Paul Slattery

Labour productivity in hotels: an empirical analysis

Abstract Among the current issues confronting hotels that of improving productivity is one of the more compelling and challenging. For while the need to secure greater productivity becomes increasingly evident to hotel managers the elusiveness of the concept persists. Not only have managers frequently been at a loss to understand it but also to know how to measure it satisfactorily. This paper introduces approaches to the measurement of hotel productivity and, within the context of one hotel companys quest to manage labour productivity, concentrates upon two particular factors which have made hotel productivity elusive -productivity measurement and productivity evaluation.

Hospitality organisations and their environment

Abstract This article focuses first on the relationship between hospitality organisations and their objectively conceived environments and then on the relationships between hospitality organisations and their personally assessed environment. The diversity of the relationships within these two perspectives is identified and their implications for the structure of hospitality organisations are explored. It is argued that the specific relationship between hospitality organisations and their environment are important to the management of the organisations, since survival and growth are dependent on it.

Reported RevPAR: unreliable measures, flawed interpretations and the remedy.

Abstract Revenue per available room (RevPAR) is regarded by hotel companies, the investment community and other commentators as the most effective yardstick of the balance between hotel room supply and demand. However, the gap between the concept of RevPAR and reported RevPAR statistics has become too wide to be ignored. I will present three arguments. First, from an industry wide perspective reported RevPAR is unreliable. Secondly, explanations of hotel supply and demand performance derived from it are flawed. Thirdly, for reported RevPAR to perform its job effectively the latitude with its definition must end and it must be tied to hotel cash flow.

Social scientific methodology and hospitality management.

Abstract The hospitality industry is frequently presented as a people industry. This paper argues that accepting this view requires our understanding of hospitality management to be social scientifically informed, because the social sciences alone are able to offer theoretically grounded interpretations of people and social events in hospitality. The success of these interpretations is dependent upon the methodology employed, and the paper identifies three areas of methodology crucial to the resolution of social issues in hospitality management.

The structural theory of business demand: a reply to Hughes

I need to start by correcting Howard Hughes’s understanding of my Structural Theory of Business Demand (Howard L. Hughes, The structural theory of business demand: a comment, I. 1. Hosp. Man. 12,309-311). Whereas the proportion of GDP from services and the proportion of the workforce in services are necessary conditions for the growth of business demand in hotels, they are not sufficient. The progression from phase I to phase II in the structural theory also requires the emergence of national chains of service businesses and Hughes has chosen to ignore this feature of the theory. When retail chains, financial services chains, professional services chains, wholesaling chains and, indeed, hospitality chains develop a national spread then the secular growth of business demand into hotels progresses apace as it has done in the USA and the UK. In the structural theory it is not just the proportion of services in an economy, but also the structure of the service economy which is necessary for the acceleration of business demand. There are three main types of business demand which are prominent when an economy develops service chains. First, the emergence of service chains such as retailers and wholesalers, requires a cohort of corporate executives from across the full range of management functions who need to spend a proportion of their time interacting with company branches across the country and this produces demand into hotels. In service chains there is a greater proportion of corporate executives travelling on business more frequently than there is in extractive, manufacturing or state controlled services. Secondly, financial and professional services companies, which are nationally and internationally based, require business travel at a greater frequency than extractive or manufacturing companies to service clients and this adds to hotel demand. Thirdly, service chains use hotels as quasi offices in which company meetings, training courses and strategy courses are held. Hughes is right to record that several developing countries have the majority of GDP derived from services, but much of this is state controlled services and these countries do not have national chains of service businesses. Therefore they do not have sufficient conditions to trigger secular growth in business demand. Hughes did not mention that the structural theory explained why business demand into

Major variables in the corporate structure of hotel groups.

Abstract As hotel chains emerge and grow they naturally evolve a corporate structure. This exists outside of the individul hotels within a group and in organisation charts appears above them in terms of managerial seniority. Corporate structures are specific to chains and are not part of the traditional battery of hotelkeeping skills. Hotel chains, however, are growing apace and as concentration of the industry grows so corporate structures grow. Here we provide an analysis of them.