Human Resource Management for Hospitality, Tourism and Events

Dennis Nickson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136001451
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Gestion des ressources humaines

Please note: this title will publish in January 2012.

This textbook explores the policies and practices employed in the management of people working in the tourism, hospitality and events industries.

It considers the nature of these industries and the varied approaches that organizations take with the handling of matters such as recruitment, health and welfare and remuneration. This book is enriched with topical case studies that describe and illustrate the human resource management behaviour of airlines, hotel chains and other international companies in the sector, providing real world industry perspective. With a clear, reader friendly layout containing chapter outlines and objectives and examples of best practice, this is the ideal guide to HRM for any student on a hospitality, tourism or related course.

CHAPTER 1

Human resource management and the tourism and hospitality industry: an introduction

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

This chapter sets the scene for the book. It considers the nature of the tourism and hospitality industry and some of the approaches to managing people adopted by organizations and how these approaches can vary. Therefore the aims of this chapter are:

•To recognize the importance of tourism and hospitality as an employment sector.

•To outline the diverse range of sub-sectors and occupations under the broad heading of tourism and hospitality.

•To consider the nature of the workforce.

•To review the range of models/theories concerned with human resource management and how these might be applied to the tourism and hospitality sector.

Introduction

The importance of tourism and hospitality employment in both developed and developing countries is attested to by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), who suggest that travel- and tourism-related activities account for 8.7 per cent of world employment, sustaining directly or indirectly over 255 million jobs, which equates to one in 12 jobs worldwide (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2012). However, while the quantity of jobs is unquestionable, the quality of many of these jobs is of great concern to academics and policymakers alike. Despite the rhetoric of policy-makers and business leaders that people are the industry's most important asset, many remain unconvinced that such a view is borne out by empirical evidence. For example, Douglas Coupland, the notable cultural commentator, has for many captured the zeitgeist when he talks pejoratively of ‘McJob’, which he describes as ‘A low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who have never held one’ (Coupland, 1993: 5; see also Lindsay and McQuaid, 2004). MacDonald and Sirianni (1996) recognize the challenges of living and working in a service society which, according to them, is characterized by two kinds of service jobs: large numbers of low-skill, low-pay jobs, and a smaller number of high-skill, high-income jobs, with few jobs being in the middle of these two extremes. Such a situation leads labour analysts to ask what kinds of jobs are being produced and who is filling them. This point is also true for the tourism and hospitality industry and it is important at the outset of this book to add a caveat about the generalizability (or otherwise) of the conditions of tourism and hospitality employment worldwide. Hence Baum (1995: 151; see also Baum, 2007), reflecting the diversity of employment within the sector, notes that:

In some geographical and sub-sector areas, tourism and hospitality provides an attractive, high-status working environment with competitive pay and conditions, which is in high demand in the labour force and benefits from low staff turnover&. The other side of the coin is one of poor conditions, low pay, high staff turnover, problems in recruiting skills in a number of key areas, a high level of labour drawn from socially dis advantaged groups, poor status and the virtual absence of professionalism.

Organizations and managers in the tourism and hospitality industry face real challenges in recruiting, developing and maintaining a committed, competent, well-managed and well-motivated workforce which is focused on offering a high-quality ‘product’ to the increasingly demanding and discerning customer. This book seeks to address some of the key human resource issues that have to be tackled in order that organizations can maintain such an environment. To do so it will critically review some of the problems which lead many to characterize tourism and hospitality employment as generally unrewarding and unappealing, while also considering examples of good practice, important policy responses and models of human resource management (HRM) which may offer cause for greater optimism in the way people are managed within the tourism and hospitality industries.

What are the tourism and hospitality industries?

Many academics, industrialists and policy-makers have attempted to define the nature of the tourism industry — and the place of the hospitality sub-sector within this broader conceptualization — yet there is still no single commonly accepted definition. Hence, there are inherent problems seeking to define what is a large and diverse sector, which means many of the activities may overlap, and could be described as encompassing tourism and hospitality. For example, Lucas (2004), in her work on employment relations in the hospitality and tourism industries, chose to talk in broad terms about the hotel, catering and tourism sector (HCTS). This characterization of the HCTS recognizes that, in reality, many jobs in hospitality and tourism ‘share common attributes and are associated with both hospitality and tourism activities’ (p. 4). Clearly, then, we should recognize the potential for a lack of precision in describing the tourism and hospitality industries.

In an attempt to avoid too much imprecision and, at the same time, capture the diversity of the sector, this book uses the framework offered by People 1st, which is the sector skills council (SSC) for the hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism sector, to exemplify the broad range of activities that may be seen in the HCTS. The reason for using People 1st is that SSCs are government-licensed bodies in the UK responsible for improving skills within the industry. SSCs are employer-led and, among other things, aim to engage employers in raising the skills of a defined industry sector, supporting efficiency and productivity improvements and helping to ensure that the sectors remain globally competitive (see Chapter 7 for the role of People 1st in improving skills and training in hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism). Therefore, People 1st suggest that the sector as a whole is made up of 14 sub-sectors (People 1st, 2010a):

•hotels

•restaurants

•pubs, bars and night-clubs

•contract food service providers

•membership clubs

•events

•gambling

•travel services

•tourist services

•visitor attractions

•youth hostels

•holiday parks

•self-catering accommodation

•hospitality services.

