HAT304 Presentation: Analyzing Contemporary Issues in Hospitality

This presentation delves into contemporary issues within the hospitality and tourism industries, primarily focusing on authenticity and the impact of the internet. It examines the importance of authentic services in hospitality, highlighting how genuine customer interactions enhance satisfaction and create a competitive advantage. The presentation discusses the challenges of commodification, particularly the decline in service authenticity due to scripted interactions and the influence of non-local cuisines in cultural tourism. Furthermore, it analyzes the positive and negative impacts of the internet on the tourism sector, noting its role in information distribution, ease of booking, and increased awareness of destinations, while also addressing concerns about misinformation, heightened competition, and the displacement of traditional roles like tour guides. The presentation references academic articles to support its analysis, providing a comprehensive overview of these critical issues.

Contemporary issues
In
Hospitality and Tourism
Industry

Authenticity and Commodification
Authentic hospitality raises the
standards of excellence
Hospitality industry is service
oriented
Services are required to be of
good quality so that it can
increase the satisfaction level of
the customers.
Authentic services are those
services that follow the industry
standard.
With the increase in number of
service providers the level of
authenticity of services are
decreasing.
This has been one of the serious
issues of hospitality industry
(Xiang et al. 2015).

Importance of Authentic
services
In hospitality industry
hotels, restaurants and tour
operators are required to
provide genuine services.
Apart from the food quality
the employees should smile
and greet their customers.
One can differentiate
whether the service
provider is actually happy to
serve their customers or
doing their jobs.
The mood of the service
provider affects the quality
of service provided.

Service Scripting
Many hospitality firms have created scripts
for management of services they provide.
The details in the scripts and the level of
services provided differ at times
Some scripts are very strict enough to
teach the employees to use phrases in
conversation like “Good morning” or Hello
This reduces the authenticity of services as
the service provider is simply reading a
script
For providing authentic services the
employees are required to pay attention to

Authenticity in tourism
Often in tourism tourists do not get
authentic services
Tourists do not understand history and
culture of a place when other allied
services are more influential
This happens mostly in case of cultural
tourism where some restaurants might
provide non- local cuisines
The customers fail to experience the local
cuisine which is an important aspect of
cultural tourism

Benefits of Authenticity of
services
It makes the customers happy
The quality of services is enhanced
Customers prefer the service provider over
others
The company gets competitive advantage
by providing differentiated genuine
services
Scripted services create mismanagement
when situations not mentioned in the
scripts arises (Ponte, Carvajal-Trujillo and
Escobar-Rodríguez, 2015).

Impact of internet on tourism
Internet provides important
information related to tourism industry
It can be said that it helps in
information distribution
In present scenario customers use
internet to choose the destination
they want to travel
Internet gives them necessary
information about the service
providers they can contact
It makes it easier for the travelers to
book hotels and air tickets
It can be said that internet has made
travel easier in present scenario
One of the major advantages of
internet is that it creates awareness
about the destination that are far
across in the other part of the globe
(Grandey et al. 2015)

Negative impact of Internet
There are some negative impact
of internet
With the increasing number of
sources it has become difficult to
determine which sources are
genuine
There are number of information
are still left out which might
affect the consumer behavior
One cannot completely rely on
internet sources because the
experience of customers
depends on other factors as well
With advanced technology it has
become easier to fool the
travelers as the data can be
manipulated

Internet has created pressure on the
service providers as the competition has
also increased
The expectation of the customers have also
increased
Internet has become distribution channel
and plays a role of intermediary in travel
industry thus reducing some of the job
opportunities
The number of tour guides have reduced as
some part of their work now is done by the
internet.


References
Grandey, A.A., Fisk, G.M., Mattila, A.S., Jansen, K.J. and Sideman,
L.A., 2015. Is “service with a smile” enough? Authenticity of
positive displays during service encounters. Organizational
Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 96(1), pp.38-55.
Lu, A.C.C., Gursoy, D. and Lu, C.Y., 2015. Authenticity
perceptions, brand equity and brand choice intention: The case
of ethnic restaurants. International Journal of Hospitality
Management, 50, pp.36-45.
Ponte, E.B., Carvajal-Trujillo, E. and Escobar-Rodríguez, T., 2015.
Influence of trust and perceived value on the intention to
purchase travel online: Integrating the effects of assurance on
trust antecedents. Tourism Management, 47, pp.286-302.
Xiang, Z., Wang, D., O’Leary, J.T. and Fesenmaier, D.R., 2015.
Adapting to the internet: trends in travelers’ use of the web for
trip planning. Journal of Travel Research, 54(4), pp.511-527.

Thank You