Literature Review On The Hospitality Industry Tourism Essay

Literature Review On The Hospitality Industry Tourism EssayThe cordial reception assiduity is experiencing gain even in times of recession. Between 2004 and 2014, the cordial reception application is expected to add 17 percent in wage and salary employment (U.S. function of Labor Statistics, 2006-07). A growing demand of cordial reception workers can be translated into a growing need of cordial reception educational programs to adequately prep be the manpower to meet present and future demands in this enormous attention. Programs need to provide an education that improves the employability of the cordial reception graduates. However, employability of the future graduates will not increase until and un little they convincingly portray the skills and competencies involve in the workplace. In an education program, students develop skills and competencies through years in various cognitive heart and soul beas. In that aspect, the hospitality platform needs to prioritiz e the field of battle areas according to the perceived impressiveness of the effort practitioners, and this prioritization has to be up-to-date to reflect the changing needs of the fabrication.Although curriculum of hospitality and tourism programs ingest been examined in a plethora of research studies, little attention is given to hospitality programs housed in accredited colleges of occupancy. Be occasion of the limitations obligated by the accrediting bodies, authorized aspects of the curriculum such as course offerings, and credits become restricted to certain extent. As a result, there is a need to evaluate the curriculum of such programs separately from other hospitality and tourism management programs such as the independent ones and those housed in various several(predicate) colleges.Gursoy and Swanger (2004) investigated the curriculum of a hospitality and tourism management program housed in an accredited college of business. As part of their study, they ordinat eed hospitality paper areas according to the perceptions of hospitality professionals, identified any gaps between the perceptions and the current curriculum and suggested a feign of curriculum for hospitality programs in accredited colleges of Business. However, hospitality curriculum needs to be ongoing and relevant to the current industry needs and expectations. Also, the changing character of the industry calls for recent graduates to reflect the changes and challenges of the industry. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to replicate Gursoy and Swangers (2004) study, and provide an updated ranking of the hospitality give in areas. In addition, the changing needs of the hospitality industry is highlighted through a comparison of their 2004 ranking with the current ranking of hospitality subject areas according to hospitality professionals perceptions. As such, likely changes to the 2004 curriculum specimen are suggested establish on the findings of this study. The specifi c research questions that will be answered through this study areWhat are the current perceptions of industry professionals regarding the importance of course subject areas?Are there any significant changes in the perceptions of industry professionals in the last five years?Are there any gaps between the industry needs within the changing operable environment and the current hospitality curriculum?Literature ReviewHospitality students have oftentimes been criticized for having unrealistic expectations of the lawsuits of responsibilities they whitethorn be given and consequently the types of skills they will be expected to exercise on entering the hospitality industry (Purcell and Quinn, 1996). At the same time, the industry often discounted a students formal qualifications on the grounds of lack of experience and frequently we hear the complaint that students are overqualified but under experienced for even founding level management smudges (Raybould Wilkins, 2005). In order t o bridge this gap, the hospitality programs underwent several changes in its substance, focus, and structure.In 1996, Formica published a study of tourism and hospitality education in Europe and America that examined programs and future trends. In his study, he argued that there was an international movement that supported the emancipation of hospitality education from its vocational base to an academic field of inquiry. Formicas claim was later supported by Morrison and OMahony (2003) in their case study regarding the liberation of hospitality management education. Rappole (2000) stated that programs have shifted from a home-economics focus towards a business-related one and Chathoth and Sharma (2007) noted this as the likely rationalness behind the change in curricular structure of hospitality programs in the United States. Most programs in the 1980s and early 1990s were geared towards developing the functional skills of the students, but during the past decade, universities we re foc employ on both operational and management-related courses as part of the curriculum (Chathoth Sharma 2007 Rappole, 2000).Developing a hospitality curriculum openhandedly involve three