Few businesses have customers who stay on the premises, buy a wide range of products in varying combinations throughout the day and night, have a large number of employees, many with special skills, and also have a high capital to sales ratio. These are some of the realities of the hotel business, and the authors examine the hotel comprehensively as a business providing commercial hospitality.
The Business of Hotels Fourth Edition is the outcome of a thorough revision of an established text by the writers, who are well known in the field of hospitality management. The authors have updated the text to include a comprehensive profile of the hotel business as it enters the twenty-first century, as well as new data, quotes and extracts from a wide range of authoritative industry sources.
The focus is on markets, money and people, and the text is illustrated from hotel operations all over the world. Separate chapters are devoted to hotel policies, the main hotel services, organization, staffing and performance, the small hotel, hotel groups and international hotel operations.
For the student and teacher of hotel management, the whole book and each of its chapters provide an international framework in which the hotel business may be studied at professional, diploma and degree level. It will also be very useful for students on short or distance learning courses in hotel management.
For the practitioner - the owner, director or manager - the book can help to organize and formalize what they might have learnt in a less systematic way by experience and also perhaps contribute to a more balanced view of their business.
For newcomers to hotels and others with a professional interest in understanding them this book is a suitable introduction to the hotel industry.