The Hotel Industry In Britain

According to the British laws a hotel is a place where a “benefited” traveler can receive food and shelter provided he is in a position to for it and is in a fit condition to receive.

Hotels have a very long history, but not as we know today, way back in the 6th century BC when the first inn in and around the city of London began to develop. The first catered to travelers and provided them with a mere roof to stay under. This condition of the inns prevailed for a long time, until the industrial revolution in England, which brought about new ideas and progress in the business at inn keeping.

The invention of the steam engine made traveling even more prominent. Which had to more and more people traveling not only for business but also for leisure reasons. This lead to the actual development of the hotel industry as we know it today.

Hotel today not only cater to the basic needs of the guest like food and shelter provide much more than that, like personalized services etc.

Hotels today are a “Home away from home”.

Hotel can be classified into different categories or classes, based on their operational criteria. For example the type of accommodation they provide, location of the property, type of services provided, facilities given and the clientele they cater to can help categories hotels today.

The market segmentation is economy hotel, mid market hotel, suite hotels, first class hotel, deluxe hotel, casino hotels, resort hotel and resident hotel.

Source:http://www.scribd.com/doc/6170286/Introduction-to-the-Hotel-Industry

Hospitality industry offers a variety of service including food service and accommodation and has different organizations. One of the most common sectors of hospitality industries is hotel and followed by restaurants. Hotel and restaurants have commonalities but differs in many ways they serve and the quality service that they offer.

The organisational sturcture of a hotel

Two main divisions in any hotel. The first is operational which contains the following departments :

Food and Beverage division

Accommodation

House keeping

Security

Functional division contains the following

hR Mgt

Markeying

Finance & A/c

Dicuss each department’s roles

Scale and scope of hospitality:

Firstly, there are four basic types of the hotel ownership such as the franchise, privately owned and operated, leased and managed, on the other hand restaurant can be franchised and privately owned only. The franchise operation is privately owned but the owner pays for the franchise fee and followed by the royalty which is paid monthly and according to the contract same as the restaurants. The privately owned and operated hotel has company partnership which that may have investors or others with a financial interest in the hotel, however, in the restaurant industry it has one sole or partner ownership who run the business. Leased hotels are owned by individual or company but only lease the establishment. And lastly, the managed hotel is privately owned but has an agreement with another hotel brand to run the hotel operations.

Source:http://www.ehow.com/about_5598328_types-hotel-ownership.html#ixzzOfDhyE1W

Assessment of hospitality related orgs: ( judgement, evaluate)

According to People 1st State of the Nation Report 2009, it is roughly 31% of high turnover in terms of labor in the industry and the employers are spending GBP 414 million on recruiting and improving new staff in 2008/09.

Secondly, in diversity perspective in terms of products and services such as food, drinks, accommodation, conferences and banqueting, leisure facilities, levels of services and customer service varies on what kind of hotel and restaurant are. This means the target that they are targeting differs the quality that they are offering. For instance, in 5-star hotel you will see that the food and service are quite posh and branded, the facilities are expensive which exceeds on your expectations, thus, you are delighted of the food and service they offer compared to the 2-star hotel which is much cheaper. These are the things that we are considering regarding the factors that makes it diverse in service . Another thing is the culture of a certain country that they offer different meals and different kinds of meat according to the norms that they are believing in like the Halal food in Muslim country which the people do not eat pork. It is bizarre to give them this meat (pork) because it creates chaos and conflict to you when you set up a business in Muslim country.

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The organizational side of the hotel and restaurant can be divided into operational and functional. The operational is more on food preparation, food and services, accommodation service and front of house services while the functional is more on human resources, finance, marketing, research and development, security and maintenance. In operational point of view in the hotel are much sophisticate and posh and meticulous than the restaurant perspective. The hotel offers international food much more compared to restaurant which is much limited. Hotels caters all according to customers need. In terms of employees such as the waiter and receptionist, the hotel are hiring much more people and mostly who have a degree with personality and experience while the restaurant need few employees regardless of a degree , personality and experience to a certain degree. In functional, the hotel have human resources and high security and maintenance primarily because it is much bigger company and enormous responsibility and caters different nationality with regard the employee and customers.

The following are the organisations which are related to these industries:

I want to do this! What’s This?

People 1st is the sector skills council for hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism.

They are working to transform skills in the sector, particularly in the areas of management and leadership, customer service and craft skills. They are committed to ensuring that public funds support the industry to develop only those qualifications and programmes that meet the needs of employers.

The British Hospitality Association has been representing the hotel, restaurant and catering industry for 100 years.

The Association exists to ensure that the views of the British hospitality industry are represented in a forceful, coherent and co-ordinated way to government and policy makers in the UK and internationally, in order that its members’ businesses can flourish.

The Institute is delighted to release a new suite of five online learning modules which are freely available to all. The modules are tailored to meet the needs of hospitality and tourism students and professionals. They also support learning for our own Hospitality Management Qualifications.