major components substantive knowledge, skills, and values (Dopson and Tas, 2004). small-arm operational issues such as working knowledge of hospitality services were important (Kay and Russette 2000), managerial and behavioral issues such as managerial skills were often considered to be to a greater extent important (Okeiyi, Finely and Postel 1994).Thus, the hospitality curriculum should not only teach the students in crucial operational skills but in addition facilitate them to learn and raise the art of management. To accomplish this purpose, it was necessary to incorporate the perspectives of the industry professionals into the hospitality curriculum. This was basically achieved in two ways. First, regular industry professionals were invited to visit classrooms as guest lecturers and i ndustry experts, or to participate in executive education programs, as part of the curriculum review process (Lefever Withiam, 1998). Second, competency models were devised through which industry practitioners bedded the competencies and content areas most important in the workplace. Educators then made a strong note of these important competencies, and likewise incorporated them into the curriculum.In the course of time, a large-minded result of studies were undertaken regarding identifying and ranking competencies of hospitality graduates. One of the first competency establish studies in hospitality was undertaken by Buergermeister (1983) where he found human relation skills and attitudes to be a very important area for hospitality graduates. Among others, Tas (1988) roam forward a hospitality curriculum by identifying 36 skills college graduates expected to possess from analyse general managers of 75 hotels. While, most competency ground studies in hospitality management f ocused solely on the perceptions of the hospitality industry practitioners (Ashley et al. 1995 Breiter and Clements, 1996 Kriegl, 2000) a hardly a(prenominal) incorporated the perspectives of educators along with the industry practitioners (Su et al. 1997 Tsai et al. 2006) and a few even added the perspectives of students to the group (Enz et al. 1993 Okeiyi et al.1994). Among the studies from the industrys perspective, the majority focused on either the hotel industry itself (Tas 1988 Siu 1998 Kay and Russette, 2000 Tesone and Ricci, 2006) or the overall hospitality industry (Ashley et al. 1995 Breiter and Clements, 1996), with a few focusing solely on other sectors such as the food service sector (Horng Lu, 2006 Okeiyi et al. 1994).Notable works in the competency-based approach include Chung-Herrera, Enz, and Lankaus (2003) presentation of an industry specific and future based leaders competency model. In their study, they identified and ranked 99 key hospitality work related co mpetencies. In some other case, Nelson and Dopson (2001) compared hotel managers, human resource specialists, and hospitality alumnis perceptions of competencies necessary for winner in the hospitality field. Eventually, Dopson and Nelson (2003) ranked 37 course content areas using the same three groups, and found several differences in their perceived importance of those course content areas.Competency models were developed as a descriptive tool to identify, categorize and summarize competencies that might be relevant to perform a specific job effectively in an organization (Chung-Herrera et al., 2003). However, these competency models are often broad and generic in nature and lacks emphasis on specific hospitality skills. Employers, who generally do not want narrowly teach graduates, recognize the importance of generic competencies (Harvey, et. al., 1997). Raybould and Wilkins (2005) structured a generic skill framework to rank important skill areas of hospitality graduates fro m both employers and students perspectives. However, the nature of hospitality workplace, demands mastery of both generic skill sets and hospitality specific skill sets. In that aspect, taking into account hospitality subject areas, and course content areas, provides an extended representation of the skills and knowledge graduates will require at the workplace.Chung (2000) laid divulge an effective plan for reforming the hotel management curriculum of Korean universities based on required competencies of hotel employees and career success in the hotel industry. Their study found significant relationships between competencies required of hotel employees and hotel management courses of universities, between competencies required of hotel employees and career success in the hotel industry, between hotel management courses of universities and career success in the hotel industry, and last but not the least between hotel management courses of universities and their contribution to care er development in the hotel industry. While this method might be easier for the industry practitioners to identify with, it might be difficult for educators to reform a programs curriculum based on such models because of the broad and diverse nature of such competencies. Since, there is a significant relationship between competencies required of hotel employees and hotel management courses of universities, in this regard, it