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WHAT DOES HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM MEAN? MODULE 1  Hospitality and tourism is a massive, collective industry consisting of tourism and other hospitality-related businesses. Tourism companies are technically considered hospitality businesses because they rely on strong customer service t...

WHAT DOES HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM MEAN? MODULE 1  Hospitality and tourism is a massive, collective industry consisting of tourism and other hospitality-related businesses. Tourism companies are technically considered hospitality businesses because they rely on strong customer service to generate revenue. They must provide a welcoming, enjoyable experience to their guests. Otherwise, those guests won't return in the future, and some guests may share their bad experience with friends or family members. All hospitality businesses, even those residing outside of the tourism sector, follow a similar approach with their operations by emphasizing the importance of strong, positive customer service. HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM DEFINITION Merriam Webster's Dictionary defines hospitality as, “generous and friendly treatment of visitors and guests or hospitable treatment.” It also refers to the industry in which hotels, caterers, and event planners largely operate. HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM DEFINITION Tourism is the activities of people traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for leisure, business or other purposes for not more than one consecutive year  The task of defining tourism is not as easy as it may appear, Since tourism is a multidimensional phenomenon, it is difficult to describe. Attempts have been made in the past to formulate a standard definition to tourism and tourist among countries throughout the world. One of the first attempts to define tourism was that of Professors Hunziker and Krapf of Berne University, Switzerland. They defined tourism as the “sum of the phenomena and relationships arising from the travel and stay of non-residents , in so far as it will not lead to permanent residence and are not connected to any earning activity”. This definition distinguishes tourism from migration which involves taking up permanent residence. Since it necessarily includes both travel and stay, it excludes day tours.  The definition of the Tourism Society in Britain was: ‘Tourism is the temporary short-term movement of people to destinations outside the places where they normally live and work and their activities during their stay at these destinations” This definition was reformulated by the Tourism Society in Cardiff: “Tourism may be defined in terms of particular activities selected by choices and undertaken outside the home environment.” BURKART AND MEDLIK CITED 5 MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF TOURISM : 1. Because of its complexity , tourism is a combination of phenomena and relationships. 2. It has 2 essential elements : the dynamic element, the journey and the static element – the stay. 3. The journey and stay are to and in destinations outside the place of residence and work. 4. The movement to destinations is temporary and short-term with the intention to return within a few days, weeks or months. 5. Destinations are visited for purposes not connected with paid work , that is, not to be employed and not for business or vocational reasons.  Tourism in the pure sense is essentially a pleasure activity in which money earned in one’s abode is spent in places visited. In this sense, tourism represents a particular form of leisure and a particular form of recreation but does not include all uses of leisure and all forms of recreation. It includes much travel but not all forms of travel. Tourism therefore, is distinguished from the concepts of leisure and recreation on one hand, and from travel and migration on the other hand. MEANING OF TOURIST In 1937, the League of Nations defined “tourist” as follows: “A tourist is a person who visits a country other than that in which he usually resides for a period of at least 24 hours.” This was held to include persons traveling for pleasure, domestic reasons or health, persons traveling to meetings or on business and persons visiting a country on a cruise vessel. In 1963, a United Nations Conference on International Travel and Tourism recommended a new definition of a “visitor” as “ any person visiting a country other than that of earning money.” This definition covers two classes of visitors: Tourist Excursionist 1) Tourists: Temporary visitors staying at least 24 hours, whose purpose could be classified as – a. Leisure such as recreation, holiday, health, study, religion or sport or b. Business c. Family d. Mission e. Meeting 2.Excursionists : Temporary visitors staying less than 24 hours in the destination visited and not making an overnight stay, including cruise travelers but excluding travelers in transit. At present, most countries of the world accept the definitions of visitor, tourist and excursionist that evolved out of the U.N. Conference on International Travel and Tourism held in Rome in 1963. ELEMENTS OF TRAVEL 4 basic elements have been used as criteria for defining travelers and/ or tourists. These are: distance, length of stay at the destination, residence of the traveler and purpose of travel. Distance What must be considered under distance is the difference between local travel or travelling within a person’s home community and non-local travel or travelling away from home. It excludes commuting to and from work and change in residence. A measure that has been used to distinguish travel away from home is the distance traveled on a trip. A trip is defined as “each time a person goes to a place at least 100 miles away from home and returns.” Travelers, on this basis, are individuals who travel at least 100 miles in one direction from home. This definition may be applied in measuring travel by the residents of a country. Length of Stay at Destination The Second Basic Elements of travel used as a criteria for defining travelers is the length of stay at a destination. The