Artefact 5

Hospitality in the present era has many different perceptions as illustrated by the different viewpoints from the interview we had gotten.

Interview of a Financial Controller of XX Hotel:

1. What is hospitality in your point of view?
-  Service, satisfaction, return guests, courteous, guest feel at home and good memories to bring back home

2. What are some facilities/services do you have to provide guests?
- Besides the usual room amenities, always the go the extra mile to meet guests needs.

3. How do you think hospitality has changed over the years?
- During the early years, hospitality is a selfish trade. Hotels engage staff with experience, paper qualification don't matter. No internet etc.
Now the service standard has soared due to competition. Internet plays an important role. Unhappy guest will post negative remarks and the rating of the particular hotels will drop. When people booked, they not only look at prices, but also rating of the hotel, be it service etc.

4. What do you think hospitality now emphasize on?
- It now emphasise on earning revenue for hotel rather than seeing that the guests' needs.

5. Do you think that the present hospitality is better than the past?
- Present hospitality is better than the past due to keen competitor vying for top scores and  services. When the guest checkout, immediately the hotel would know if they do well. Due to internet, you can view and read the good and bad experience of the guests. Presently, there are a lot of OTA's the hotel can rely on.

Interview of a Facilitator of Republic Polytechnic:

1. What is hospitality to you in the past (from your knowledge) and present?

- Hospitality started from a Latin word, Hospitare and it depends on the dimension back then. However, today, hospitality is a commercial business due to urbanisation.

Today's value of hospitality has changed significantly due to development of culture, perception of safety and people are becoming less outgoing as compared to the past.

The modern hospitality started in America due to the Geographical mean (towns are too far away from each other). It started from an inn to shelter travellers, thus passing down by generations.

2. Do you agree to the above notion?

I feel that it contradicts the notion, as nowadays people do not care about people, they care more towards what facilities/places can provide the best service which not really involved human.

Justification:

We chose to interview them because they both have experience and prior knowledge in the area of field.

The hotelier considered past hospitality as a decade ago instead of the Classical Rome era, therefore she said that hospitality was a selfish trade in the past.  In her point of view, present hospitality now focuses on earning revenue rather than meeting guest needs.

For the facilitator, she worked in both local and foreign hospitality industries, therefore she will know how hospitality is like in other countries.The facilitator also mentioned that nowadays in hospitality, people do not care about people. The people cares more towards the company's facilities, places that can provide the best services or the image/speciality that they can convey.

Hence, both interviewees feel that the notion is contradicting.

Hence from the interview, we can see that hospitality in the present has different priorities as compared to hospitality in the past. In the past, hospitality's priority was based on the people's feelings as they would determine the hosts' social status. However in the present, the priority is based on the facilities that is provided for the guests, as if the facilities and services are better, the happier the guest will be, which determines the hotel's ratings, hence more value-adding.