makes more sense if the industry practitioners rank the actual subject areas and course content areas offered in the curriculum. However, the subject areas and course content areas in the hospitality program might be difficult for industry practitioners to identify with especially if they are not graduates of hospitality programs. In this regard, the concerned school has to rank the subject areas from the perspectives of their own alumni, who are now established hospitality industry professionals so that they can easily identify the subject areas and relate them to their skill requirements in the workplace.Keeping the hospitality curricula rigorous, relevant, and current to the industry trends seems to be a clear concern of the hospitality practitioners. According to Dopson and Tas (2004) the biggest challenge for hospitality educators today is to determine clear objectives for the curriculum that takes care of the constantly changing needs of the industry. In that aspect, it is of utmost importance to close the gap between what is taught to students and what the industry expects of the students being hired (Dopsan and Tas 2004 Okeyi et al. 1994). Therefore, in addition to being an industry and faculty driven process, curriculum development needs to incorporate the changing needs of the industry, and foster innovation. In short, the process needs to be ongoing (Dopson and Tas, 2004).MethodsThe purpose of this study was to identify hospitality subject areas and rank them according to the perceptions of hospitality industry professionals. In addition the current perceptions of industry professionals regarding hospitality subject areas were to be compared to their perceptions five years agone to reflect the changing requirements of the industry. For gathering data from industry professionals, the same great deal instrument developed using a four-step process by Gursoy and Swanger (2004) was used. The four step included conducting a series of focus groups, developing the batch instrument to systematically measure the perceived importance of the course subject areas by industry and to investigate the gaps between hospitality curriculum and industry needs based on the findings of the focus groups, pre-testing the instrument on a sample of industry professionals using an on-line survey method and last but not the least revising and finalizing the instruments based on the pre-test results. Based on the feedback received by Gursoy and Swanger (2004) from their respondents, the survey instrument was modified in 2009. For th e purpose of comparison only the common subject areas between the 2004 and 2009 surveys were retained. The final instrument was employed to collect data on hospitality industry professionals perceptions of the importance of the course subject areas.Development of the Survey InstrumentThe procedures recommended by Churchill (1979) and DeVellis (1991) were followed for developing the survey instrument. Initially, an item pool containing a summate of 39 subject matter variables were developed or identified from the literature, current hospitality curriculum, and from a series of five focus groups conducted with the consultative board members, eatery executives, hotel executives, university alumni, and hospitality educators. The content validity of the items that were identified from the focus groups and from the literature was assessed by ten faculty members. The faculty members feedback on content and understandability was gathered based on which the items were modified to enhance their clarity, readability, and content validity. Based on the same process any redundancy in the scale items was removed to improve the proposed scale. later on the content validity check, it was pre-tested using an on-line survey method involving 50 industry professionals.The survey instrument was modified one last time based on the pre-test. Each variable was measured using a 5-point Likert scale (5=extremely important, 1= not important at all) as to their importance for success in the hospitality industry. The final version of the 2004 survey instrument consisted of four parts 40 subject matter variables, 128 course content variables, demographic data, and information regarding the performance of the company the respondent was part of. For this study, only the part that deals with the subject areas and demographic information are considered. In 2009 some changes were made based on the feedback received from the participants of Gursoy and Swangers 2004 study REPEAT. While the 2004 survey dealt with 40 subject areas, the 2009 one had only 33. 