Introduction
The hospitality industry is categorized as a service industry that includes tourism industry, lodging facilities and catering units. Travel and tourism industry comprises of areas of tourism, transportation services, food and beverage services and other small retail stores. The places that offer hospitality services include hotels, restaurants, arts and craft shops, airplanes, bars and motels.
Hospitality services extend to include activities such as recreation, educational trips and tours, festivals, sports and gaming events (Brooks & Kasavana, 2007). This paper explains about hospitality service trends in Asia and specifically focuses on Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau and Thailand.
Hospitality service trends in Asia
Hospitality services are those services and consultancies that are mainly in a hotel, restaurant, gaming industries, and leisure and entertainment industries. The current trends and issues affecting the hospitality industry in Asia include globalization, changing lifestyles, socio-demographic changes, technology, legislations, physiological and psychological factors.
These factors affect hospitality services such as accommodation, tourism, foods and beverages. The following is a discussion on the current hospitality service trends in Asia especially Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and Thailand.
Previously most tourists visited France, the United States of Americas and Spain but lately there have been more people visiting Asian Countries especially China, Japan, Singapore and Korea. The rise in the international tourism in Asian countries attributes to the technological development. Two factors facilitating globalization in Singapore include the establishment of the transport technology and development of the internet technology. Tiger Airways in Singapore makes movement from one place to another fast and less expensive.
The cost and time of moving have been reduced tremendously due to the development of transport technology that facilitates globalization and hence the tourism sector has improved. The rapid internet development enables tourists to communicate easily at the comfort of their homes. In addition, hotel booking and flight tickets that are done online improve the efficiency of the tourism and hospitality industry (Cowen, 2012).
Hotel industry in Macau faces the challenge of labor shortage as depicted by Lam Lei of the University of Nevada in his master’s thesis. The government information bureau of Macau recorded in 2004 that because of the liberalization of the hotel industry in 2002, hotel industry is growing at an alarming rate.
This attributes to increased investors from other countries who venture in the hospitality industry. The complexity of the businesses in Macau leads to the need of employing more personnel that are skilled to serve the customers. Macau government places strict restrictions to the incoming foreigners and as a result, there has been a greater shortage of labor in Macau (Lei, 2011).
In the hospitality industry, a good customer service plays an important role in ensuring the success of the business. In Hong Kong China, customer service drops as educational level increases in the hotel industry. The heart of the business revolves around hospitality and customer service.
Currently, with the generation Y employees working at the hospitality industry, the quality of customer service has dropped because of their desire to have a learning-oriented relationship with the supervisors, lack of commitment and the high rate of labor turnover (Wan, 2011).
Thailand receives the greatest number of tourists in South East Asia after Malaysia. The country receives about 7 million tourists every year. In Thailand, the four Ss of tourism stand for sun, sand, sea and sex. Recently, the country has faced the competition from other countries majoring on other tourists’ attractions like cultural attractions, natural resources and other forms of entertainment and leisure activities (Kontogeorgopoulos, 2008).
Trends in the tourism industry in Thailand have taken four dimensions as identified by Cohen. First is massification of the industry caused by the increased number of tourists in the recent years due to the improved and upgraded accommodation facilities, improved transportation and communication networks and development of the tourism-based services.
The second dimension is the dispersion of tourists from the central Bangkok to other parts of the country like Chiang Mai in the North and Phuket in the South. The third dimension involves the heterogeneity of the tourism sector due to varied attractions sites and diverse range of quality services to the tourists. Lastly, tourism sector in Thailand lately experiences regionalization.
Tourism Authority of Thailand and private companies’ attempts to extend the network to the neighboring countries like Burma and Vietnam has led to the expanded market for the tourism sector in Thailand (Kontogeorgopoulos, 2008).
Socio-demographic changes influence tourism in different aspects. Such factors include age, population, migrations, gender, and educational differences. For example, the population increase in Japan and Italy has led to increased demand for the holydays resulting to the increased turn over for the country from tourism (Kapiki, 2012)
Conclusion
From the above current trends in hospitality services in Asia, it is correct to say that there is a paradigm shift in the industrial sector among the Asians. Tourism sector is the most affected area in Hong Kong, Thailand, Macau and Singapore. These service trends continue to be experienced and the current events project the changes in the future especially in the hospitality industry.
References
Brooks, R & Kasavana, M. (2007). Managing front office operations. Michigan: Educational Institute.
Cowen, T. (2012). Trends and issues in the tourism and hospitality industry. Alexandra: Education Bureau.
Kapiki, S. (2012). Current and future trends in tourism and hospitality. International Journal of Economic Practices and Theories, 2 (1), pp. 2247-7225.
Kontogeorgopoulos, N. (2008). Tourism in Thailand: Patterns, trends and limitations. Cognizant Communication Corporation, 2, pp. 225-238.
Lei, L. (2011). The challenges of the labor shortage in Macau’s hotel industry. Las Vegas: University of Nevada.
Wan, J. (2011). Customer service: Trends and challenges. Hong Kong: Chinese university of Hong Kong.