Urban tourism increasingly focuses on the role of hospitality in cities, evolving from a means to strengthen tourism as a ‘product’, towards a focus on tourism as an opportunity for revitalization and transformation of destinations. In this context, cities are considered dynamic communities in which ‘hosts’ (entrepreneurs, residents, municipalities) and ‘guests’ (visitors, tourists) co-habitate and co-create multisensorial experiences. This shift in focus comes hand in hand with increasing awareness of competitiveness and sustainability of destinations, expressed by a harmonious relationship between city residents and visitors and a balanced usage of the city as a shared resource. This is of great importance, given the intense usage of urban spaces – the city center of Amsterdam being an illustrative example – and the multiple purposes that these spaces represent for different stakeholders. This paper presents the outcome of a review study into city hospitality experience indicators. We integrate these indicators as a basis for the development of a new scale for measuring the effectiveness of hospitality interventions in relation to outcome variables such as satisfaction and net promotor score (NPS). We thereby provide an important means for scholars and practitioners to develop sustainable tourism actions inclusive of local community interests, in support of efforts toward more balanced city experiences among all stakeholders.
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This article critically reappraises a key concept in hospitality management (and specifically food and beverage management) - that of the meal experience. Focusing primarily on the commercial sense and applications of the concept, while recognising the many other contexts that provide a basis for much wider study of the phenomenon, the discussion questions the status of the meal experience as part of the 'received wisdom' of hospitality management on the grounds that empirical support for the concept, as represented in the published research literature, is limited both in quantity and evidential persuasiveness.
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Purpose – The hospitality industry creates a distinctive context in which learning takes place. The industry’s international perspective and large globalisation play an important role in learning, as well as the operational and structural features that give meaning to learning and development in the hospitality industry. This explorative research therefore studies the relation between workplace learning and organisational performance in the Dutch hospitality industry. Design/methodology/approach – The qualitative research is done through 15 in-depth interviews with general managers and HR managers of Dutch hotels with three or more stars and at least ten employees. Findings – It can be concluded that there is a relation between workplace learning and organisational performance in the hospitality industry, as the participants in this research and the literature both mention workplace learning enhances organisational performance. Originality/value – Little research has been done on learning and organisational performance specifically, in the (Western) hospitality industry. This research therefore focusses on HRD and studies the influence of workplace learning on organisational performance in the Dutch hospitality industry.
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Change has become continuous, and innovation is a primary approach for hospitality, i.e., hotel companies, to become or remain economically viable and sustainable. An increasing number of management researchers are paying more attention to workplace rather than technological innovation. This study investigates workplace innovation in the Dutch hotel industry, in three- and four-star hotels in the Netherlands, by comparing them to other industries. Two samples were questioned using the Workplace Innovation survey created by the Dutch Network of Social Innovation (NSI). The first was conducted in the hospitality industry, and these data were compared with data collected in a sample of other industries. Results suggest that greater strategic orientation on workplace innovation and talent development has a positive influence on four factors of organizational performance. Greater internal rates of change, the ability to self-organize, and investment in knowledge also had positive influences on three of the factors—growth in revenue, sustainability, and absenteeism. Results also suggest that the hospitality industry has lower workplace innovation than other industries. However, no recent research has assessed to what degree the hospitality industry fosters workplace innovation, especially in the Netherlands. Next to that, only few studies have examined management in the Dutch hotel industry, how workplace innovation is used there, and whether it improves practices.
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Many cities are facing challenges in finding an equilibrium in the use of urban consumption spaces. Urban consumption spaces comprise different sociospatial relationships, bringing together work, consumption, recreation and habitation in a delimited area within the city. This mixed character is a potential source of creative urban quality, but this quality is not always realized, leading to on the one hand 'overheating' in some urban consumption spaces faced with excessive, imbalanced usage, and on the other ‘undercooling’, with declining visitors and vacant lots. We focus on Amsterdam as our living lab, in our aim to develop a new perspective toward reinstating the sociospatial relationships between local community stakeholders and to restore the equilibrium of Amsterdam city center as an urban consumption space. In doing so, we address the research question How do residents, entrepreneurs and visitors perceive ‘hospitality’ in their lived-in experience of Amsterdam as urban consumption space, and how does this contribute to community connectedness?
