SECTORS OF THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

Hospitality industry is a wider term for a broad variety of service industries which are all connected by their drive to provide an enjoyable experience for all who participate through welcoming and warm atmosphere. These can generally be divided into segments according to the skill-sets required for the work involved as follows:-

1. Food and beverage: This is the largest segment consisting of the preparation, transportation, and serving of food or beverage to customers.  E.g. restaurants, bars, and lounges, Cafeterias, Cafes, Pubs etc.
2. Lodging: Lodging means accommodation for a period or a place to sleep for one or more nights. Businesses in the lodging industry can accommodate as few as one or two guests to as many as hundreds. Examples include:- Hotels, hostels, motels etc.
3. Recreation: Recreation is any activity that people do for rest, relaxation, and enjoyment to refresh a person’s body and mind.  Examples include:- movies or theatre, attractions, zoos and museums, spectator sports, and participatory sports.
4. Travel and Tourism: Travel and tourism deal with services related to moving people from place to place. In general, travel and tourism allow people to visit destinations outside of their normal environment and this can be either leisure travel or business travel.

DEPARTMENTS IN HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

In addition to operational service sectors, a hospitality business usually have a number of functional departments as well which plays a significant role to ensure its general administration and they are:-

1. Sales and Marketing: The responsibility of increasing the sales of the hotel’s products and services is the major task of the department.
2. Personal and Human Resources: Human Resource department is responsible for the acquisition, utilisation, training, and development of the human resources of the hotel.
3. Account and Finance: This department maintains all the financial transactions.
4. Security: The security department of a hotel is responsible for the overall security of the hotel building, in-house guests, visitors, day users, and employees of the hotel, and also their belongings.
5. Engineering and Maintenance:  It looks after the maintenance of all the equipment, furniture and fixture installed in a hotel.
6. Purchase and Store: The purchase department is responsible for procuring, storing and issuing the inventories for all departments of a hotel.
7. Information Technology (IT) / Systems: Is responsible for the day-to-day support of all IT systems, business systems, office systems, computer networks, and telephony systems throughout the hotel

EXAMPLES OF HOSPITALITY BUSINESSES

A restaurant is an example of a hospitality business. Restaurants generally rely on a high level of customer satisfaction to stay alive in business. If customers are unsatisfied with a restaurant’s service, they may stop dining there and, instead, choose a different restaurant. Hospitality training can benefit restaurants by giving employees the soft skills needed to provide customers with quality service that encourages them to come back. Another example of a hospitality business is a Each hotel is a hospitality business because they rely on creating a positive relationship between the host (the hotel) and the guest (the customer). Hotel owners must train employees to create a welcoming environment for their customers while ensuring that all of their customer’s needs are met in the process. Of course, there are other dozens of other hospitality businesses, some of which include:- amusement parks, zoos, event planning, catering, cruise lines, bartending and transportation. Any business that relies on creating and maintaining positive relationships with its customers or clients is essentially part of the hospitality industry.