Hospitality & Society - Volume 5, Issue 1, 2015

Hospitality is often understood as an ethical openness towards the other. Hospitality, in this way, is a gift. But is this really the situation of hospitality in the world today? Europeans have created another, bespoke hospitality and they insist on being given a generous welcome all over the world – colonialists, imperialists, businessmen, tourists, scientists and students. Europe is too small for the Europeans: the world is their oyster. Yet in that oyster, hospitality is more often the cause of problems than the solution. In the following article, I will elaborate on this critical idea of hospitality as it is understood in the works of Zygmunt Bauman.

Building on the work of lifestyle migrant researchers where hospitality and tourism are key drivers for migrants’ location decisions, this article considers the complexities of work choices made by lifestyle migrants. Discussion leads to the proposition of linking lifestyle migration, work–life balance and work choices to provide a basis upon which to explore this group of workers and their relationship with work post-migration. To do this the study reflects on semi-structured interviews with 33 UK lifestyle migrants living in the Chamonix Valley, France and working in hospitality and tourism.

This study examines the phenomena of child sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation as well as how the hospitality industry can be proactive in fighting for human rights in the context of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Seven hospitality companies have signed End Child Prostitution and Trafficking (ECPAT)-USA’s Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism, also referred to as The Code. The initiative of seven hospitality companies and the purpose of The Code is to provide awareness and tools to fight against the sexual exploitation of children in the hospitality and tourism contexts. Whether and how to become involved with this movement tests hospitality companies’ approach to strategic CSR. These companies can gain a competitive advantage by creating a safe and socially sustainable environment for their guests, employees and their community, as well as a good reputation by investing in strategic and long-term positive social responsibility activities related to combating child sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.

This article focuses on the increasing fashionableness of gastronomic forms: their ‘symbolic enhancement’, and the ensuing incorporation of their forms into tourism, policy, destination management and marketing. The symbolic (although also material) enhancement of gastronomy may also lead to its objectification rather than acknowledging that gastronomy is an abstraction, and something that is negotiated constantly amongst the members of a society. Unfortunately, the inadvertent consequence of some studies focusing on the promotion and management of gastronomy, with respect to tourism and destination management, has been the formalization of such a normative approach with a tendency to link gastronomy with the wider debates on heritage. This article proposes a different way of looking at gastronomy: one in which gastronomy is relational, reflexive and negotiable – not fixed. This is a multi-disciplinary approach that draws on sociological and cultural studies of ­tourism, gastronomy, identity, reflexivity and consumption.

Eating Her Curries and Kway: A Cultural History of Food in Singapore, Nicole Tarulevicz (2013) Urbana, University of Illinois Press, xi + 204 pp., ISBN: 97802520389099, p/bk, £34.00

Food and the Self: Consumption, Production and Material Culture, Isabelle de Solier (2013) London: Bloomsbury, ix+199 pp., ISBN: 9780857854223, p/bk, £19.99

Tourism and the Power of Otherness: Seductions of Difference, David Picard and Michael A. Di Giovine (eds) (2014) Bristol: Channel View, xii+195 pp., ISBN: 9781845414153, p/bk, £24.95

Food and Society: Principles and Paradoxes, Amy E. Guptill, Denise A. Copelton and Betsy Lucal (2013) Cambridge: Polity Press, 333 pp., ISBN: 9780745642826, p/bk, £17.99