Critical Evaluation Of Contemporary Issues In Hospitality Management Tourism Essay

Critical Evaluation Of Contemporary Issues In Hospitality c be Tourism EssayHospitality is a dynamic industriousness that is ever so changing as a precede of several external factors. The patience has become to a greater extent hawkish than ever before. approximately companies often decease while others atomic be 18 very successful. Tanke (2001) urges that successful firms acquire, manage, and develop alternatives that go away competitive benefit. They similarly get over and build up relationships with a large make verboten of organizations, various stakeholders, and groups. Globalization has intensified the competitiveness and for firms to re important competitive they necessitate to expand their relationship networks and collaborate with each other to remain competitive. many a nonher(prenominal) firms ar starting to monitor and manage key indicators to cut on cost and save money.According to Ottenbacher and G nonh (2005) There atomic number 18 several coetan eous issues in the cordial reception industry which complicate, forgiving choice heed, strategical prudence, theatrical role of ICT and gastronomy and tourism. Much of changes in issues make been brought rough by globalization. For example in the case of piece imaging, globalization has brought diversity in the charitable resources. randomness conversation engineering has advanced much in organic evolution. The racy cast of people travelling to foreign lands has brought changes in the gastronomy and tourism. Hospitality businesses essentialiness thence manage all these issues to succeed in their operations.Tanke, (2001) argues that cordial reception businesses bequeath fatality to focus more than on brand, human beings resource, emerging markets and information communication technology. These ar the primary determinants of the winners and losers in years to come. Strategic counselling is thitherfore important in determining the success of these firms. Strategic management has been hailed to provide higher acquits of satisfaction than other management tools.Literature ReviewHRM Issues In the Hotel Industry GloballyThe importance of valu sufficient human resource management to business success in any use of human resources terminate give an organization a competitive advantage. The importance of human resources is peculiarly signifi push asidet in cordial reception industry. Dun depose (2005) suggested that at that place be several main areas of challenge and worry in the global hospitality industry, relating to profession issues, gross takes and environmental issues.Employee turnoverAccording to Hinkin and Tracey (2000) employee turnover has become one of the challenges in the hospitality industry. The industry globally suffers from high level of staff turnover, which solution to intangible costs and high direct exp repealiture. Riegel (2002) argues that turnover is a return of several factors such as job dissatisfacti on, unfortunate working environment, poor supervision and lack of commitment that influence employee attitude and behavior.Iverson and Deery (1997) carried tabu a research on the labor requirements of the hospitality industry and established that the high turnover rate is one the most difficult issues in human resource management in that context. They reported that the turnover problem in large hotels was much worse than in small hotels. Many hotels are planning to increase the number of people employed simply to intersect the turnover situation.Hoque (1999) contends that portion quality focuses on the nature of the interaction in the midst of the individual employee and the node at the point of swear expose, in terms of subtlety and overall professionalism. Hoque as well argues that service quality is the main factor in creating competitive advantage in the hotel industry, and that any hotel that does not make an try to modify continually its service quality will lose g round. belligerent advantage generated from internal sources includes such characteristics as value rareness, exceptionality, and non-substitutability (Iverson, Deery 1997), and the employee at the end of the service delivery trunk may well be the entirely differentiated and unique asset of a hotel organization that cannot be soft copied.Hinkin and Tracey (2000) open in any case recommended that there are in fact nevertheless two ways to compete in and differentiate amongst hospitality services. One is by competing on price and minimizing costs, which locks a hotel into a ill-tempered market segment. The other is to compete by providing exceptional service. They note that node care is not a new concept in the service industry, but it is still a mingled thing to control and sustain.In the face of the high level of turnover in the hotel industry, it is assertable that more or less customers are served by employees who are fairly untrained, less committed, and less able-b odied in their social skills. But dealing with this requires the use of quite nonionised approaches to service quality management. Huang (2001) suggested that if an organizations first and foremost objective is to provide a service, a holistic approach to service quality management must be real and employed, insightful at all levels of the organization from the main(prenominal) executive to the entry level employees.Training and phylogenyGaravan (1997) argues that training and development of employees is linked to service quality be causality its activities can be used to arm attitudes and behaviors that scarper to topicive service. Several detectives soak up suggested that developing a service culture during training and development and knowledge building are upright practices. Employees training and development of skills help firms to enhance quality of service, increase productivity, and smother costs. Elsewhere, Davies, Taylor and Savery (2001) investigated certain h uman resource management attends in improving employees relations in western Australian accommodation industry and found out that sustained training and development led to an important improvement in productivity, with a reduced turnover of employees. Huang (2001) argued that in Taiwan training and development was the main significant driver for economic development.Staff recruitment and excerptionAlleyne, Doherty and Greenidge (2006) contend the due to the nature of the hospitality industry labor pick up is much unpredictable and playing area to seasonal variation. As a result the hospitality industry has had negative image among prospective employees. Elsewhere Debrah and Budhwar (2004) argue that changes in the macro environment for example ageing workforce, lower lineage rates have also contributed to employees shortage heightening the imbalance between the employee demand and supply. This has made employee resourcing a great