These organizations helps everyone what are the current trend and development in hospitality industry. It keeps us update and be aware about the opportunities in the market. Moreover, it enhances our knowledge and we have questions we can check it out anytime we want to. On top of that, it helps the hospitality industry what are the things they need to improve which quite fruitful to all.

Task 2

The hotel and restaurants have commonalities in terms of functional and operational side of hospitality management but they have differences in other things. The hotel functional side are the human resources, finance, marketing, research and development, security and maintenance where the restaurant varies whether the restaurants are fast food chain, fine dining restaurants or vending machine. In fast food chain like McDonalds has human resources, finance, marketing ,research and development, security and maintenance however fine dining restaurants do have but others do not have. In operational points of view in the hotel and restaurants like food preparation , food and beverage services, accommodation services and front of house services have same legislative law regarding the health and safety ,environmental law and other laws. The way they do quality service differs in the way they deal the customers and their target market as the hotel restaurants are more meticulous and customer oriented than the restaurants in the market.

Hotels have star rating according to their quality and status and much more posh compared to restaurants. The hotels now offers more careers than the restaurants from a wide variety of jobs to choose from. They can apply in management, event organisation, restaurant and bar work as well as operational roles which includes the finance, human resources and marketing. On the other hand, careers in restaurants include management and chef work which is the most difficult to look for purely because of lacking the required skills and experience but in the larger restaurants opportunities for business managers, finance managers and operational staff are existing. In conferences and meetings and events are massive business that mostly involves in the hotel which accounts of 60% according to the British Hospitality Association Centres trends and statistic 2008.

Many occupations in the hospitality industries are offering full time, part time and casual and from agency. The full time has 40 hours a week normally but can exceed depending on the availability of the employee whilst in part time offers 20 hours only. The casual are just on call employees but have a limited benefits compared to full time and part time job. On the other hand, if they run out of members of staff they might call from agency to cover up for those who make an absent or those situations that needs more staff . Part-time job are mostly students and they are hired according to their availability especially in the hotel and fast food chain restaurant. The part-time job salary is roughly 5.82 and the full time is much higher depending on how much longer they are in the company. It varies from person to person and it depends on the size of the company and the amount of the responsibility involved and sometimes , packages can include profit-related. Restaurants employ more than 526,000 full time and part time staff accounting 82% in the UK. In the hotel the full time are approximately 72% in terms of employability. In the UK there are over 46,000 hotels and guest houses and the hotel industry remains a vital role in the economy having an annual turnover of roughly 40,000 pounds according to trends and statistics in 2008 British Hospitality Association.

In terms of salaries, the trainee hotel manager earns from 12,000 pounds to 19,000 and the more experience hotel manager gets 16,000 to 22,000 while the restaurant manager salary range from 16,000 to 20,000 pounds.

As far as structure is concerned, hotels and restaurants are different in many ways such as the hierarchy ,teams, organisations structures number of employees , career progression , staff characteristic , flexibility and interpersonal skills. The hotels have general manager that look the company as a whole or have a big picture of it. It is break down into department where they are specific on their task like restaurant manager has a responsibility to manage the people working in the restaurant such as the waiter, receptionist and the back of the hotel like the chef. On the other hand, the restaurant is much simple to operate and few people are working here so the restaurant manager are much more relax and specific on what they are doing in the said establishment. The progression of career in the hotel is much better than the restaurant for the reason that if you are working in the hotel it is much easier for you to be hired in higher position in the restaurant since you have the background working in the hotel. In addition, hotel staff can still have the options to apply in the other hotels and restaurants such as the supervisor after being a waiter before. This is what we call career advancement after having intensive training and qualification given by the hotel apart from the experienced gained in the hotel. Since working in the hotel has diverse nationality , the personal growth and confidence become an asset and as time goes it develops which makes you a flexible type of person, thus, having a good interpersonal skills which the employer is looking for.

Having said that, the hotel is still has plenty of advantages than the restaurant, although restaurant has pros in many things. But of course, it depends on the person as well if how determined and persevered he is in achieving his goals and be promoted in the company.

Qualifications in the hotel and restaurant industries can be apprenticeships, national vocational qualification(NVQ), vocationally related qualification(VRQ) and degree as well. The apprenticeships are nationally designed for young people in age bracket of 16-24 which has two levels like the apprenticeship and the advanced apprenticeships and consist of an NVQ and three key skills such as the application of number, communication and IT. The NVQ is developed by National Occupational Standards which focus on job responsibilities within the scope of the industry which is complied in a portfolio evidence. The vocationally related qualification (VRQ) sometimes called as technical course of study usually 1-5 days. These qualification have levels from level 1-3 , A Level 2 NVQ is equivalent to 5 GCSE’s grade A to C, and A Level 3 NVQ is equivalent to 2 A Levels.