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Shapes of Tourism Employment
Edited by
Gwenaëlle Grefe
Dominique Peyrat-Guillard
First published 2020 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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© ISTE Ltd 2020
The rights of Gwenaëlle Grefe and Dominique Peyrat-Guillard to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932484
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-354-7
1.1.
2.3.
Chapter 3.
3.1.
3.4.
4.1.
Chapter
Aurore GIACOMEL and Régis DUMOULIN
5.1.
5.2. From the
5.3.
5.4.
5.5.
5.6.
5.7.
Chapter
Aldona GLIŃSKA-NEWEŚ, Rafal HAFFER, Joanna WIŃSKA and Barbara JÓZEFOWICZ
6.1.
6.2.
6.3.
6.4.
Chapter
7.1.
7.2.
7.2.1.
7.3.
7.4.
7.5.
Chapter 8. Rebuilding of Flag Carrier Airline Companies and Historical Value Violations .................
Gwenaëlle GREFE
8.1. National companies conquering the world: a historical background ..
8.1.1. The impetus of the Paris Convention and the rise of the interwar period ........................
8.1.2. The acceleration given to air transport by the Chicago Convention ............................
8.2. Flag-carrying companies in the age of globalization: toward historical value chains............................
8.2.1. American deregulation: an anticipation of globalization in Europe.............................
8.2.2. The liberalization of the European sky and its consequences on the majors, at all levels
8.3. Conclusion ....................................
8.4. References ....................................
Chapter 9. Aircrew Conflict Management: Divisions and Continuity within the Ranks of the Majors .......
Gwenaëlle GREFE and Dominique PEYRAT-GUILLARD
9.1. Two jobs for the same condition .......................
9.2. Flight crew, a class with comparable professional identities, difficult to integrate into traditional human resource management systems........
9.3. Flight crew, the target of successive restructuring plans leading to separate corporate struggles ...................
9.3.1. Cabin crew facing the challenge of trivializing their occupation ..
9.3.2. Flight deck crew in need of joint management .............
9.4. Conclusion
9.5.
Chapter 10. Ground Personnel Exposed to Headwinds: Restructuring on Land in Response to Air Deregulation ........
Gwenaëlle GREFE
10.1. The ground worlds ...............................
10.2. Between ground and sky, the suspended world of air traffic controllers ............................
10.3. Ground operations personnel, an adjustment variable in any context ................................
10.3.1. Groundstaff: the immediate targets of legacies’ restructuring plans ..........................
10.3.2. ADP staff concerns ............................
10.3.3. Deregulation and outsourcing of ground
10.4. Conclusion
Chapter 11. The Psychological Bonds between Airline Pilots and their Work: From Passion to Reason .........
Dominique PEYRAT-GUILLARD and Gwenaëlle GREFE
11.1. Airline pilot, from dream job to the psychological bonds experienced..........................
11.1.1. Flying, a child’s dream ..........................
11.1.2. An emotional bond of identification with the profession threatened by societal and organizational developments ....
11.2. The particularity of the bond with the organization ...........
11.2.1. From an idealized organization...
11.2.2… to an instrumental, or even a simple acquiescence bond .....
11.3. Which HR policy? ...............................
11.3.1. Recruitment difficulties in the face of an announced shortage ... 180
11.3.2. Constrained career management ....................
11.3.3. A social dialogue hampered by the impossibility of defending one’s profession ..........................
Chapter 12. The World of Companies Pro Social No Frills .......
Gwenaëlle GREFE
12.1. A world without social frills .........................
12.2. The chaotic regime of charter airline personnel in the face of the widespread use of “sun destination planes” ......... 188
12.3. Dark management at low-cost airlines: human resource management abuses .......................
12.3.1. Social dumping and circumvention of European labor law .... 192
12.3.2. Human resource management optimization ..............
12.3.3. From social dialogue avoidance to accommodation
12.4. Conclusion ...................................
12.5. References ....................................
Chapter 13. Hybrid Companies, Inclined to Reasoned Human Resource Management ..................
Gwenaëlle GREFE
13.1. A hybridization of models ..........................
13.2. At the origin of the invention of low cost, a model based on employee commitment .....................
13.3. The low-cost imitation strategy
13.3.1. The temptation of switching to low cost: the case of Aer Lingus ...............................
13.3.2. The inclusion of low-cost as a response: the choice of duplication and subsidization of medium-haul flights ..........
