INTRODUCTION TO HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM
Hospitality is defined as a purposeful, planned, and persistent effort to build and maintain mutual understanding between an organisation and the general public, often known as the business of making and keeping friends and establishing a better understanding atmosphere. “The act or practise of being hospitable; the welcoming and entertaining of guests, visitors, or strangers,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The Latin word “Hospitalitias” is the source of the term “hospitality.”
Providing attentive and courteous services, facilities, and amenities to a traveller, meeting and greeting him at the door, providing efficient and caring food and beverage service to him in his room, i.e., providing “A Home away from Home,” and making his visit a memorable and pleasant experience are all examples of hospitality activities.
Hospitality is defined as the courteous reception, greeting, and treatment of a visitor or stranger. In most countries around the world, visitors are greeted with great kindness and warmth, as well as given with entertainment. The fundamental principle of hospitality is to make the visitor feel as if he has arrived among friends and that Guests Are Always Welcome. Although the basic concept of hospitality has remained the same, the needs and wants of travellers have changed dramatically with the passage of time and the advancement of technology and science, necessitating the provision of numerous services and facilities in terms of accommodation and other basic needs such as food and beverages.
Origins Of Hospitality Industry
There were no hotels back then, so travellers were either fighters, traders, or seekers of knowledge. Warriors and conquerors slept in tents, whereas traders and those seeking knowledge valued hospitality and sometimes traded their goods for housing.
The earliest commercial venture for hospitality and one of the first services for which money was exchanged was innkeeping. Inns in Biblical times merely had a cot or a bench in the common room. Guests were housed in enormous common rooms with no privacy or sanitation. Of course, the prices were reasonable. It was a difficult company to work for. Travellers and their horses and animals shared the same quarters.
King James Version of the Bible mentions that Mary and Joseph were turned away by a Bethlehem innkeeper because there was “no room at the inn”. According to Biblical scholars the innkeeper may have meant that the room was unsuitable for a woman about to give birth to a child. At that time, and probably for several centuries after that, men and women shared ‘ the same accommodation accompanied by their horses and livestock. The stable where Mary and Joseph spent the night was probably almost as comfortable as an inn and at the same time certainly more private than the inn itself.
In the 3rd century AD, the Roman Empire developed an extensive network of brick-paved roads throughout Europe and Asia Minor, and a chain of roadside lodges was constructed along the major thoroughfare from Spain to Turkey. Till the Industrial Revolution of the 1700s, no significant improvement was made in the inns and taverns and they were not very suitable for aristocrats. To accommodate wealthy travelers, luxurious structures were constructed with private rooms, individual sanitation, and comforts of a European castle. These elegant new establishments adopted the French word for mansion-‘Hotel’. Their rates were beyond the reach of an ordinary person.
In America, early inns were modeled after European taverns with sleeping quarters shared by two or more guests.
Herman Melville in his novel Moby Dick has mentioned a seaman who checked into a room of a nineteenth-century inn and the next morning woke up to find out that he was sharing the bed with a cannibal. Sharing beds was a very common practice in early American and European inns. Throughout the 1800s American innkeepers improved their services and continued to build larger and more amply equipped properties and most of these properties were located near seaport towns.
The tendency of Americans to travel more provided inspiration to lodging operators. The nation’ s democratic spirit also led to the development of comfortable and sanitary lodging within the reach of an ordinary person.
Hospitality Industry can be broadly defined as the collection of businesses providing accommodation and/or food and beverages to people who are away from home.