Commercial Hospitality and Hospitality to the Home - Coursework Example

Commercial Hospitality and Hospitality to the Home Name Institution Commercial Hospitality and Hospitality to the Home Different literatures have offered different definition of commercial hospitality. According to Lashley (2008), hospitality can be described as the relationship between a guest and the host where an individual is offered reception, entertainment, care and kindness. Hospitality is considered a social and commercial service. In the tourism industry perspective, hospitality involves a concurrent human exchange which is offered voluntarily to enhance the needs and wants of the people involved through offering services such as entertainment, accommodation and food (Kim and Moon, 2009). The hospitality industry consists of numerous fields such as transportation, restaurant, event planning, etc. Today, hospitality is less associated with protection and more directed towards etiquette and entertainment. Nevertheless, it still involves care and respect for guests by providing them with what they want and treating them equally. According to Thio (2005), hospitality is a three-dimensional phenomenon; social, private and commercial. Whether, private or commercial, hospitality should involve a clear communication between host and guests. This essay will offer arguments to discuss whether commercial hospitality is an extension of hospitality to the home. The paper will suggest that commercial hospitality and hospitality in the home have common themes and therefore, commercial hospitality is more than an extension of hospitality the home. Hospitality can be defined in terms of three main domains; social, domestic and commercial (Thio, 2005). Social hospitality involves offering services to guests while considering the cultural obligations and the customs employed by the host establishment. Commercial hospitality involves offering services to guests as an obligation for monetary exchange. On the other hand, private or domestic hospitality involves offering memorable experience in order to satisfy the emotional and functional needs of visitors (Lashley, 2008). Many companies have focussed on offering hospitality services based on monetary exchange rather than emotional or functional dimension. This puts the values of commercial hospitality over other important values. According to Barsky and Nash (2002), offering hospitality services by only focussing on the functionality dimensions involves the provision of basic needs of guests such as accommodation and food without putting emphasis on other needs. Lashley (2008) differentiate between commercial hospitality and hospitality to the home. Commercial hospitality is considered a formal way of offering services to guests as a repay for monetary exchange. These services are offered in institutions like hotels and restaurants that are typically impersonal. On the other hand, hospitality to the home is concerned with offering effective services to guests that make them feel homely (Thio, 2005). Historically, commercial hospitality has been focussed more on offering impersonal services for financial exchange, making it very different from hospitality in the home. It was a form of hospitality where services such as accommodation and food were offered without any interaction between the host and the visitors (Ariffin and Maghzi, 2012). This suggested that it did not involve hospitableness which is part of hospitality in the home. However, commercial hospitality has evolved overtime with a breadth in its definition (O’Connor, 2005). Commercial hospitality can be able to incorporate both social and domestic concepts in its operations. It can become more about offering services to guests while at the same time establishing a great host-guest relationship. According to Nameghi (2013), although there is a connection between hospitality in the home and commercial hospitality, the two concepts differ to some extent. Hospitality in the home is more of a personal gift. For instance, an ill-behaved guest in such a surrounding is likely to be ejected while in a commercial hospitality, an ill-behaved guest will be tolerated if he pays more for the services. It is argued that commercial hospitality systems often charge more since they expect the guests to steal soaps and towels and therefore, the charges are enough to cover for such incidences (Nameghi, 2013). On the other hand, a home owner would be insulted in an event of theft of towels and may take serious actions thereafter. From these examples, it is evident that the difference between commercial and hospitality to the home lies on the monetary exchange and relationship between guests and hosts. In a commercial hospitality setting, there is a specific type of relationship between the visitors and the host whereby, the host has an understanding of what the guests want and enhance their comfort by delivery services according to their recommendations (Lashley, 2008). Furthermore, hospitality in the home is more focussed on friendship while commercial hospitality is focussed on monetary exchange where hosts are obliged to offer the best service to meet the needs of the visitors. Hospitality companies today have incorporated social and domestic domain to its commercial operation in order to offer memorable stay for the guests (Ariffin and Maghzi, 2012). For instance, Royal Main Hotel in Australia has put some efforts to satisfy the physiological, psychological and emotional needs of the visitors. It offers gifts for guests with children as a way of connecting with them emotionally. Also, in specific occasions such as Christmas, birthdays and wedding anniversary, the staffs offer a bottle of champagne and other gifts and personally deliver to the guests. The incorporation of the gifts reflecting the domestic or private domain and the personal delivery reflecting the social domain