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It can be argued that many potentialities within society are left unused by organising hospitality venues based on modern planning practices. These planning practises regard the setting as a rational space which is predictable and manageable. By applying modern management principles to spaces of hospitality an important function of spaces of hospitality can be easily overlooked and that is that spaces of hospitality can be regarded as spaces which provide 'difference' for both host and guest. This difference in spaces of hospitality entails that hospitality space gives an opportunity to experiment with different futures, or in other words with different becomings. The concept of 'Urban Vitalis', which is initiated at the beginning of the twentieth century by the German philosopher Georg Simmel, and in 2006 reworked by John Pløger, illuminates this quest for difference. Through 'Urban Vitalis' human beings are recognised as self-transcendent entities, whose lives - attitudes, values, ways of acting and behaving - may change through their 'being-openness' toward life but also always influenced by the ongoing striving for being part of relational positions or intersubjectivities. The concept of 'Urban Vitalis' enthrones the quest for difference in space rather than modern managerial principles such as profitability, make-ability or controllability to study hospitality space. When curriculums of Hospitality Management Studies are reviewed, hardly any attention is given to the possibility that spaces of hospitality can be spaces which create a difference. By adopting 'Urban Vitalis', spaces of hospitality become sites of experimentation where humans should be able to experiment with new combinations, where humans can experience that the future is not a replica of the past. Through the processes which happen in spaces of hospitality and which open spaces of hospitality to difference are limited. This study can be seen in the light of the aim to create spaces of difference and focuses on home exchange space as an informal space of hospitality. These informal spaces are characterised by open ended planning processes. This research explores the home exchange experience from a participant perspective and the overall research aim is to analyse the nature of the home exchange experience in order to conceptualise the dynamics of open-ended planning processes in spaces of hospitality. In other words the practise of home exchange is used to identify processes which underlie creative becomings in spaces of hospitality. The study follows two trajectories, namely, interactively exploring literature alongside the data collection. The interactive exploration of the literature led towards an employment of the concept of the 'Assemblage' from Deleuze and Guattari (1987) in order to know hospi tality space. The Deleuzian Guattarian assemblage focuses on what space does rather than on what space represents and searches for processes which underlie the becomings. Through the concept of the assemblage, the metaphor of the Cultural Laboratory (Lèofgren, 1999) is used to explore the literature and to reach a post-structural understanding of a space of hospitality as space of experimentation. The art project by Sabrina Lindemann 'Hotel Transvaal' is used to ground this understanding. Alongside this literature review, field work has been conducted through a participative (auto) ethnographic study and a total of twenty-two home exchanges have been conducted and recorded, this data collection occurred while connecting with home exchange organisations.For analysis and representation of the methodology during the interplay between fieldwork and literature review, 'Sociological Experimentation' has been developed, its goal is to ident lead to difference. It employs three ways of knowing: the evocative, the performativity of space and the process of becoming. The evocative dimension showed the importance of an initiation by the host into the space and highlights the non-representational bodily aspects of the assemblage. The performative dimension stresses the importance of the X-thing, which represents the unknown and potential emergence of the subject into serendipitous experiences. The becoming aspect also focused on this growing and shrinking by becoming other and creating lines of flight. Through becoming other, the guest could become and the ability to (temporarily) escape the guest role by creating new configurations of bodies and sensations. Recommendations for providers of hospitality space and curriculum designers in hospitality management are to acknowledge the constructive forces in spaces of hospitality and to facilitate for X-things to enhance serendipitous experiences.
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We contribute to the hospitality work research agenda by reconsidering the role of outdoor adventure guides as agents of hospitality, set against a conceptual backdrop of deepening ontological insecurity in industrialized societies. We argue that the concepts of dwelling, communitas and hygge have much to offer in the delivery of outdoor hospitality in general, and in outdoor adventure tourism scenarios in particular. Although originating from the Danes and their ideas of 'cosy indoor life', the concept of hygge has recently gained global attention in the debates around creating comfortable atmospheres at home, and in fostering people's emotional well-being on holiday. Moving the concept along, we suggest the stimulation of hygge in the outdoors, along with provision of the space to dwell and the stage management of the communal effervescence of communitas as part of the crucial skill set for the outdoor guide. We opine that such conceptualization can greatly inform our understanding of both the role of the outdoor guide and of the dynamics of deliverable hospitable experience more generally.
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Experience quality has been studied for many decades in various contexts. While understanding of experience quality has advanced, its context-specific and multi-dimensional nature has challenged its conceptualisation. With the rise of experiential accommodation in tourism and hospitality, luxury lodges have been increasingly recognised in the industry and by customers as the emblem of luxury experiences, albeit receiving limited scholarly attention. Through a qualitative multiple-case study methodology, utilising high-engagement research techniques, this study explores the dimensions and determinants of luxury lodge experience quality. The study presents an experience quality model grounded in empirical data, bridging various experience quality theoretical perspectives to explain the luxury lodge experience, and demonstrating generalisation capabilities for other service contexts. The study contributes to the ongoing discourse on experience quality, particularly in the context of small luxury accommodation. The study also offers important practical implications for luxury accommodation operators on designing, staging and managing quality experiences.
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