problem and highlights that effective management of demand and supply of best employee is a great problem in the hospitality industry (Tanke, 2001).Global competitiveness in the hospitality industrySuccessful hospitality firms neverthelesstually find that their domestic markets are all saturated or that foreign markets offer opportunities for growth and profits which are not available domestically. Several forces are leading businesses into the global arena. These include trade barriers falling especially in Europe and North America, impertinently industrialized countries, shift towards market economies, availability of financial capital standards are worthy uniform globally and advancement in information technology (Tanke, 2001).Organizations that want to remain competitive must therefore acquire cite of the art resources at a lower price, for example they may exact expanding to emerging nations where labor is cheap.The strategic management repercussions of increasing globalization are extreme. Managers cannot afford to ov erlook opportunities in foreign markets. Nonetheless, business modes and customs diversify from country to country. These disparities make stakeholder analysis and management even more important. epitome of wide environmental forces such as society, technology, and political influences ought to also be extended to the different regions in which an organization carries out business. People also vary greatly from region to region. The challenge of an ever increasing competitive global marketplace can be tackled through a well-devised strategic management process. Nevertheless, tactical planning must not always lead to the kinds of changes that are essential to stay aggressive over the long term. applied scienceAlthough there has been an increasing awareness of the value of state of the art structured administrations many hospitality firms still do not take advantage of them. There inadequate understanding of how much competence could be alter via use of these systems. Tanke, (20 01) argues that hospitality administration systems have over the years developed into complex, well incorporated tools which help firms to make more revenue, attract more guests, and improve effectiveness.Nevertheless, many business still hang on systems that have are much ahead of their competitive useful life. This limits them from having the benefits that are brought about by these systems. Though several firms are scared of upgrading their systems because they fear that their employees will not be in a position to handle these systems, there is need for training the employees how to use these systems (Tanke, 2001).Alleyne, Doherty and Greenidge (2006) contend that as systems become more inclusive their support and security management become necessary and complex. save it must be noted that it is almost im contingent for organizations to have their birth technical support staff skilled in all the system they use. Guest report has become an aim for thieves and attacks on com se t aparters are becoming more complex. These trends call for a shift towards more professional system management this may be a corporate team or an agreement party. Elsewhere Debrah and Budhwar (2004) argue that innermost revenue management teams, for example, can provide specialist help to numerous properties in a regionally unified way. Centrally-hosted systems permit highly-skilled technicians to offer a far more protect and managed systems environment than would be accessible to an individual firm. This trend is expected to affirm as understanding grows of the value of maintaining systems operating at peak proficiency, and of the possible harm from security violations.MethodologyAccording to Hoque, (1999) two essential questions were put to a sample of hotels What are the key human resource management issues and concerns in the hospitality industry of Taiwan? And what are the main human resource management roles and practices used to engage with them? Rather than default to a s ingle issue approach to the interviewees, the interviewer tried to examine human resource management in the hospitality industry in an entirely open-ended way. The respondents were free to raise any human resource management issues, concerns, functions and practices that they survey to be significant. This method allowed the researcher to notice what came up in methodicalness of priority for the respondents, or what failed to come up at all (Hoque, 1999)The method used was qualitative and the main technique was in-depth interviews. Leading questions were avoided by the researcher on order to gain a deeper understanding of well-nigh phenomena as experienced by a group of people (Creswell, 2003). It was not possible to examine all the hotels in Taiwan because of financial and time constraints. The researcher selected the twine hotels which he expected to have formalized human resource management practices than smaller hotels. The researcher further segmented the hotels according t o number of rooms, geographic location, and brand.The researcher interviewed senior managers but in some cases some hotels that were approached refused to be interviewed arguing that they would consider questionnaires because of their tight schedules. Although there are a few(prenominal) definitive rules for sample size in qualitative enquiry (Patton, 2002), it has been suggested that 12-20 examples are needed when trying to obtain the broadest range of information and perspectives on the subject of study (Kuzel, 1992). At the time this research was conducted, there were 46 chain hotel properties in Taiwan and the sample selected totaled 14 hotels, which represents 30.43%of the total race of such hotels.AnalysisThe findings were presented together because some issues were common to all the respondents and had cause and effect relationship. Fourteen participating hotels identified several main issues to wit shortage of employees 100% of the respondents, 64% of the respondents talk ed of challenges in approach to training and development. bit 50% of the respondents emphasized on the high level of employee turnover.Shortage of employeesParticipants pointed out that the overall education level in Taiwan has risen in the last decade. This has caused a problem to the hospitality firms in recruiting entry level employees. The increased growth of the hospitality industry has made the shortage even worse. Respondents however, believe that at middle level the case is different there is o shortage at this level. However those who hold these positions are not qualified but only fill these positions because a vacancy has to be filled.Shortcoming in Approaches to training and developmentMost of the employees have no hospitality background this calls for a sophisticated training and development approaches. Nevertheless, some hoteliers believe that that is not a major problem