Core Elements and Characteristics of Hospitality - Coursework Example

Introduction The hospitality industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world today. It depends largely on disposable income and leisure time for its growth (Pine and Gilmore, 1999). Hospitality is one of the fields within the service industry and includes event planning, transportation, theme parks, restaurants, lodging, and cruise line. The hospitality industry includes different organizations that offer accommodation and food service (Schmitt and Simonson, 1997). Different sectors that make up the hospitality industry include food and beverage, accommodation, events and meetings, entertainment, gaming, recreation, visitor information, and tourism services. “Vacancy rate” or the “usage rate” forms the foundation of the hospitality industry. This means that hotel, restaurants, theme parks and other sectors that define the hospitality industry, seek to ensure that large numbers of customers are “processed” on a daily basis in order to maximize productivity of the hospitality industry. According to Pine and Gilmore (1999) companies in the hospitality industry must design experiences that customers judge to be worth the price the customers pay. This means that excellent marketing, design, and delivery of services to the customers creates a good experience for the customers just like the delivery of quality goods is key to the growth of the manufacturing industry (Davis and Meyer, 2003). The purpose of this paper is to explore the core elements and characteristics of hospitality and their role in the development of commercial hospitality product in the context of the international experience economy. The paper focuses also on the role of management in the provision of hospitality in diverse cultural environments with regard to how Melbourne small bars and restaurants situated in the city lane have become both an important and iconic part of the Melbourne hospitality scene. Core elements and characteristics of hospitality Production of memorable experience One of the core elements or characteristics of hospitality is the creation of memorable experiences. Pine and Gilmore (1999) noted that an excellent experience occurs when players in the hospitality industry recognize that goods should be used a props, services should be used as the stage to create memorable experiences in the minds of the customers. In order to gain the required experience, the participation and engagement of the guest is an important element that must be taken into consideration. Experience production in the hospitality industry covers a wide range of offering such as, surrounding and buildings, employees, and the services provided to the guests. Pine and Gilmore (1999) noted that the production of memorable experience plays a significant role in the development of commercial hospitality product in an international experience economy in that, buyer of the memorable experiences, value the extent to which the company reveals to them during a particular period of time (Snel, 2005). While economic offerings such as services, goods and commodities provide the buyer with external experiences, experiences in the hospitality industry exists in the customer’s mind and this engages with intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual experiences the customer has (Gunn, 2002). Hence, different customers have different types of experiences that depend on the way customers perceive the services offered to them in the hospitality sectors. The Melbourne small bars and restaurants situated in the city lane have become important and iconic part of the Melbourne hospitality scene due to production of memorable experiences to the guests (Cooper, 2002). First, the surrounding produces memorable experiences due to the strategic location of the small bars and restaurants in the vicinity of the city. Guests ride and walk comfortably from the restaurants and small bars to the rest of the city such as shopping malls (Boswijk, Thijssen, and Peelen, 2005). For example, the restaurants and small bars provide guests with memorable entertainment in form of live bands that perform live music thus providing the guests with a high level of engagement and participation. Pine and Gilmore (1999) held that like goods and services experiences must meet the needs the customers for which it is intended. The small bars and restaurants in Melbourne tailor their experiences to meet the needs of diverse customer by providing diverse services in terms of price, cultural offering and class consideration. For example, accommodation services provided by small bars range in prices and customers have to be engaged to choose the type of accommodation the fit their preference. Additionally, the type of foods offered in the restaurants comes with a variety of cuisine (Cooper, 2002). This takes care of the diverse customers that stream into the restaurants. Theming the experiences Theming the experiences refer to the aspect of envisioning a well defined theme as the first step in experience staging (Fuglsang and Sørensen, 2007). A poorly envisioned theme does not give the guests the platform in which to gather and make their impressions. In the context of international experience economy, theming experiences provides customer with an ample ground to organize their impressions (Fuglsang and Sørensen, 2007). The experience obtained by guests is therefore not lasting. Theming experiences play an important role in the development of commercial hospitality product because it gives the customer the overall picture of what to expect once in the surrounding (Fuglsang and Sørensen, 2007). Small bars and restaurants in Melbourne situated in the city have well themed experiences evident in the names of entertainment restaurants. For example, names such as Rainforest café, Planet Hollywood, Hardrock bar (to mention a few) provides