The Hospitality Industry - Essay Example

Questionable Hospitality The hospitality industry; a bustling conglomeration of hotels, travel agents and insurance organizations, all vying to provide better service for us all. But, how hospitable are these companies towards their own employees With many hotel chains and travel agencies finally coming out of a three year slump from 2001 to 2003 1 , conditions are improving in all aspects of the industry. Many people within human resources often feel like they are over burdened and over whelmed with the massive influx of work they must constantly handle. It is a very difficult job, to say the least, but rewards and conditions are improving as better economic times have been showing. However, the most striking statistic is the difference in pay rates amongst different travel areas around the world. Europe in particular is a very strongly growing travel destination and a great place to work as a human resources employee for a travel organization 2. Ever since the events here in the United States since 9/11, the hospitality industry has been suffering, whereas the industry has been growing exponentially in other parts of the world. Whenever catastrophic events such as 9/11 do occur, they always effect multiple industries, but it has been proven time and time again that it's usually only localized, and not permanent. This is apparent with the steady growth within the last couple years. In 2004 alone, the entire travel industry within the United States has grown in revenue by 7.6%, with profits increasing by 11.4% in the same time period 3. The strength of the American economy coupled with a renewed interest in travel is just a few of the factors effecting such growth. But probably the largest player in the recent spurt of production has to be within the human resources departments at many of these organizations. In the early years of the new millennium, many hospitality organizations were simply trying to brace for the effects of 9/11. With crackdowns in security at airports and hundreds of flight cancellations, most businesses within the United States lost a lot of their revenue. They could only offer odd hours to many of their employees to make up for their lack of labor funding, and often times couldn't afford to pay most employees like they used to. What 1would normally cause uproar within an industry was left fairly silent within most businesses. However, European and especially Caribbean hospitality industries experience an unparalleled amount of growth. According to a study of salary comparisons within human resource departments done in 1997, Caribbean employees were grossing approximately $48,000 USD for a salary, Europe averaging roughly 1$28,000 USD, compared with the world average of $22,000 USD 4. There are many factors that some businesses are finally starting to follow here in the United States which allowed these two areas to become so strong. Europe has many organizations which help the hospitality industry. It's always been within European culture to travel the world, it is the great land of exploration. One of the most prominent organizations within Europe effecting travel is ATOL (Air Travel Organizer's License), which is a type of travel insurance organization. It is a requirement within London for travel organizations to be ATOL protected. ATOL provides insurance to travelers who get stranded somewhere because a company or business is foreclosed, and additional travel insurance can be purchased from ATOL. This removes a lot of the work a human resources representative has to take care of, and gives them more time to focus on team building, skills training and marketing. Thus, employees of hotels and travel agencies can work better hours and are often trained better than in other parts of the world. The United States has an absence of such organizations, partially because of our strict policy of laissez-faire. Many businesses would benefit from a government sponsored organization such as ATOL within the United States. However, the focus has been on the human resources department due to the absence of such a great asset. Hotels across the country have been offering better pay and bonuses to certain employees who can market an idea or set up good training meetings to improve the production of all aspects of employees. Within the past few years, many organizations have been buying up hotel properties due to their exponential growth. Take Hospitality Properties for instance, who reported a 29% increase in revenue in the third quarter of 2004 5. With new found trust within agencies around the country, more businesses are feeling closer and closer to their employees. And this is a feature which has been in absence in the past few years. However, a lot of work can still be done. Many smaller organizations don't feel as if they need a middle man by using human resources. However, I conducted an interview with a friend of mine who feels very differently. She works at a local restaurant and has operated her own, and told me she feels that being close to your employees and finding any way you can to make the job easier for them increases production and revenue in all aspects 6. When you can give your employees more motivation and show that you care, the more production you can expect to get out of your employees. I myself am a team builder for the marketing corporation I work for. I myself have found that the more time you can spend to personally train and motivate