13.4. Conclusion ...................................
13.5.
13.6.
Introduction
Subjected to unprecedented opportunities but also to the hazards of the triumph of the leisure society [VIA 15], human resource management (HRM), which is part of the world of large tourist organizations, appears to be critical in many respects [GRE 19]. In the same vein, the individual is in a paradoxical position: envied and desired as a consumer, he or she is too often seen as a burden or optimized as an employee. This twofold consideration compromises adherence to the managerial discourse and cultures developed in the name of spreading values backed by customer service. But above all, it makes the organization dichotomous, which undermines the substance that can be attributed to its societal mission, at a time when CSR issues are essential in democratic debates. Both the hotel industry and air transport are not spared from the aforementioned singularities that they sometimes illustrate even to excess.
In addition, the two sectors have experienced a concomitant expansion [GAY 17], especially from the 1950s onwards. The first is essential to the second in order to attract tourists to the destinations served, to urbanize them in part but also to provide good accommodation for crews, so that many airlines have chosen to invest in hotel chains. Pan Am was a pioneer in creating the Intercontinental Hotel Corporation (IHC), which opened its first 85-room hotel in Belem, Brazil, in 1949, due to the lack of quality hotels available on site. In the same perspective, Trans World Airways (TWA) acquired the international branch of the Hilton Group in 1967 in order to become more international. In Europe, in the aftermath of the Second World War, Air France was no exception, first making stakes in French air representatives located in the French colonies in Africa, then creating in 1970 the subsidiary Hotel France International (HFI), which became Le Méridien.
Introduction
written by Gwenaëlle GREFE and Dominique PEYRAT-GUILLARD.
These examples, which could be further supported by the cases of holiday clubs and their integrated airlines and hotel chains, attest to the intertwining of the two sectors and sometimes their connection to a common parent company. These proximities undoubtedly explain why Accor has coveted – without success – the public shares of the Air France Group. Although financial and strategic logics meet, professional cultures remain far apart, which makes the idea of a corporate HR department producing homogenized and global policies illusory. However, beyond these obvious divisions, the hotel and airline sectors have similar basic trends: opposition of internal trades and formation of “clans” (front and back, room and kitchen, accommodation and catering, ground and sky, cabin and cockpit), wide range of qualifications, recomposition of skill portfolios and rise in soft skills, from receptionist to hostess, to the captain who must now act as an expert in crew relationship management. The turbulence endured is also comparable. As sectors largely affected by mergers and acquisitions, both the hotel and airline sectors are imposing changes on their staff that permanently alter their ability to project themselves and plan a controlled professional trajectory.
Similarly, the constant search for savings and improved profitability exposes individuals to increasing labor flexibility, exacerbated by the outsourcing policies observed in both sectors in order to bring about the “low-skills” class: the luxury hotel caretakers mentioned by Gilles Alfonsi and Edouard Deluxe [ALF 13] among Parisian hotel staff in charge of housekeeping, or the “invisible workers” [BRU 17] on airport runways.
Moreover, neither of these two domains can be reduced to a single sectoral approach, given the internal heterogeneity that reveals a complex logic of “worlds”1. Those of the hotel industry, presented in the first part of the book, suggest contrasting environments depending on the size and financial strength of investors, non-hotel owners or owner-operators, affiliated or not in a chain, voluntary or integrated (Chapter 1). Similarly, the choice of a heritage hotel transforms the mission of the staff responsible for embodying the site in its originality, while employees in the standardized hotel industry can better comply with preformatted scripts.
Finally, everyone is called upon to promote their personality in order to create emotion, re-enchantment, satisfaction and interpersonal skills in the service of an experience that is more than ever urged as a co-production. These “summonses” to
1 In lowercase, the word “world” refers to everything that surrounds an actor and what he or she is part of, through his or her thought and action. With a capital letter, “World” refers to the space inhabited by humans on planet Earth [LEV 13, p. 15].
intervene positively in the customer journey transform the professions traditionally built on restraint and discreet propriety, to confuse some of them through the enhancement of front office soft skills in particular (Chapter 2). The spaces invested in by the hotel industry also have other variabilities. On the one hand, the historic spaces of a hotel industry that is winning back its customers, attracted by the alternative promises of the collaborative economy but also strengthened by a tradition that underlies know-how that can now be negotiated elsewhere, are being recomposed on the basis of a reaffirmed combination between culture (art and design), heritage and the culinary dimension. These new attributes of the hotel equation call for the rise of back office professions, also enhanced by the globalization of the sector (Chapter 3). Alongside “Lifestyle” or traditional hotels, the timeless category of luxury constitutes an autonomous world, with its own codes and rules, capable of stimulating the motivations of passionate individuals, captivated by the possibility of capturing by proxy a little of the fantasized life of famous customers. In these “houses”, the possibility of a career, built by internal evolution, still functions as an attractor with a commitment that is sometimes difficult to develop in the other levels of the range (Chapter 4).