the guests with the required shopping experience that helps in creating the desired impressions bout the experiences they are about to get once they get into the small bars and restaurants. Hence, theming experiences helps in the development of commercial products that meets and needs of the customers by providing the guest with the products of their choice. Eliminating negative signals This is another core element and characteristic of hospitality (Rifkin, 2000). Eliminating negative signal or cure means that the integrity of the experiences the customers have must be taken into consideration. In the development of commercial hospitality products, eliminating negative signals or cures means that anything that contradicts, distracts, diminishes the theme must be eliminated. For example, messages in the walls of small bars and restaurants, messages on the tables and messages on the uniforms won by the employees are some of the signals that either put off the customer or attract the customers even more (Swarbrooke, 2001). Pine and Gilmore (1999) observed that customers must be provided with space to satisfy their needs. The restaurants located in city lane in Melbourne provide the guest with the serene environment where guest can in conversations without interruptions from the front desk employees. Gusts that prefer to read in quiet places are also provided with quiet environment for reading. Eliminating negative cues in small bars and restaurants situated in city lanes in Melbourne plays an important role of developing commercial hospitality products in the context of international experience economy by providing serene environments where guests drawn from different parts of the world can find a comfortable place to carry out their activities with minimal disturbance. Role of management in providing hospitality in diverse cultural environments One of the roles of management in providing hospitality in diverse cultural environments is to consistently provide engaging experiences to guests from different cultural backgrounds. This means that small bar and restaurant managers should offer consistent hospitality services to all the guests without regarding some gusts as superior to the others (Sørensen, 2007). For example, guests from poor countries should be treated consistently as guests from rich countries. The harmonization of guest experiences creates memorable experiences across the spectrum. In Melbourne, small bars and restaurants situated in the city lane harmonize their guest experiences to ensure that guests are not discriminated in terms of hospitality services they are provided with. Hence, the guest leaves the small bars and restaurants with the same experiences of “super services” (Sørensen, 2007). The second role of management in providing hospitality in diverse cultural environments is to avoid overpricing the services offered in their respective hospitality sectors (Csikszentmihalyi, 2001). Overpricing of hospitality services in terms of the perceived abilities of the guests to pay the price renders the experience unmanageable by the guests. Managers should therefore apply the same price for hospitality across the guests (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004). In Melbourne, small bars and restaurants charge the same price for the hospitality across the cultural spectrum of guest that stream into the bars and restaurants. The third role of management is that managers should seek to evoke all the guest senses by providing experiences that engages all the senses (Sørensen, 2008). The reason for this is that the more the senses hospitality evokes the more memorable the experiences becomes. Managers in small bars and restaurants in Melbourne apply this technique by ensuring that all the senses are evoked by the experiences guests receive in the bars and restaurants (Schmitt, 2003). For example, guests are treated to soft and hard music, variety of delicacies, entertainment joints, well furnished environments, and quality services from employees that evoke most of the guest senses. In conclusion, it is evident from the above sections that the hospitality industry entails more than just serving the guests with what they need. It involves the creation of an environment that provides for a wider engagement and participation of the guests (Sørensen, 2008): It also entails the application of simplicity in service delivery by enhancing the guest experience rather than delivering high quality hospitality services. Leaving lasting memorable experiences in the minds of individual guest should be the objective of the management in the hospitality industry. References Boswijk. A., Thijssen, J., and Peelen, E. (2005). A New Perspective on the Experience Economy: Meaningful Experiences. Pearson Education, Amsterdam Cooper, R. (2002). New products: what separates winners from losers? Journal of Production Innovation Management, Vol.4. pp. 169-184. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2001). Flow. The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Perennial. Davis, S. and Meyer, C. (2003). Blur. The Speed of Change in the Connected World. Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Books. Fuglsang, L,. & Sørensen, F. (2007). The entrepreneur as educator: service development in asemi-peripheral area. Proceedings from the XVII International RESER Conference, Tampere: Finland Gunn, C. (2002). Tourism Planning – Basisic, concepts, cases. Journal of Tourism Management, Vol 4 (3): p.12-34 Pine, J., & Gilmore, J. (1999). The Experience Economy. Harvard Business Review, p.1-105. Prahalad, C. & Ramaswamy, V. (2004). The Future of Competition. Co-creating unique value with customers. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Rifkin, J. (2000). The Age of Access> The New Culture of Hyper capitalism where all of Life is a Paid-for Experience. 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