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- Volume 4, Issue 1, 2014
Hospitality & Society - Volume 4, Issue 1, 2014
Volume 4, Issue 1, 2014
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Customizing new-age hospitality: An exploratory study of Sedona
Authors: Jill Poulston and Tomas PerneckyAbstractAs there is increasing interest in New Age ideas, the New Age market segment deserves more attention in the field of hospitality studies than it currently receives. This exploratory study examines a New Age destination, Sedona (Arizona, USA), to determine how products and services are customized to meet the needs of this specialized market. It considers whether New Age hospitality exists as a definable experience and concludes that the heterogeneity of the phenomenon makes it difficult for a range of hospitality providers to meet individual needs in a specialized domain. The results of this study should be of interest to providers of New Age products and services, who are likely to find the observations and customization ideas useful. The study should also prove useful to hospitality researchers interested in the New Age phenomenon and customization.
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The hospitalities of cities: Between the agora and the fortress
Authors: Frans van den Broek Chávez and Jean-Pierre van der RestAbstractThis article calls attention to the inherent complexities of analysing and understanding the hospitalities of cities. Drawing on an urban sociological view of the city it proposes a metaphor – the agora and the fortress – as two extreme opposites, to identify levels, places and forms it can comprise. Utilizing the ‘dynamic model of hospitality’ as an analytical framework, it explores and exemplifies several host–guest relationships from a city government perspective and their dynamic interactions with higher levels of agency. These interactions are discussed in the context of cosmopolitanism, urbanism and public policy. The article concludes that the hospitalities of cities involve a variety of human phenomena that cannot be defined without ambiguity, but which are essential to our understanding of the flourishing and growth of cities, and their hospitalities. Future research should therefore include many lines of enquiry and research that no one single discipline can pursue.
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Distinction work and its consequences for women working as room attendants within five star hotels on the Gold Coast, Australia
Authors: Sandra Kensbock, Gayle Jennings, Janis Bailey and Anoop PatiarAbstractThis article highlights women room attendants’ experiences of the consequences of distinction work in five five-star hotels located in the Gold Coast region of South East Queensland, Australia. Those consequences are demonstrations of deference, reification of lower social class standing and social ostracism. ‘Distinction work’ requires attendants to recognize the guest’s superior class position as a key part of service interactions. An ontologically intertwined research stance was used with socialist feminism and critical theory epistemologies and a qualitative constructionist grounded theory methodology. Interviews were conducted with 46 room attendants working at five five-star hotels. This research contributes to hospitality literature by focusing on the influence of broader socio-economic hierarchies functioning within hotels, an arena not usually encompassed within hospitality studies. We argue that ‘distinction work’ involves a process wherein the causal aspects of demonstration of deference to guests during interactions, and the conditional aspects of the lower social standing of room attendants within the broader socio-economic arena, result in embedded ostracism. This article presents a new perspective on the low social value currently placed on room attendant employment.
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Hospitality and organizations: Enchantment, entrenchment and reconfiguration
By Peter LugosiAbstractThis article examines the complex relationship between hospitality and organizations. It is argued that a variety of organizational practices can be understood by considering how hospitality is mobilized and experienced by multiple stakeholders. The article begins by synthesizing existing conceptions of hospitality and outlining its different dimensions. It then goes on to examine how hospitality themes and related issues emerge in, and are thus relevant to, the study of organizations and management. The article first considers how hospitality is extended to or oriented towards external stakeholders and thus mobilized as tactical or strategic enchantment. It is argued that hospitality can be used purposefully to establish power relations and invoke obligations both to conform to organizational norms and to reciprocate. Second, the article considers how hospitality emerges within organizational practices and may be deployed by various stakeholders as an instrument of entrenchment to perpetuate existing norms and hierarchies. However, it is also suggested that practices of hospitality can create alternative organizational spaces and networks, and hospitable acts may thus help to reconfigure power relationships and become focal points of resistance. The article concludes by reflecting upon emerging questions, challenges and potential avenues for further research and intervention.
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Conference Review
By Desmond WeeAbstractHospitality on a platter, in retrospect Food, Drink and Hospitality: Space, Materiality, Practice Conference, London, 14 June 2013
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Reviews
Authors: Elizabeth Drummond Young, Richard N.S. Robinson and Alicia CrowtherAbstractHospitality as Holiness: Christian Witness Amid Moral Diversity, Luke Bretherton (2010) Farnham: Ashgate, 226 pp., ISBN: 9781409403494, p/bk, £19.99
The Limits of Hospitality, Jessica Wrobleski (2012) Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 168 pp., ISBN: 9780814657645, p/bk, $19.95
Eating Together: Food, Friendship and Inequality, Alice P. Julier (2013) Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, ix + 237 pp., ISBN: 9780252037634, p/bk, £16.99
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