Browse by title

This chapter provides an overview of the conceptual development and measurement of employee engagement, beginning with the originating work of Kahn (1990). Critical reviews and contrasting suggestions for advancing the field are offered. Research findings from empirical studies on employee engagement in hospitality and tourism contexts are synthesized and applied to this debate.

Older workers are an increasingly important source of labour for the hospitality industry. As a result of an ageing population and declining fertility rates in most countries, resulting in a smaller pool of younger people in the labour market, the hospitality industry’s traditional reliance on younger workers needs to be re-evaluated. Attracting, retaining and developing older employees is a key employment issue facing hospitality businesses. In order to address this issue, hospitality employers will need to confront workplace inequality faced by older workers and develop policies and practices to promote the health and wellbeing of their older workers. Negative stereotypical attitudes towards older workers, such as resistance to change, inability to assimilate technological developments and physical and cognitive decline need to be challenged. The chapter examines the barriers facing older employees in the hospitality industry and ways to reduce and, where possible, eliminate these barriers.

Hotels can attract customers by adopting artistic strategies and leveraging local cultural resources. By using artistic service innovation strategies, hotels can provide unique additional value and an unforgettable sensory experience to their customers. Thus an artistic service innovation strategy provides hotels with a sustained competitive advantage and contributes to their profits. In the hotel industry, effective human resource practices can be considered as the driving force for a hotel’s development of new service. To achieve artistic strategies, hotels should develop a self-aligned system of high-performance human resource practices to enhance employees’ abilities, motivation, and opportunities for providing unique additional value or memorable new service to customers. Based on this human resource-based perspective, this research explores mechanisms through which high-performance human resource practices assist managers in appropriately arranging resources to assist hotels in successfully engaging in artistic service, resulting in better operational performance.