11 subject areas were removed from the 2004 survey, while 4 subject matters were added based on the received feedback, in the 2009 survey. The subject areas that were taken out of the 2009 survey instrument are Fundamentals of Cooking, Math, Accounting, Economics for Decision Making, Tourism, Gaming/Casino Operation, dispersion Channels, Secondary receipts Management, Beverage Management, Destination Management, and Dining Room Service Management. The subject areas that were added to the 2009 study are International Tourism, Public Relations, Convention and Meeting Planning, and victuals and Beverage Management. For the comparison, the 29 common areas between the 2009 and 2004 surveys were considered. entropy CollectionA self-administered survey questionnaire was mailed to the selected sample of industry professionals. An individually signed cover earn containing the name and address of the respondent was include d with each questionnaire, along with a self-addressed, stamped envelope. A reminder was sent after 3 weeks, to increase the emergence of responses.Data AnalysisDescriptive Analysis was undertaken to rank the means of the respective variables from the survey. Independent samples t-tests were carried out to compare the 2009 rankings to the 2004 ones. All the data analysis was performed in Statistical packet boat for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 18.ResultsThe survey was sent to a total of 2340 target participants. 369 responses were returned, resulting in an acceptable response rate of 15.8%.Profile of the Respondents The demographic characteristics of gender, present position and company, education level, ethnicity, type of property, and size of the property were included in this study in an effort to provide a descriptive profile of the survey respondents. sexual urge The survey asked the participants to indicate their gender (male or female). Out of 369, 358 respondents ind icated their gender. The number of male respondents was 177 (49.4%) while female respondents were 179 (50.6%).Present Position/Name of Company Over clxxx different companies were represented in the study. Regarding present work positions, the respondents provided more than 200 different positions or titles, which were grouped into 15 categories based on their similarities. Some of the peremptory categories included Sales/Marketing with 42 responses (11.4%), pay/Accounting with 29 (7.9%), General Manager and Human Resource each with 28 (7.6%), Chairman/ chairperson/CEO/CFO/COO and Business Owners each with 16 (4.3%), Educator/Teacher/Trainer with 13 (3.5%), Other Managers (restaurant, FB, convention, events, store, regional, training, guest services, other sections) with 43 (11.7%), and Retired/ dismissed with 26 (7.1%). Besides these major categories, there was an Other category for the grouping of many positions that were listed less than 3 times and did not readily fit into an other group, such as Attorney.Education Level Out of 355 individuals who provided education level information, 298 indicated they have a bachelors stratum (80.8%) 38 have a graduate degree (10.3%) 17 did some graduate level work (4.6%) 1 individual was a high school graduate (1.6%), and 1 person indicated other (1.6%).Ethnicity Of the 352 respondents who indicated their ethnicity, 328 (93.2%), circled Caucasian/White 10 (2.8%) circled Asian American/Pacific Islander 8 (2.3%) circled Hispanic/Latino 3 selected Black/African American 1 (0.3%) circled American Indian/Alaska Native and 2 (.6%) circled other.Size of Property For lodging properties information regarding the number of rooms in the hotel was collected and for restaurants, number of seats information was gathered. If respondents worked in neither a lodging property nor a restaurant, they were asked to provide size information using other appropriate measures. Of the 195 individuals who responded to the survey, 92 provided the number of rooms information, 34 provided the number of seats information, and 69 provided the size information by reporting other measures such as total revenue, number of employees, square footage, and others.Of the 92 managers who provided the number of rooms, 2 (2.2%) indicated the property had less than 75 rooms, 17 (18.5%) indicated the property had 75 to 149 rooms, 18 (19.6%) had 150 to 299 rooms, 29 (31.5%) had 300 to 500 rooms, and 26 (28.3%) indicated the property had more than 500 rooms. Most of the individuals who inform managing more than 500 rooms were regional managers, vice presidents, or presidents and CEOs of hotel corporations.Of the 34 managers who provided number of seats information, 6 (17.6%) indicated the restaurant had less than 100 seats, 13 (38.2%) indicated the restaurant had 100 to 199 seats, 8 (23.5%) had 200 to 300 seats, and 7 (20.6%) indicated the restaurant had more than 300 seats. A good number of the individuals who reported managing more than 300 seats were regional managers, vice presidents, or presidents and CEOs of restaurant corporations.Due to the diverse array of survey respondents, a great many different types of responses were received regarding measure of size. Thus, among the 69 respondents who chose, other in the measure of size category, measures such as square footage of convention/conference/meeting/banquet space, number of restaurants/stores/units, number of employees, number of hotels, amount of revenue generated, number of locations, number of accounts, and various others. In addition some respondents provided multiple measures of size.Type of Property 188 responses were recorded regarding the type of property the respondents were affiliated with. Of those, 99 (52.7%) selected lodging, 27 (14.4%) circled restaurants, 16 (8.5%) indicated managed services, and 39 (20.8%) selected other