your own employees, the more they can perform and the better they feel about it. This in turn can help to greatly reduce multiple factors of bad human resources issues such as turnover and low levels of efficiency. However, larger companies, who have been doing the best, simply by volume alone, don't feel like they need to help the smaller employees out. Smaller businesses, although in a totally different playing field, look up to larger companies as templates to follow, and this has helped to bring down a lot of businesses. Hospitality is a difficult industry, because it is difficult to please everyone. But, the most powerful form of advertisement and the best way to help your business is by generating good worth of mouth. An average person will tell about two people whenever they have a good experience while out shopping or staying somewhere. The same person will tell an average of eight people if they suffer from a bad experience somewhere. Using some simple mathematics, it's easy to see how if you just start out with good human resources practices and make life better for everyone, you will save about four times as much money and time. This, in turn, can produce better revenue and more profit, and allow you to treat your own employees with better working hours, and better pay. Once a company can develop good human resource strategies and ideas, a hospitality company can truly begin to shine. Also, providing more diversity has helped to attribute to the recent explosion of growth within the hospitality industry. Approximately 43.8% of all managerial positions are currently held by women within the industry 7. Turnover rates may seem a constant problem, but part of the reason has been from providing jobs within hotels and restaurants to younger workers. Many receptionists and food preparation employees are currently between ages 17-20. However, due to many organizations such as the World Travel and Tourism Summit meetings have been providing strategies to promote careers within hospitality to younger workers by providing bonuses and advanced training to pad resumes for future job seeking. Although usually not nearly as educated as older employees, younger workers are known to learn quicker and through inexpensive human resource training, it's easy to hire younger workers for less and provide them with an experience they would rarely experience elsewhere. There are literally hundreds of ways to improve the overall lifestyle of human resource workers and all general employees on the whole. There are a few particulars which should be used more often, such as multi-skilling, increased responsibility for employees, improved travel and hospitality training and skills teaching, and of course, consistent and continuing training. Multi-skilling is quite possible the best way to achieve better production, particularly in younger workers to expose them to more since they tend to learn faster. Multi-skilling simply involves teaching multiple skills and tasks to particular employees, such as training a receptionist to not only take calls and book appointments, but training them to carry out research for travel destinations or how to prepare rooms at a hotel for customers. By teaching employees two different skills at once, you can literally cut down on labor costs by half if you teach them efficiently and well. This helps to increase responsibility for workers as well, and when workers succeed in their responsibilities, they generally feel better about themselves. Another major problem with most companies, not just hospitality businesses but businesses everywhere is a simple problem that is easily fixed. Increase the amount of training and the intensiveness of said training. At Vector, we have meetings every week with improved sales techniques and training. We keep it consistent too, so everything we learn is fresh in our minds, and an average meeting only takes about an hour or two. This isn't a whole lot of difference in a work schedule for a manager already being paid a salary, so why not All in all, the travel and hospitality industry, although growing in ways it never has before, can do a lot more to improve their human resources departments. By implementing many of the skills I talked about, you can reduce overall time and odd hour scheduling for your employees, which in the end will keep everyone happy. Modeling ourselves after Europe will also help out, and hopefully one day we will get an organization like ATOL. Works Cited Page Associate Press, Hospitality Properties 3Q Rise, November 18, 2005 http://www.forbes.com/associatedpress/feeds/ap/2005/11/07/ap2321532.html Most of article cited Expedia Corporate Travel, Partner with your Human Resources Dept, November 18, 2005 http://expediacorporate.com/daily/resource/bp_optimize-efficiency1.asp Key areas cited Hospitality Net, Industry News, Hotels Break Three Year Losing Streak November 17, 2005 http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4022977.searchquery=hr+hospitality+industry+us Profit growth, Labor costs International Labor Organization, HR Development, November 17, 2005 http://www.ilo.org/public/english/dialogue/sector/techmeet/tmhct01/tmhctr3.htm Labor productivity, labor techniques, and women in hospitality Questia, Definition of Laissez Faire, November 18, 2005 http://www.questia.com Laissez Faire definition R.H. Woods; W. Heck; M.Sciarini: Turnover and diversity in the lodging industry, American Hotel Foundation, 1998. Endnotes Read More