UNETHICAL PRACTICE IN HOSPITALITY

Unethical Practice in Hospitality Industry

Unethical Practice in Hospitality Industry

Introduction

The hotel industry is concerned with providing accommodation, food, beverage, entertainment and recreation for travelers away from their usual residences and normal surroundings. The industry also naturally concerns itself with meeting the traveler's need for safety and supports their persons, property, transportation and even the different purpose of their travel, if so required. Speaking generally, those who make use of hospitality services demand achievement of a professional level of quality consistent with the universal standards, although perhaps regulated for local conditions. They hope that hotel will be clean, comfortable, safe and secure.

They expect to be furnished with hygienic conditions, good and sanitary food and beverage at a reasonable price. If there are shops or facilities in the hotel, they anticipate these outlets to reflect the same standards as the essential services. Further, they look to host for courtesy, friendliness, respect and identification. Perhaps more important than anything else, they want honesty, truth and equity during their staying from the operator to the employees (Jorgensen, 2002, p. 262).

Unethical consumer practices in hotel industry have attracted much attention from business practitioners. Tourism sector becomes as an application of the marketing process with specific side of tourism sector. The main focus of hospitality industry is characterized by its intangibility not physical good, which may cause a problem in standardization and control. Performing tourism service is limited by time and place that makes the sector perishable.

Traveling consists of many different products; as transport, accommodations, food and beverage, attractions that not all presented by the same company. The tourism industry is so volatile that can easily affected by world events, health, economic crises and so on. Another important thing about tourism sector is consuming the tourist product at the same time and place (Wheeler, 2005, p. 41). It can be seen that, the intangibility, inseparability, perishability and variability are the main characteristics of hotel industry.

Because of this, involving a high degree of contact and coordination between employees and the guests is so responsive that they may cause a negative impression on the hotel guests and it is possible to meet unethical behavior of the personnel to the guests. Concerning all these, in the process of the service production, every personnel in the hotel should work as a serviceman and as a marketer of the hotel. Especially the front office, housekeeping, and food and beverage department employees represent as a personnel sale department. Service quality and ethics are two complementary factors in hotel industry. These two crucial elements also provide competitive advantage in hospitality sector (Fox, 2000, p. 71).

As in all service sectors, in hotel sector, employees are the main elements in sustaining the service and customer satisfaction. Ethics is now becoming more important than before in attracting customers besides superior service, quality products and competitive pricing (Dreyfack, 2000, p. 25). So it is very important for these department employees who have so close relations with the guests ...