accommodation, as well as the safety and security of the guest. The guest should be made to feel valued and respected. There should be no animosity or making fun of someone different or from outside the context. The guest honours the host through their presence. The motives of the host are generous and genuine, giving is for its own sake not for the potential benefits that might flow back from it. All this can be helpful in shaping the way frontline hosts and managers perceive and evaluate service encounters in hotels, bars and restaurants.
All this leads to say that it is possible to develop a conceptual framework that suggests that much of the service-quality-management literature needs to be critiqued in the light of the hospitality discussion. It also suggests that curricula in universities and colleges need to be addressed and where necessary adapted. The host–guest transaction needs to be at the heart of the operation, service personnel become a valued resource, building long-term relationships with regular customers, skilled and developed to their full capacity. Performance is ultimately developed, monitored and managed on the basis of the quality of the guest–host relationship and the delivery of experiences founded on the qualities of hospitableness.
Will this happen in the short run? I suspect not. The influence of vocation-action approach to hospitality management education ensures that many are just wedded to the practical and the apparently relevant. The dominance of teaching in many hospitality departments, even in universities, means that many do not see the need to be concerned with research and innovations in conceptual models. Industry could learn a great deal from this, but again the dominance of short-termism and the limited knowledge and skill base conspire towards the practical and pragmatic.
Conrad Lashley
Centre for Leisure Retailing Nottingham Trent University