That said, it should also be noted that at the time of writing, People 1st are currently in the process of integrating the passenger transport industries following their merger in July 2011 with GoSkills, the SSC for the passenger transport industries. The merger with GoSkills will create a unified body for hospitality, passenger transport, travel and tourism (People 1st, 2011a).

The key point remains that in the broad classification of travel, tourism and hospitality there is massive diversity in the types of jobs generated, in relation to their technical and skill demands, educational requirements, terms and conditions and the type of person that is likely to be attracted to employment in them. To illustrate this point we can consider Baum's (1997: 97–8) description of the range of people a person buying a package holiday is likely to interact with:

•the retail travel agent;

•insurance companies;

•ground transport to and from the airport;

•at least two sets of airport handling agents (outbound and return);

•airport services (shops, food and beverage outlets, bureaux de change) (outbound and return);

•the airline on all legs of the journey;

•immigration and customs services;

•local ground transportation;

•the hotel or apartment;

•tour services at the destination;

•companies and individuals selling a diversity of goods and services at the destination (retail, food and beverage, entertainment, cultural and heritage, financial, etc.);

•emergency services at the destination (medical, police, legal); and

•service providers on return (photography processing, medical).

Baum characterizes all of these possible intermediaries, and the interactions they will have with the holiday maker, as crucial in ‘making or breaking the tourist experience’. Thus while the physical product is important, for most tourists the quality of their experience is likely to be also reliant to a large degree on the interactions they will have with the variety of front-line staff in the travel, tourism and hospitality industry. These so-called ‘moments of truth’ (Carlzon, 1987) are therefore crucial for organizational effectiveness, success, competitiveness and profitability. Indeed, within an industry that is characterized by diversity and heterogeneity in terms of the purpose, size, ownership and demands of the enterprise, the only real point of homogeneity is delivering service to customers and the need to manage people in such a way that they offer a quality service. The corollary of this point would be the belief that such front-line staff would therefore be sufficiently well paid, trained and motivated to offer outstanding service. The reality, however, is that often such staff have the lowest status in the organization, are the least trained and are the most poorly paid employees of the company.

In recognizing the diversity both of the range of sub-sectors and types of jobs they are likely to generate, this book cannot consider all of these aspects in detail. Indeed, more is known about employment in certain sub-sectors than others. For example, the commercial hospitality industry encompassing hotels, restaurants and pubs, bars and night-clubs is the largest sub-sector, with around 70 per cent of employees in the UK (People 1st, 2010a). Unsurprisingly, then, the commercial hospitality industry is well served, with extensive research on the nature of employment and HRM practices in the UK, Europe and elsewhere in the world (see, for example, Chand and Katou, 2007; D'Annunzio-Green et al., 2002; European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2012; Knox and Walsh, 2005; Lucas, 2004; Poulston, 2009). As a consequence, many of the examples drawn on in this book are from the commercial hospitality industry. However, the book also draws on the wider array of travel- and tourism-related organizations. In addition, Chapter 13 is given over to considering the events sub-sector and, in particular, the challenges of managing a large volunteer workforce who work alongside paid employees in the events sub-sector. The greater concentration on the events sub-sector in this edition of the book reflects the growing importance of events as an increasingly discrete though related sector to tourism and hospitality (see, for example, Baum et al., 2009a; Bowdin et al., 2010; Van der Wagen, 2007). Ultimately, the main aim of the book is to attempt to understand the potentially diverse employment experiences of those working in what we will broadly think of as the tourism and hospitality industries. Thus, how does the experience of an airline flight attendant differ from that of a pot washer in the kitchen in a small restaurant to a receptionist at the front desk of an international hotel or to a tour rep working on an 18–30-type holiday?

A further issue to consider is the manner in which the sector is heterogeneous in terms of the predominance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). People 1st (2010a) note that within the UK hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism sector 73.5 per cent of establishments are SMEs, while also noting that 26.2 per cent are owner-operated with no staff. Heterogeneity is also seen in relation to the way that organizations adopt differing routes to competitive advantage, depending on which type of market they operate in. For example, full service carriers in the airline industry are likely to have very different approaches to HRM compared to low-cost airlines (Eaton, 2001; Spiess and Waring, 2005; however, see ‘HRM IN PRACTICE 1.1’). The same is true for the hospitality sector, which may range from first-class and luxury hotels...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Human resource management and the tourism and hospitality industry: an introduction
• 2 International human resource management
• 3 Organizational culture
• 4 Labour markets
• 5 Recruitment and selection
• 6 Equal opportunities and managing diversity
• 7 Human resource development
• 8 Performance management and performance appraisal
• 9 Reward strategies in the tourism and hospitality industry
• 10 Employee relations, involvement and participation
• 11 Employee well-being, welfare, health and safety in the workplace
• 12 Grievance and disciplinary procedures
• 13 Human resource management in the events industry
• References
• Index