The raging polemics of defining the concept of hospitality: Towards silencing the storm

Abstract

The term hospitality became widely used in the 20th century to refer to an industry that covered hotels, restaurants and tourism. Etymologically, the concept was derived from the terms ‘hospitalite’ and `hospitalis` as French and Latin derivatives, respectively. However, noteworthy is that the current discourse on the concept of hospitality remains a slaughter house of ideas and perspectives without any foreseeable consensus on the horizon. The debate largely features scholars who challenge a management-oriented perspective or the hegemony of the ‘managerial’ paradigm, which conceptualizes hospitality as a series of organisational functions or service transactions that provides ambience to the social and commercial manifestations of hospitality. In essence, the management-oriented perspective is too linear to embrace the multi-faceted nature of the hospitality phenomenon. The latter view also fails to bring closure to the conceptual disharmony in that its emphasis on `commercial manifestations’ is also too obscure and general to offer practical guidance to the hospitality industry. This scenario leaves the industry practitioners stuck in a cul-de-sac with hardly any clear pointers on what the phenomenon is about. This paper seeks to address the ongoing conceptual fragmentation that develops a more integrative approach to defining hospitality. Specifically, it aims to identify and synthesize the critical elements of hospitality from existing literature in order to propose a composite index of hospitality. The paper originates not to align with either pros or cons of the debate but to demonstrate with reviewed literature on the futility of such a disposition. Using a qualitative literature review, the paper tracked the polemical debate on hospitality. The analysis revealed that both managerial and socio-cultural interpretations of hospitality remained incomplete abstracts when considered in isolation. The literature highlighted the multiple dimensions that ranged from the quality of service, organizational efficiency to ethical, social, and experiential factors that together shaped the phenomenon of hospitality. The conclusion led to a rewarding discourse in the hospitality industry. The findings showed that the hospitality concept through informed extracts in the literature review comprised elements of critical importance that defined the discipline. Scaffolding on the literature review this manuscript attempts to discuss on a `composite index of hospitality’ with the aid of a battery of critical hospitality indicators which serves as a distinct score card for any hospitality establishment that envisages to assess and evaluate itself in terms of how hospitality services are offered.