Concern for hospitality!

Friends and readers I can only apologise for my silence over the last couple of months…

This has not been a great year so far for humanity and I have found it hard to concentrate on one topic that I felt would make a difference.  Considering that the whole world has been suffering from political unrest and acts of God my thoughts have been steering away from the little things and more towards the bigger picture…  I have  attempted to write numerous articles for this blog these past 3 months, from the quality of our service in our industry to symbolic interpretations of  consumer behaviour but I kept deleting them as I felt that in the grand scheme of things these issues appeared meaningless (for now at least).

As such I began contemplating a larger picture for hospitality and the effects our industry has generated, both the positive and the negative cross cultural barriers and physical borders.  Unfortunately we tend to see mostly the negative effects in the press and the positive are rarely measured and presented. 

It is a shame that we do not have an organisation that monitors and reports both bad practise and best practise of hospitality organisations across the world… or do we?

Enter Tourism Concern, a small charity that is doing so much for our industry yet most of the hospitality colleagues and students I talk to appear to never have heard of.  Perhaps the title of the charity might be misleading, or perhaps it has been in the past perceived as a campaigning organisation that  is only “concerned” with the bad things.  No matter how people perceive this charity the fact remains that for over 20 years it has challenged the status quo and has helped improve the life’s of local people involved in tourism and hospitality businesses and as such improve our industry. 

So this is a call for hospitality professionals and students to visit the Tourism Concern web pages and make a judgement for themselves on how their approach is changing and if you feel you wanted to do your little bit then consider becoming a member and transforming your concerns into action. 

And if you are still not worried a little about our impact both as human beings and as professionals listen to what this child had to say.  Her words still ring true today and echo a reality that our industry sometimes contributes to: