Hotels In The Main Leisure Industry

In the travel industry hotels are very significant. Modern sociologists who de-construct them as architectural features see them as being much more significant than mere places to hire a room for the night.

The words 'inn' and 'hostel' are typically English words suggesting basic, unadorned functions of the human body like eating and sleeping. With its French ancestry 'hotel' suggests a place where these things may be done with some style. The word connotes in a subtle way the confluence of the crude and the cultured.

Accommodation is the primary purpose of hotels. Travellers need places to sleep peacefully and comfortably. The basic tariff will cover this, but may also include a great deal more, including a sense of luxury and prestige. Many establishments go to extreme lengths to compete in terms of finer features.

Each hotel has a character. Some are new and shiny, others revel in their antiquity. The more that a hotel can gather from its ever moving clientele that happier it will be. Although shiny competitors keep rising from the ground the establishment with a past usually takes pride in that, and posts pictures, signatures and memorabilia from its ever moving stream of guests as signs of its reputation.

The industry plays an important part in the culture and literature of many countries. Some very old hotels in Beijing represent the ancient past, and yet modern hotels a stone's throw away operate in the twenty first century way. The English novelist, Arnold Bennett is famous for using a hotel setting as background for the development of plot and character. In the parade of characters passing through a foyer the foibles of humanity keep coming and going.

In more recent times film directors have found rich veins of drama in the frailty of a door which separates the temporary safety of a private room with an outside threat of danger on the other side of the door. A suspicious pizza delivery boy or gun toting thugs represent one side of the equation, the hero or heroine the other and the ambient hotel space is the sign between the two elements.

Parallel with the hotel trade industry is a burgeoning Bed and Breakfast industry. It might be expected that his would pose a serious threat to the hotel industry, but such does not appear to be the case. New hotel chains seem to profit and expand, yielding good returns for investors even though Bed and Breakfast take their quota of travelling guests.

Hotels and hotel chains can withstand the competition from smaller establishments because they can offer more. Gyms, spas and restaurants are the obvious advantages, but there are also marketing opportunities that are not open to bed and breakfast establishments. A hotel chain can offer exactly the same standard of service in a number of different locations and many people make travel arrangements knowing in advance what to expect at various stops. Weary travellers might also prefer the privacy and discretion of a hotel above the nosey intrusions and questions of a host who wants to be friendly.