definition of tourists and excursionists as proposed by the WTO is largely based on length of stay. Tourists are temporary visitors who make at least one overnight stay while excursionists are temporary visitors who do not stay overnight in the country that the visit Residence of the Traveler The residence or origin of the traveler is the third basic element of travel. For business and research purposes, it is important to know where people live. Purpose of Travel The fourth basic element is the purpose of the travel. It can be divided into seven: 1. Visiting friends and relatives 2. Conventions, seminars and meetings 3. Business 4. Outdoor recreation – hunting, fishing, boating and camping 5. Entertainment – sightseeing, theater, wedding 6. Personal, family-medical, funeral, wedding 7. Others THE NATURE OF TOUR To analyze the nature of a tour systematically, it will be helpful to understand the difference between domestic and international tourism as well as independent and package tour. Domestic tourism refers to travel taken exclusively within the national boundaries of the traveler’s country. People find it easy to do so because there are no language, currency nor documentation barriers. International tourism involves the movement of people across international boundaries. It is more difficult to travel outside one’s own country because the country visited has a different language, a different currency and documentation requirements such as passports, visas and other conditions of entry to be met by tourists. A package tour, sometimes called inclusive tour is an arrangement in which transport and accommodation is brought by the tourists at an all-inclusive price and the price of the individual elements cannot be determined by the purchaser himself. The tour operator who organizes the packages tour purchases transport and hotel accommodation in advance, usually obtaining these at lower prices because he is buying them in bulk. He then sells the tours individually to tourists direct or thorough travel agents. On the other hand, an independent tour is one in which the tourists buys these facilities separately, either making reservations in advance through a travel agent or en route during his tour.  Tourists purchasing package tours may do so on the basis of either individual or group travel. An independent inclusive tour is one in which the tourists travels to his destinations individually, while on the group inclusive tour he travels in the company of other tourists. The abbreviations IIT and GIT are used for individual inclusive tour and group inclusive tour respectively. THE TOURIST PRODUCT In a narrow sense, the tourist product consists of what the tourist buys. In a wider sense, the tourist product is a combination of what the tourist does at the destination and the services he used during his stay. The first characteristic of a tourist product is that it is a service. It is an intangible item. It can not be inspected by prospective purchasers before they buy as they can with a washing machine, a stereo or other consumer goods. The purchase of a package tour involves a high degree of trust on the part of the buyer. The second characteristic is that the tourist product is largely psychological in its attraction. It is more than a collection of services such as an aircraft seat and a hotel room. It is the temporary use of a strange environment plus the culture and heritage of the region an other intangible benefits such as atmosphere and hospitality. Another characteristic is that the tourist product tends to vary in standard and quality over time unlike the production of a television set. A package tour cannot be consistently of equal standard. A bumpy fight can change an enjoyable experience into a nightmare; a good room in a hotel may be spoiled by poor food and a holiday at the seaside can be destroyed by a prolonged rainy spell.  Still another characteristic is that the supply of the product is fixed. The number of hotel rooms available at a particular resort cannot be varied to meet the changing demands of tourists during a particular season. The unsold hotel room or aircraft seat cannot be stored for later sale as is the case with tangible products. Thus great efforts are made to fill hotel rooms and aircraft by discounting the prices of these products at the last minute. THE TOURIST DESTINATION The tourist destination is geographical unit which the tourist visits and where he stays. It may be a village , town, city, district, region, island, country or a continent. The success of a tourist destination depends upon the interrelationship of three basic factors: attractions, amenities or facilities and accessibility.  Attractions may be site and event attractions. A site attraction is one in which the destination itself has appeal while an event attraction is on in which tourists are drawn to the destination solely because of what is taking place there. A site attraction may be a country, geographical region such as the Alps, city, resort such as Boracay. Event attractions include congresses, exhibitions, festivals such as the Ati-atihan Festival and sports events such as the Olympics Games. Attractions may also be natural or man-made. Natural attractions include mountains, beaches, climatic features such as sunshine and pure air. Man-made attractions include buildings of historical or architectural interest such as Fort Santiago, holiday camps or “theme parks” such as Disneyland in Los Angeles, U.S.A  Amenities or facilities include accommodation, food, local transport and communications and entertainment at the site. However attractive a destination, its potential for tourism will be unlimited unless the basic amenities will differ according to the attraction of the site. Sometimes the amenity is itself the principal attraction as in the case when a resort hotel is built to offer different kinds of entertainment in a previously undeveloped region Accessibility means having regular and convenient forms of transport, in terms of times/distance to the destination from the originating country at a reasonable price. If private transport is to be the means of access, tourism flow will depend upon adequate roads, gasoline stations, etc. good railways and coach services, airport and seaport are designed to facilitate accessibility. TOURIST SERVICES The travel and stay of tourists give rise to a wide range of services in the course of a holiday. The principal tourist services are supplied by passenger transport which provides the means to reach the destination as well as the movement at the destination. Distinction in transport are between public and private, domestic and international and among the various modes land, sea and air Accommodation, food and beverage and entertainment constitute the second group of tourist services. Hotels are of vital concern to a large proportion of tourists. However, many stay with friends and relatives and in other private accommodations. Other provide their own accommodation in the form of caravans and tents. At present, food and beverage operations cut across all sectors of the travel industry since eating is a necessity as well as a pleasure for travelers. Entertainment combined with food.  Amusement and recreation is the primary reason why millions of people travel. A third group of tourist services consists of those provided by the travel agent and by the tour operator. The travel agent is the distributor of the product while the tour operator is the manufacturer of the product. The travel agent provides an intermediary function between the tourist and the providers of transport and accommodation while the tour operator combines the individual components of a holiday into a product which is then sold directly to the public or thorough travel agents. Other tourist services include currency exchange, documentation information, sightseeing and shopping. CHARACTERISTIC OF TOURISM Tourism has special characteristics which make it different from other industries. 1. In tourism the product is not brought to the consumer rather, the consumer has to travel and go to the product to purchase it. In other industries, an item manufactured in a factory is brought to the wholesaler and retailer and ultimately to the consumer. 2. The products of tourism are not used up; thus they do not exhaust the country’s natural resources. The products of other industries have a limited life and at the end of it are either junked or replaced with new ones 3. Tourism is a labor-intensive industry. It requires more manpower than other industries. 4. Tourism is people- oriented. It is primarily concern with people. One of the most important motivations of tourists is to meet other people and see how other people live. 5. Tourism is a multi- dimensional phenomenon. It is dependent on many and varied activities which are separate but interdependent 6. The tourist industry is seasonal. During vacation seasons millions of tourist travel which result in increased revenues for several tourism agencies but when vacations are over, these companies experience a big decline in dollars earned. 7. The industry is dynamic. It is characterized by the changing ideas and attitudes of its customers and therefore must be always prepared and willing to adjust to these changes. IMPORTANCE OF TOURISM Tourism has become one of the world’s major industries. Current forecasts suggest that international travel will double by the year 2,000 and will account for 10% of international trade. both developing and highly – developed nations are now taking a closer look at the potential benefits from tourism: 1. Contribution to the balance of payments – Tourism can help correct the balance of payments deficit of many countries by earning the much needed foreign currency in international trade. Examples of countries in which the tourist industry had helped to reduce the deficit are : Spain, Mexico , Philippines , Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore. 2. Dispersion of development – International tourism is the best means to spread wealth among countries thus, bridging the economic gap between the rich and poor nations. 3. Effect on general economic development –Expenditures by tourists can have beneficial effects on all economic sectors and leads to the development of different industries and other economic activities. 4. Employment opportunities –Tourism is a source of employment. It is a service industry which could have a significant effect on those countries with surplus labor such as the Philippines. For countries where there is a high rate of unemployment and underemployment, tourism can provide a ready solution. 5. Social exchange takes place when tourists come in contact with the inhabitants of the place they visit. Their social background and their presence affect the social structure and way of life of the local residents. In the same way, tourists are also affected by the experience so that they often carry with them new habits and a new outlook on life when the return home. 6. Cultural enrichment – Tourism emphasizes a sharing and appreciation of cultures rather than the lack of trust brought about by isolation. Through tourism we can appreciate the rich human and cultural diversity that the world offers: evolve a mutual trust and respect for one another and the dignity of life on earth. Tourism likewise contributes to the preservation and development of the world’s cultural heritage. It encourages governments to preserve historical sites and monuments and motivates indigenous groups to preserve their heritage in the form of dance, music and artifacts. 7. Educational significance – Tourism enhances one’s education. International conferences, seminars, study trips held each year enable people of all nations to exchange ideas, propose solutions to problems and share their concerns. They provide up-to-date information for enhancing the knowledge and skills required for the development of the tourism industry. 8. A vital force for peace – Tourism, properly designed and developed can help bridge the psychological and cultural distances that separate people of different races, colors, religions and stages of social and economic development. In facilitating more genuine social relationships among individuals, tourism can help overcome prejudices and foster international brotherhood and world understanding. Thus, tourism can become a real force for world peace.