On the other hand, recent and vertically extended hotels, defined within the outlines of emerging tourist countries, where accommodation capacities must accompany the metamorphosis of tourism practices between imitation of the West and definition of local customs, imprint their silhouettes in those of world cities and sometimes “high places”, which are not metropolises (like the Hualuxe Hotels and Resorts of IHG). In these contexts and in these worlds (Chapter 5), the difficulty of HRM seems to be able to apply the principles of the “glocal” approach, which is ultimately complex to build and deploy, unless one has the ability to control interstitial zones, halfway between local and corporate culture, always subject to the nuances of interculturality. Poland (Chapter 6) and China (Chapter 7) will allow us here to illustrate these challenges and scales, after having demonstrated the structural presence of “worlds in the vast world” of the hotel industry.
In the aviation world, discussed in the second part of this book, the same pattern is reproduced: according to the geographical areas delimited by particular growth areas (United States, Europe, Asia, Middle East, etc.), but also according to the types of companies (legacy or full service, charter, low cost and no frills2, leasing companies, business companies, etc.) or from the ownership of a parent company or its regional and low cost subsidiaries, employment conditions such as HRM differ from one company to another, exposing employees of the same denomination to
2 Means “without frills” because the service is basic, unless the customer wants to pay more to improve it.
disparate and unequal positions. The situation rents of some people are not necessarily correlated to the economic success of the model of the company in which they operate, but rather to the age of the structure and its social culture, where social benefits won by the trade union struggle have been built and stratified, depending on the more or less decisive areas of uncertainty held by the forces involved. In this context, talking about HRM for the air sector does not mean that there is a homogeneous reality that would simply be modified by national legislation. Air transport is indeed characterized by worlds that intersect in the air and compete on land, at the cost of many social adjustments, and against a backdrop of uninterrupted social crisis.
However, from one sphere to another, the reasons for trade union demands change, sometimes based on defensive logics of preserving social heritage, sometimes on offensive logics of social conquest, but signifying, in any case, renegotiations of internal balances, undermined by the chaos of ever-increasing liberalization and the trivialization of travel, associated with its social diffusion. These worlds, designed in particular following the upheavals of the 1990s, are not frozen and have intense areas of permeability: when full-service companies develop low-cost subsidiaries internally; when they decide to convert to low cost themselves; when low-cost subsidiaries become charters or when low-cost subsidiaries return to the parent company; when a regional subsidiary also relies on charter companies to operate, occasionally offering leasing; or when, finally, a foreign company acquires a national company, with or without the desire to preserve it in its original identity.
Each situation evokes paradoxes and ambiguities for staff subject to double binds and unequal treatment, but also to group and clan logic, which leads to social friction. In these climates of division, there are still opposing ambitions to adjust upwards for some (the worst-off employees) and to level down for employers. These tensions undermine the stability of collectives whose passion for the profession and the need for permanent consideration of safety exclude true psychological detachment. Moreover, career systems largely defined according to seniority criteria often prevent departures and make strikes more systematic. These allow demonstrations of strength that are impossible in the practice of the profession, and undoubtedly all the more vehement because they remain self-prohibited on a daily basis in the name of the latter’s security requirement.
To penetrate and understand these worlds, we will first consider comprehending the sector as a whole as well as its history (Chapter 8), before looking at the situations of the two main categories of personnel present in the air: flight crews (Chapter 9) and ground crews (Chapter 10). We will then focus more specifically on the case of pilots and their link to an atypical work environment (Chapter 11). Then
we will finally proceed in two stages to explore the worlds of aviation: in a first part (Chapter 12), we will analyze the actors and social policies of the companies in the economic segment, before focusing in a second part (Chapter 13) on the situations and social strategies of the so-called hybrid companies, whether they are low cost or regular airlines3. Within each part, other worlds are subdivided, referring to the complex reality of an area that the book hopes to further illuminate by identifying some stable guidelines and common denominators.