types which included vending, marketing/advertising, airlines, associations, distribution/suppliers, cruise lines casinos , clubs retail/convenience stores, cruise lines, health care, real estate/property development, banking/finance, and consulting.Type of Ownership In the Type of Ownership category 225 responses were recorded. Of them, 124 (55.1) properties were company owned, 68 (30.2%) were independently owned, and 33 (14.7%) were franchised.Ranking and parity ResultsThe 33 course subject areas were ranked in the order of importance by the industry professionals. The ranking is provided in table 1. The top ten subject areas are Leadership, Internships/industry experience, Preparation for Industry Employment, Ethics, Overview of the Hospitality Industry, Revenue/Asset Management, Hospitality Management and Organization, Hospitality operations Analysis, Foodservice Operations and Controls, Computer/Information Technology. The results were compared to Gursoy and Swangers 2004 survey results. Results show that 10 out of 29 hospitality subject areas Hospitality Management and Organization, Principles of Marketing, Hospitality Marketing Strategy, Hospitality Operations Analysis, Ethics, strategical Management, Service Management, Revenue/Asset Management, Study Abroad, and Innovation and Product Development are significantly different compared to the 2004 rankings.DiscussionA look at the two ranking tables (2004 and 2009) pick up that highly important subject areas which were quite consistent in their perceived importance among industry practitioners include leadership, Internships/industry experience, Preparation for Industry Employment, Overview of Hospitality Industry, Foodservice Operations and Controls, and Computer/Information Technology. Leadership, the highest rated subject area, especially has been rated as one of the most important skills deemed of hospitality graduates a number of times in hospitality literature (Okeiyi et al. 1994 Breiter and Clements, 1996 Siu 1998 Kay and Russette, 2000 Kriegl 2000 Nelson and Dopson, 2001).There were some major changes in the ra nkings over a period of 5 years. The ranking of Ethics went down from 1 to 4, service management from 10 to 18, Principles of Marketing from 12 to 19, and Hospitality Marketing Strategy from 14 to 20. On the other hand, Revenue/Asset Management went up 14 places to number 6, and Finance from number 18 to 13. Finance, accounting, and related skills were recognized as very important by hospitality employers in various studies (Getty et al., 1991 Umbriet, 1992 Ashley et al. 1995 Nelson Dopson, 2001 Agut et al. 2003) in the past. In that aspect, this improvement in ranking of finance and related areas is consistent with past literature.As mentioned before, t-tests revealed significant differences in means between 2009 rankings and 2004 rankings in 10 out of the 29 subject areas. 8 of those 10 subject areas had significantly higher means in 2004 compared to 2009. These areas include Hospitality Management and Organization, Principles of Marketing, Hospitality Marketing Strategy, Hospita lity Operations Analysis, Ethics, Strategic Management, Service Management, and Innovation and Product Development. Ethics, especially, showed a very significantly high decrease in means (t (670.079) = -5.116, p = .000). Time and again, moral philosophy has been recognized as the most important skill in the hospitality workplace (Enz et al., 1993 Nelson Dopson, 2001 Gursoy Swanger, 2004). This significant decrease in the ranking of ethics shows that it is not quite deemed as important in the hospitality workplace as it used to be. This decrease in importance can be accounted to two reasons. Firstly, following the wake of Enron, WorldCom, and Adelphia corporate scandals that agitate the business community in early years of this new millennium, scrutinise firms were increasingly putting a lot of emphasis on having stringent audit practices. Consequently, businesses all over the founding were paying special attention to preventing corporate fraud through promoting ethical practic es within the organization. This has increased the demand for ethics, as a top level competency/skill/subject area deemed of recent graduates in the workplace during the time period of Gursoy and Swangers (2004) study. However, the increased emphasis coming out of the shock the business community received from the corporate scandals has faded away a little as time went by. Moreover, business schools all over the world have been producing much better graduates reflecting ethical preparedness in response to those corporate scandals and the increased pressure from the business community. This can be demonstrated by the increased importance on ethics posed by universities in response to industry pressure. MBA programs that require students to take a course dedicated to business and society issues have increased dramatically over time 34% in 2001 to 63% in 2007, and to 69% in 2009 (Aspen Institute CBE, 2010). In the accreditation standards of AACSB, hypothesise in 2003, an increased emp hasis on ethics was made, and schools were mandated to integrate ethics across the curriculum to meet the accreditation