Analysis of Contemporary Issues in Tourism and Hospitality Management

This report examines the current challenges within the tourism and hospitality industries. It analyzes these issues across four key contexts: operational, human resources, financial, and product/market. The operational context highlights issues like technology adoption, data management, and employee turnover. The human resource section addresses training needs, skilled personnel retention, and labor shortages. Financial aspects discussed include seasonal fluctuations, competition, and the impact of skilled workforce salaries. The product and market context covers diverse customer demands and intense competition. The report uses recent scholarly publications to support its findings, offering insights into the complexities of the industry. The report concludes with a summary of the key challenges and their potential impact on the industry's future.

Running Head: TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT
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TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT

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Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Operational context...............................................................................................................................3
Human resource context.......................................................................................................................4
Product and market context..................................................................................................................4
Financial context...................................................................................................................................4
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................6
References.............................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
Tourism and hospitality industries are growing well due to increasing demand of customers
for travel and luxurious stays in hotel. Despite of various benefits, these industries are facing
several issues in terms of managing the records, hiring, and retaining the talented staff,
changing demand of customers, decreasing revenue in lean season. The report will analysis
the current issues of tourism and hospitality industries in terms of its operational, financial,
human resource and market context.

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Operational context
Technology and keeping the record and data up-to-date is the major issue faced by tourism
and hospitality industry. Hotels and tourism industry have to keep the records in their systems
and books. Sometimes, it is hard to manage the data and records in large quantity. The
changing customer needs of the people in tourism and hospitality industry requires the
management to adopt those technologies that are in trend. Besides this, employee’s turnover
is the major issue faced by these industries in recent times. These are service industry that
needs the employees to work at any time (Smith, 2015). Therefore, finding the employees
who can work for long hours is becoming difficult for companies. In order to find the right
kind of employee, there is labour cost associated with the employee turnover that put an
adverse impact on these industries. In addition to employee’s turnover, operating cost is
becoming a problem for hotels. Due to the changing technological trends, hotels are required
to become technology advanced. For example- while travelling, guests require the speedy
Wi-Fi which in turn increasing the operational costs for these industries. Various industries in
Australia are facing operational issues in their hotels regarding maintaining the customers
delighted from their cost and quality. Recent days, citizens spend their vacation by going to
visit other countries in peak season. Therefore, it becomes difficult for hospitality industries
to manage the books and records of booking.

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Human resource context
The major human resource issues faced by tourism and hospitality industry are the
continuous need of training and finding the skilled persons to deal with the customers. In
today’s fast changing environment, the demands of the customers changes frequently. Due to
the expertise-based jobs, the hotel and tourism industry finds difficulty in retaining the skilled
and efficient personnel in hotels and tourism management (Crommelin and Nouwelant,
2016). Besides these issues, unqualified employees and shortage of labour tends to reduce
the profits of tourism and hospitality industry. In addition, the seasonality of these industries
makes the job inappropriate for potential applicants. In a report, it is founded that at the time
of interviews, employers faces the major problem regarding reliability, recruitment and
retention of lower-paid employees (Kokt, 2015).
Product and market context
In a global business environment, hospitality and tourism industry have to deal with people of
various countries. Therefore, the main major issues faced by today’s tourism and hospitality
industry are different demands of customers. Due to cultural diversity, these industries faces
serious issues regarding meeting the different customers demand. Besides this issue, the
excess competition in tourism and hospitality industry is the serious issue that almost all the
companies dealing in these are facing (Baum, 2015). The lack of truthful marketing is the
issue that means not only public lose their confidence but also investors anxiety being
scorched. Customers in hospitality industry want better quality services at lower price, this is
the most common and significant challenge that these industry is facing. Mangers from these
industries highlighted that ensuring the repeat visit of the guests and continuous satisfaction
of guests put a question mark on hospitality sector (Infraspeak, 2018).
Financial context
The financial issues faced by tourism and hospitality industry are due to changing demand
and seasonal factor. It is obvious that these industries boom only in peak season. Rest of the
time, they do not earn much due to which it become difficult for them to earn the money
sometimes (Tarlow, 2016). Besides this, it also happen that whenever any new industry
opens, it is customer tendency to move toward that, in this case some industries demand falls
which results in lower revenue. In addition, these industries required to recruit such persons

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who can handle diversify people and have enough knowledge to address the changing needs
of the guests. Due to high demand of salaries of skilled workforce, company have to spend
their most part of the revenue on hiring. It puts negative impact on the industry revenue.

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Conclusion
From the above discussed paper, it can be concluded that the issues that are faced by tourism
and hospitality puts negative impact on the industry. These issues need to be address in order
to keep the industry booming. The changing demand of the customer preference from the
tourism and hotels are increasing due to which they have to hire skilled persons and which in
turn increases the cost of the industry.

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References
Baum, T. (2015) Human resources in tourism: Still waiting for change?–A 2015
reprise. Tourism Management, 50, pp.204-212.
Infraspeak. (2018) 5 Biggest Challenges in 2018 for Hospitality. [online] Available from:
http://home.infraspeak.com/biggest-challenges-2018-hospitality/ [accessed 12/08/18].
Jobs, S. (2017) 6 Major Hotel Industry Challenges in 2017 and Beyond. [online] Available
from: https://www.soegjobs.com/2017/07/24/6-major-hotel-industry-challenges-2017/
[accessed 11/08/18].
Kokt, D. (2015) Human resources management. Hospitality Management: A practical
introduction, p.1.
Nouwelant, R.V and Crommelin, L. (2016) High housing costs create problems for tourism
and hospitality employers. [online] Available from: https://www.domain.com.au/news/high-
housing-costs-create-problems-for-tourism-and-hospitality-employers-20160407-go0r8q/
[accessed 12/08/18].
Smith, M.K. (2015) Issues in cultural tourism studies. United States: Routledge.
Tarlow, P.E. (2016) Issues facing the travel and tourism industry. [online] Available from:
https://www.eturbonews.com/136067/issues-facing-travel-and-tourism-industry [accessed
12/08/18].
The Conversation. (2018) Australia needs to invest if it wants the tourism boom to continue.
[online] Available from: https://theconversation.com/australia-needs-to-invest-if-it-wants-the-
tourism-boom-to-continue-71407 [accessed 11/08/18].

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