In a non-exhaustive manner and above all as an example, this book invites the reader to explore some of these worlds, sometimes to dwell on them, in order to better understand the contemporary HR issues faced by current and future players who will be involved or interested in them.
References
[ALF 13] ALFONSI G., DELUXE E., “La révolte des soutiers de l’hôtellerie de luxe”, Le Club de Mediapart, October 4, 2013, available at: https://blogs.mediapart.fr/sylla/ blog/.../larevolte-des-soutiers-de-l-hotellerie-de-luxe
[BRU 17] BRUGIERE F., La sous-traitance en piste. Les ouvriers de l’assistance aéroportuaire, Eres-Clinique du travail, Toulouse, 2017.
[GAY 17] GAY C., MONDOU V., Tourisme et transport. Deux siècles d’interactions, Bréal, Paris, 2017.
[GRE 19] GREFE G., PEYRAT-GUILLARD D., “La GRH au défi de la troisième révolution touristique : impulsion, diffusion et/ou traduction des stratégies ?”, in CLERGEAU C., PEYPOCH N. (eds), La recherche en management du tourisme, Vuibert, Paris, pp. 237–256, 2019.
[LEV 13] LEVY J., Réinventer la France, Fayard, Paris, 2013.
[VIA 15] VIARD J., Le triomphe d’une utopie. Vacances, loisirs, voyages: la révolution des temps libres, Éditions de L’Aube, La Tour d’Aigues, 2015.
3 The term “regular” is due to the fact that these airlines have stable flight slots, and take off at regular times, without change.
Managing
the Human Resources of Hotel Companies in the Face of Third Tourism Revolution Disruptions
Shapes of Tourism Employment: HRM in the Worlds of Hotels and Air Transport, First Edition. Edited by Gwenaëlle Grefe and Dominique Peyrat-Guillard. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Introduction to Part 1
While hospitality is a form of social relationship with an anthropological dimension, the hotel business is a modern innovation whose development has been encouraged by the invention of the Grand Tour. In other words, for a long time, it would seem that welcoming the other or the host did not constitute the content of dedicated professions. Indeed, for centuries, hospitality has been socially embedded in customary practices, opening its home to foreigners in accordance with ordinary courtesies that can be declined according to the rank of stakeholders. The nobility has long been able to organize reciprocal receptions, ritualized around a relationship that has been developed in castles or mansions. These private establishments knew how to compete in finery and prestige, serving the glory and reputation of the welcoming owner, and whose hosts also came to break idleness, thus becoming pretexts for play and social life.
More soberly, the monasteries reserved single rooms for this category of exclusive guests, while the dormitory was open to low social conditions. Finally, the “common people” also had to submit to the “right of lodging” of the nobility on its subjects by undertaking to receive in all circumstances an aristocrat in transit and without a roof for the night. Opening one’s door to foreigners also made it possible to disseminate information (political, cultural and economic) that would otherwise remain scarce.
With the development of trade and university flows that the creation of colleges could not all contain, particularly during stopovers between two scholarly destinations1, mobility increased in the Middle Ages: travelers became too numerous
1 The medieval colleges from the end of the 12th Century to the 15th Century were first dedicated to providing assistance and accommodation for poor students. They later evolved into a teaching activity.
to rely solely on the support of non-market accommodation. Under these conditions, civility evolved toward negotiated service. The figure of the inn developed, even if already soberly present on the ancient roads to shelter the moving armies. The inn reflected the rustic image of a makeshift stopover for captive individuals who did not express any pretensions. Neither luxury nor comfort accompanied its only proposals for accommodation and meals, which were conditioned by the “you sleep, you dine” principle. Health and safety were the two unknowns left to discover the daring traveler who never lingered, once he/she had rested and was fed enough. With the development of stagecoaches, the inn evolved in the 15th Century toward the model of the postal representative, where the owners acted as innkeepers as well as grooms. This type of establishment, most often located outside the cities, persisted for centuries without major changes and without offering anything other than an income for its couple of operators alone, with the help of a few versatile clerks.