because they believe that skills can be gained on job training.High level of employee turnoverPart icipants pointed out that this was unavoidable because of the nature of the hospitality industry. In certain cases the turnover top executive be positive to the industry as it may remove de-motivated staff. Respondents also pointed out that older employees led to lack of innovation, infusion of fresh ideas and globe in the firm.DiscussionFrom the in depth interviews it can be argued that challenges in training and development, inadequate employees and problems in internship employment can be attributed to customer service quality discussed in the literature. Kuzel, (1992) argues that employing interns is a solution to the shortages in the hospitality sector. Interns provide stable employment especially at the entry level. somewhat hotels just view interns as supportive force as contrary to long term investments. It is recommended that hospitality managers should create a sense of be to the interns so that they could come back and work in these establishments.Most participants i n this study appeared to accept Hoques (1999) view that the high level of turnover is a fact of life and a regular and acceptable phenomenon in the hospitality industry (Iverson Deery, 1997). In the fact, turnover still can be ameliorate by better management, as long as human resource managers can see it as an opportunity, not just an unavoidable problem.Some researchers have recommended that specific human resource management practices can improve employee satisfaction which in turns minimizes the turnover rate. Empowerment is one of the efficient approaches suggested by many researchers (Enz Siguaw, 2000a, 2000b Lashley, 1999). They recommended that it is significant to give power to the employees who provide services by focusing on customers needs. Service visualises are the key activity in a customer service business and employees may encounter a lot of diverse unique situations which cannot be covered by the organizational policies and actions (Iverson Deery 1997). If org anizations are able to give power to their employees, then they are able to exercise prudence in delivering customer service and do any(prenominal) is required to satisfy customers needs (Enz Siguaw, 2000a Lashley, 1999). It has been disputed that empowered employees also have a propensity to have a strong sense of control and personal worth because they can take liability for the service encounter and have the power to effect customer satisfaction (Lashley, 1999). At another(prenominal) level, it has been recommended that empowered employees are motivated by doing meaningful work that in conclusion enhances their job satisfaction and reduces the turnover rate sAccording to Lashley, (1999) as a result of global economic changes there has been increased argument and uncertainty, the firms have to be flexible in employee resourcing and responding to customers. The human resource managers must use methods that give them flexibility to employ employees to respond to variations. This type of employment helps the organization to cut on direct labor cost and also provide flexibility for employees and employers.One of the possible negative characteristic is that dispatching workers have a limited relationship with hotels in which they will work turn up in low trust and low commitment. These might, in turn, lead to divergency between direct-hire and dispatching workers, and between management and employees (Kalleberg, 2000). Another likelihood is that it is more dearly-won to manage the outsourcing activity than initially expected, so that the goal of cost economy is not achieved (Albertson, 2000).The tendency towards flexible working has become inevitable in such a fluctuating environment (Purcell Purcell, 1998), and dispatching is one of the arrangements which are inclined to be a permanent dynamic of the hotel industry in the future. fleck becoming more popular in Taiwan, but there is no rule of the process at the time of writing. It has been argued that it is essential to regulate dispatching employment, because of the complex triangular employment relationship between dispatching company, dispatched worker, and the firm to which they have been dispatched (Kalleberg, 2000 Purcell Purcell, 1998). expiryThis study set out to find out the contemporary issues in the hospitality industry. Due to its nature the hospitality industry and globalization effect the industry has several contemporary issues. These contemporary issues have a direct impact on the hospitality industry and for that reason they must be strategically managed for these businesses to succeed. This study however lays emphasis on the contemporary issues in human resource management.The findings of this study suggest that many of the participating hotels idea and mindset are at the operational level, rather than the strategic level. raze though a good number were able to identify occurrence human resource management issues as vital, it seems that many do not have strate gic approaches to deal with these challenges. Equally, although most perceived specific human resource management functions and practices as being very important, some of these are not utilized in a complicated way. Some of those interviewed had story thoughts and creative ideas but had a limited voice or battle in decision-making. It seems that their role is seen as being to go behind the polity that has been already set by top management, rather than being an dynamic voice or head in the organizations thinking.It was very strange for respondents in this study to have a seat at board level or to play a key role in creating and backing competitive advantages for the business. The interviewer concluded that human resource management is not normally seen as a source of competitive advantage, and many look foregoing to maintain competitiveness mainly through new facilities and amenities. Nonetheless, Ottenbacher and Gnoth (2005) have argued that the might of a hotels approach to human resource management is just as significant as a source of sustainable advantage.This study has tonic that the highly competitive nature of the industry affects both customers and staff. In particular, adroit people are much preferred in a labor-intensive customer service industry. This research has expectantly provided some practical and strategic suggestions for hoteliers to cross the gap between the operational level and the strategic level of thinking and practice. Nevertheless, it is concluded that hotel owners need to be aware that human resource management must be managed well in order to salve up with changes in the global environment. The human resource management function is no longer one of traditional personnel administration instead, it must be strategic and proactive in dealing with complicated human resource management issues.