assist the employees to tap to the emotional needs of the visitors (Ariffin and Maghzi, 2012). Since the introduction of such services, the management has discovered that visitors are appreciative of such gestures and often return back. Therefore, this act of incorporating the values of hospitality in the home has enhanced the success rate of commercial hospitality (Ariffin and Maghzi, 2012). The values of hospitality in the home are reflected in accommodation in a commercial home setting. To understand the concept of hospitality in the home, it is important to have an understanding of what a home is. According to Domenico and Lynch (2007), a home is a place that has the ability to offer refuge, safety and residence. It can be applied as a setting for hospitality through commercial home (Domenico and Lynch, 2007). In the context of hospitality industry, a commercial home is an owner-occupied space that offers accommodation, guesthouses and food. Commercial homes have gained popularity today since many consumers today prefer a more specialised tourism experience. They carry the values of hospitality in the homes although they are based on monetary exchange rather than friendship (Domenico and Lynch, 2007). Therefore, it is correct to argue that commercial homes incorporate the values of both commercial and hospitality in the home. The nature and purpose of commercial hospitality have evolved since the 20th century. Today, commercial hospitality systems like restaurants and hotels are aimed at creating a home away from home (O’Gorman, 2009). They are meant to allow guests to feel protected and confortable by having a positive host-guest relationship. In the past, commercial hospitality establishments only offered accommodation at a fee. Today, they have revolved to become functional places with facilities and equipment that are typically part of a home. In addition, to ensure guests feel at home, some people are transforming their homes into accommodations enabling guests to fulfil their home fantasies (O’Gorman, 2009). Many 5-star hotels and restaurants have transformed their operations to create the aspect of home in their operations (Lovitt, 2011). Hotels such as the Darling Hotel, Hilton Hotel and Amora Hotel have created the concept of home away from home in their accommodations. For instance, Hilton has come up with the concept of Home 2 Suites, an extension of their hotel rooms to accommodate guess who want to stay for more than 10 days. Home 2 Suites are designed with a home concept in mind (Lovitt, 2011). They have in-room kitchen, dining room, reading areas, etc. to cater for people who yearn the values of hospitality in the home. Incorporating this aspect into their commercial hospitality establishments has led to increase in profits and sales as a result of the word of mouth. Such concept supports the notion that commercial hospitality has become an extension of hospitality in the home (Lovitt, 2011). In conclusion, hospitality involves three distinct domains; social, private and commercial. In the past, commercial hospitality established focused on offering basic needs such as accommodation and food while disregarding other important needs including psychological and emotional needs. However, overtime, hospitality has evolved in regards to its motive and nature. It has incorporated social, private and commercial domain in order to satisfy all the needs of the customers. Commercial and hospitality in the home vary in terms of host-guest relationship and monetary underpinning. Commercial hospitality is based on limited relationship between the host and guest and often put emphasis on monetary exchange while hospitality in the home base its services on emotional and psychological needs of the guests. Also, hospitality to the home involves the practice of hospitableness by considering the emotional, functional and physiological needs of the visitors. Commercial and hospitality in the home were two distinctive phenomena but with changing nature of consumers’ demands and needs, commercial hospitality has incorporated the values of hospitality to the home becoming an extension of it. References Ariffin, A. A & Maghzi, A 2012, A preliminary study on customer expectations of hotel hospitality: Influences of personal and hotel factors. International Journal of Hospitality Management, vol. 31, pp. 191-198. Barsky, J & Nash, L 2002, Evoking Emotion: Affective Keys to Hotel Loyalty. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 39-46. Domenico, M & Lynch, P 2007, Host/Guest Encounters in the Commercial Home. Diurnal of Business Management, 3(26), pp. 321-338. Kim, W. G & Moon, Y. J 2009, Customers’ cognitive, emotional, and actionable response to the services cape: A test of the moderating effect of the restaurant type. International Journal of Hospitality Management, vol. 28, pp. 144-156. Lashley, C 2008, Studying Hospitality: Insights from Social Sciences. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 69-84. Lovitt, R 2011, Extended-Stay hotels a home away from home, Viewed 14th August 2017 from http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41297302/ns/travel-business_travel/t/extended-stay-hotels-home-away-home/ Nameghi, E.M 2013, The Relationship between Private Domain and Commercial Domain of Hospitality in Airlines: Employing Partial Least Square Technique. International Journal of Marketing Studies, vol. 2, no. 5, pp. 102-110. O’Connor, D 2005, Towards a new interpretation of hospitality. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 267-271. O’Gorman, K 2009, Origins of the Commercial Hospitality Industry. From the Fanciful to Factual. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, vol. 7, no. 21, pp. 777-790. Thio, S 2005, Understanding Hospitality Activities: Social, Private and Commercial Domain. Journal of Hotel Management, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-5. Read More