A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

5.2.1 Introduction: hospitality and its linkage with tourism

Traditionally, hospitality has been known as an industry that provides services to people who are far away from home regardless of whether it is for a long or short period of time (Baker, Bradley & Huyton, 2000:2). On the other hand, tourism is a collection of sectors that provide the necessary and essential services to the travelling public (Baker et al., 2000:3). These descriptions of hospitality and tourism indicate an express linkage of the two sectors to travel. The relationship between hospitality and tourism is illustrated in Figure 5.1.

Figure 5.1: The relationship between hospitality and tourism

Source: Adapted from Baker, Bradley and Huyton (2000:4)

The relationship that is demonstrated in Figure 5.1 is an explanation that these two industries support and depend on each other. While hospitality supports travel and tourism in sustaining tourists’ comfort during travel, it receives benefits from its commercial approach to this relationship.

Tourism and hospitality are two industries that have been known to share common experiences (Ingram, 1995:44-54). It is explained in this text that physical infrastructure, facilities and security are prerequisites for attracting tourist visitors to a destination.

Facilities in this context include all factors of hospitality service frameworks such as hotels, restaurants and entertainment as has been mentioned in Figure 5.1. According to Chon and Sparrowe (2000:6-7), hospitality businesses are closely intertwined with those in the travel and tourism industry, to the extent that industry leaders consider the combined industries of hospitality and tourism as one large industry namely the hospitality and tourism industry. These authors argue that hospitality has its immediate components of food service and lodging closely tied to the travel and tourism, transportation as well as the sports, recreation and entertainment sectors.

Commercial accommodation, restaurant, bar and entertainment services to support travel and tourism

HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY TOURISM INDUSTRY Institutional/welfare

accommodation and catering, e.g.

hospitals and schools

• Leisure attractions, e.g. parks and museums

• Transportation services, e.g.

airline and cruises

• Retail outlets, e.g., malls and arcades

LINKAGE

Other authors view hospitality as part of the attractions for tourists. Bennett and Strydom (2005:8) explain that in many tourist destinations there are natural attractions as well as man made attractions. They give the Sun City/Lost City complex in South Africa and the Great Zimbabwe Ruins in Zimbabwe as examples of man made attractions. Most of the facilities that form a large part of these destination components are man made. Bennett and Strydom (2005:9) add that tourist facilities are those factors that in themselves do not generate tourism flow but the absence of which discourage people from visiting a destination. They give examples of such facilities as accommodation, restaurants, picnic sites, transport at the destination, sports, retail outlets and security. From this argument, there is a significant initial conception that the nature of the product/service offer by hotels at a destination is a possible determinant of attractiveness.

5.2.2 Defining hospitality and its hotel component

Hospitality has been defined as “the cordial and generous reception of guests (Angelo &

Vladimir, 1994:479). It has also been defined as those commercial activities which offer consumers accommodation, meals and drinks when they are away from home while promoting a warm friendly experience that benefits travellers (George, 2001:18). The term hospitality is derived from the Latin word hospe, which means host or guest, and also hospitium, which means guest chamber, inn or quarter (Chon & Sparrowe, 2000:5) and hospitare meaning “to receive as a guest” (Dittmer, 2002:4). These scholars assert that other words closely related to this Latin concept include hospice, hostel, hospital as well as hotel. It is within this understanding that today’s hotels hold their linkage with the hospitality industry. One of the most recent studies carried out an evaluation of the traditional and historical application, as well as the dictionary meaning of hospitality, and crystallised the understanding of this term as “kindness in welcoming strangers and guests (Brotherton, 1999:165-173).

A typical climax of the hospitality concept is demonstrated in the contentious story about two patron saints (Angelo & Vladimir, 1994:xxvi). One patron saint known mystically as Saint Julian the hospitaller, is said to have left his wife at home and came back to find a couple sleeping in his bed. Having mistaken all this for his wife having a sexual affair

with a stranger in his bedroom, he reacted out of rage and killed the two. It is explained that as he walked out, he met his wife coming in and wondered what was happening. In fact, his wife had only surrendered their family bed to provide sleeping accommodation to a stranded travelling couple. From this day, he vowed to dedicate his life to providing lodging to strangers. The authors name the other patron saint as Saint Notburga, an Austrian farm girl who dedicated her life to the service of servants at a local home church. She is today considered as the patron saint of food servers (Angelo & Vladimir, 1994:xxvii). In this recollection that is contested as mere mythology, one may locate lodging/hotel and food service as the make-up of hospitality.

Although taverns existed in England from the middle to late eighteenth century, the food service element of travel only changed dramatically when Boulanger, a Frenchman started operating small businesses selling soups and broths around Paris in 1765 (Dittmer, 2002:39). They were later referred to as restaurants, a French term meaning restoratives.

Today, the hotel and food service industry has become widely known as the hospitality industry (Lillicrap & Cousins, 1990:2) and it is explained that the industry is defined by its output of products, which satisfy the demand for food, drink, entertainment and accommodation. Indeed, Chon and Sparrowe (2000:7) as well as Horner and Swarbrooke (2005:393) say that hospitality is a two facetted industry or an umbrella term holding together the food service industry and the lodging industry components as shown in Table 5.1 below.

Table 5.1: The two faces of hospitality