CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
It is generally accepted that the historical origin of the hotel and catering workforce lie in the class of domestic servants who maintained the homes of the ruling classes in the latter half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century (Sanders, 1981a; Riley, 1985). According to Sanders (1981a) the decline in the number of domestic servant, in the part of the 20th century, coincided with the first significant growth in hotel employment. Many domestic workers were leaving their employment as a result of push factors such as lack of employment protection (which made domestic labour less attractive) and the improvements being made in domestic technology (that reduced the need for servants). Riley (1985 argued that the location of such domestic servant employment geographically mapped the growth areas for hotel and catering, notably in seaside resort, country Spas and large urban conurbations. Sander argues that this process of labour transfer meant that by the end of the second world war, conditions made it seem logical that substantial number of male and female domestic staff drift into the expanding hotel and catering industry (sanders 1981a: 83).
Since the 1940s the term hotel industry has come into common usage. It embraces the economic activities of undertaking aim to satisfy the demand for accommodation, food and drink away from home. To a greater or lesser extent many products of the group as well as other characteristics distinguish its entrepreneurs from others. They have a common function to supply those away from home with their basic needs. These are the considerations which combine this heterogeneous variety of units into a group, described here as an industry.
The hotel and catering industry is one of the largest employers in many developed and increasingly, less developed countries. Some 10% of the British workforce are engaged in hotel and catering employment representing some where between 2 & 2 and a half million person. The hospitality industry as it is now commonly referred to is the most important element in the wide tourism sector.
Economists, frequently point to the heterogeneous nature of hotel industries. The industry comprises units ranging from the most humble café to the largest luxury hotel owned by a multinational corporation. Hospitality industry employers stress the catering people oriented nature of hotels and catering, generating a glamorous, mystic that is all too easily reinforced by images in popular media (wood, 1990 a).
Furthermore, the industry is often presented as a paragon of conservative virtues, low barriers to entry mean that, in theory at least, the hotel and catering sector is fertile grouped for the small time entrepreneur. Similarly, a view is promulgated of a career development in the industry as open and meteoritic: even the kitchen pan washer can rise to become general manager of the hotel with hard work and dedication. Supporting these powerful images in an educational system that post school students separate courses in hotel and catering management from those in general business studies, encouraging an insularity that is characteristics of the industry as a whole.
This insularity manifests itself in a variety of ways, most commonly in places from those connected with it for the industry to be regarded as unique and special requiring specialist skills and training, a special attitude of mind and body, specialist professional associations, and above all special academic understanding. Those engaged in hotel and catering industry cannot disguise the true nature of much hospitality industry employment, of how wages and poor working conditions, of exploitation and minimal job security, of monotonous yet demanding works of degrading and low status occupations.
The purpose of this research is to investigate and provide answers to such problem and question as:
- Do hotel industry control revenue appropriately?
- Can high rate of loss in a hotel industry be attracted to poor working conditions?
- Are the staff of hotel industry exploited?
- Is hotel industry of low status occupation?
- Do the staff of hotel industry see their jobs as minimally secured?
- Attempts to make suggestions which will be of help to any hotel that is not measuring up to expectation with regards to the control of revenue.
It is clear that the persistence of hotel and catering industry as major employers cannot be explained in terms proposed by Riley and Sanders. Other contemporaries discussion of hospitality industry employment tend to be couched in terms of the attractiveness of such work to persons who are in some way socially and / or psychologically marginal (Mars, Bryant and Michell 1979). Thus, in explain the attractiveness of hotel and catering work in the face of poor formal rewards, Mars and Mitchell (1976) argues that hotel workers obtain satisfaction from their employment that is not easily obtained in other occupations, satisfaction which can offset low earnings. This view can be trace back to whyte (1948) who comments that: apparently there are many people who require a high rate of social activity in order to be happy in their work.
The restaurant fills this need for them (whyte 1948: 13) Thus, the objectives of the study are:
- Identify the problems in revenue control of the hotel industry
- Find out the extent to which hotels can reduce loss / fraud through auditing process.
- Find out what really causes the procurement of loss in the business.
- Find out the extent to which loss can occur in a hotel industry
- Make recommendations / suggestions that can go a long way to influence the internal control system and move things into normality.
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