standards, although there was no requirement of a standalone ethics course in the curriculum (Swanson, Fisher, 2009). Having received better prepared graduates, it can be argued that the business community no longer rate ethics as important as it rated in 2004 because they are more content now compared to six years ago.Secondly, the prolonged economic downturn has caused the business community to put more weight on other skills/subject areas. Consequently, this shifted the importance on other areas such as leadership and financial competencies, which diminished the relative importance of ethics. Also, in the beginning years of the economic downturn, firms were under shock, and had to operate under strict financial conditions prompting them to avoid any unnecessary lawsuits which might cause them to be ultra protective. Thus, they were in need of better ethically p repared employees, which are reflected in the 2004 rankings.Moving away from ethics, marketing related subject areas were also rated significantly less important in 2009 compared to 2004. 11.4% of the 2009 respondents were associated with Sales/Marketing compared to 8.9% in 2004. In this regard, it was expected that the ranking of marketing related subject areas would improve, but the results are contrasting indicating that the importance of marketing related subject have indeed gone down. According to IBISWorld industry reports, the overall lodging industry showed positive harvest-feast in revenue from 2004 to 2007. However, the report also showed huge decrease in revenue growth in 2008 and 2009. Especially in 2009, revenue decreased by as much as 9.4% for hotel and motel industry, consistent with the projections made in 2008 (IBISWorld, 2010a). This decrease in growth has caused the hospitality industry to be ultra-protective of their expenses. As a result, there has been a decre ase in the importance of marketing oriented subject areas, which accounts for a good chunk of costs in hospitality industry. The same reason can be cited for the significant decrease in hospitality operations subject area. A better argument can be presented from the employment perspective. Because of the jerky economic downturn in the lodging industry, it can be argued that firms have reduced their hiring practices in areas that greatly add to the cost of the hotels such as marketing, operations, and innovations and harvesting development. Same holds true for managerial level positions, which accounts for the decrease in the perceived importance of subject areas such as service management, strategic management, and management and organization. However, reflected in our analysis, it can be pointed out that firms are looking for leaders, who can think out of the box, and bail them out of the financial crisis, which accounts for the high perceived rating of leadership subject area. E specially, it can be argued that hospitality firms are looking for employees who can lead from the front and make their decisions, instead of relying on other people such as the managers. Thus, it can be argued that, hospitality firms are trying to cut down the costs of employing specialized managers by trying to promote leadership qualities on their regular employees.The subject areas that showed significantly higher means in 2009 compared to 2004 include Revenue/Asset Management and Study Abroad, which were both highly significant (p Suggested political platform ModelGursoy and Swanger (2004) suggested an industry driven model of a hospitality curriculum for programs housed in accredited college of business. Based on our study, some suggestions and improvements are offered to make the semester-based model more rigorous, relevant, and up-to-date.The model of hospitality curriculum was developed based on three different components business core requirements, hospitality core requir ements, and hospitality electives incorporating the ranked subject matter by hospitality industry professionals. Based on the limitations regarding number of credits in the hospitality program and on the suggestions from the focus groups and advisory boards, some subject areas, such as ethics and leadership, were embedded throughout the curriculum. The curriculum model did not embed those subject matters in the business cores and in the general education cores as business core and general education core classes were outside the hospitality programs locus of control. The Senior-level hospitality capstone course integrated all curriculum areas in the program. Subject matters with a mean ranking of 2.0 or lower were suggested to be part of elective courses and were recommended for Sophomore or lower-ranking level. Like the 2004 model, learning a second language (M = 1.76) and studying abroad (M = 1.50) were not deemed essential for success in the industry by the professionals surveye d and hence were not included in the model. Similarly, Entrepreneurship (M = 2.34) and Real Estate/Property Development (M = 1.61) courses, which were thought to be as part of other electives under a different department or program in business, were kept outside the curriculum model. For the 2009 model, electives such as Destination Manag