It was therefore only with the invention of the Grand Tour that totally new needs emerged, linked to new forms of aristocratic mobility and social practices associated with resorts and tourist stays, even as society is about to recompose itself. The roaming of young English aristocrats forced cities to equip themselves with “guest houses” and then true hotels: first of all, urban hotels, for those who had to stop in targeted European capitals (the birth of major Parisian hotels), “Terminus” hotels at the foot of stations where they could stay before a trip or while traveling, and finally resort hotels, on spa, seaside or mountain towns. This new offer outlined a hotel business immediately associated with the concepts of comfort, luxury and prestige, served by “professionals” in the hospitality industry.
The social elite changed, especially in France after the Revolution, shifting its center of gravity from the nobility to the large bourgeoisie, which nevertheless wished to imitate the codes of the one it continued to envy. In the desire to mimic emerging tourist practices, it saw the hotel as the possibility of “castle life”, surrounded by staff capable of sumptuously replacing the servants. The latter, freed from their dispossessed historical employers, became the employees of these hotel institutions sometimes able to provide a job for life, and the illusion of a new “home”. At the same time, in the United States, the triumphant bourgeoisie lacked land: the large urban hotel became a “piece of town” and a marker of urbanity. It concentrated numerous and complementary services (hairdressers, banks, post offices, etc.) and offered the possibility of living according to high standards, comparable to what was played out in the old Europe. This model inspired, at a time when they were also emerging, the great European hotels and the “Commonwealth” hotels, in the colonies and resorts, which then themselves provided jobs for the Western hotel industry.
In addition, with the hotel, the promise that otherness, the one that always threatens intimacy, kept more at a distance than in the circumstances of non-market hospitality, is finally implicitly formulated: to do so, staff needed to meet the lowprofile codes. Everything was designed to preserve anonymity; the client did not have to commit a sense of debt; rights and duties were more or less explained by the commercial contract (transaction). Under these conditions, the question of relational connection arose only in terms of the serving and the served, helping to transpose the figure of the lackey of the aristocratic society to the bourgeois society, a client of the Grand Hotels. If in the past, proximity to the householder was the basis of social superiority in the hierarchy of servants, with the hotel, we are witnessing an inversion of values and dominations: the closer the staff are to the client, the less free they are, depending on the tip (no fixed salary, a principle revised by the 1933 Godard law which established a percentage of service to be paid) and subject to the delivery. The chef, from now on ennobled by the hotel thanks to the know-how he or she possessed (culinary talent that guarantees the hotel’s reputation), thus took his or her revenge on the staff on the floors and in the dining room that were once part of the castles, by taking precedence over the hotel rank gained by the activation of the areas of uncertainty they mastered.
Hotel staff was not permanent, sometimes linking a winter season with a summer one, through an east-west migration. For example, entire trains transported employees to the Atlantic coast, many of whom were foreign, to meet the need to speak the language of customers. On floors where everything needed to be done to preserve privacy and morals (or at least limit temptations), couples were favored by recruiters to take care of governance tasks. All the hotel trades already in the process of structuring underwent another stage in their professionalism with the arrival of the palace, launched by César Ritz at the very end of the 19th Century. This model successfully chose to put the concepts of hygiene and efficiency at the heart of the hotel principle. With Auguste Escoffier in particular, it was the professions in the kitchen, transformed into a brigade according to the precepts of the scientific organization of work, that underwent the greatest changes, perishing Marie-Antoine Carême’s approach of a long decorative cuisine in favor of a cuisine that would gradually “standardize” itself to give birth to kind of a gastronomy criticized by some, yet hardly expected and reproduced on a large scale, in contradiction to the codes of great luxury. For years, hotel catering faded before undergoing a revival with the rebirth of Parisian luxury hotels at the dawn of the 2000s, in line with the logic of Michelin-starred-palace chef associations.
In any case, the Roaring Twenties saw the emergence of a flourishing hotel sector, leaning against luxury: the architectural model, symbol of the power of owners and clients alike, evolved from the styles of palaces or castles to real replicas
sometimes of the liners whose gigantic size they took over: they thus employed numerous staff, experienced in the customs learned in hotel schools (the Lausanne school was created in 1893 and the Paris school in 1903) then emerging and providing full professionalism. These establishments, with their military rigor, train individuals whose dual mission is to preserve privacy while serving the prestige of the host in search of ostentation and social distinction. The Astier Act in 1919, then the Apprenticeship Charter in 1929, which emphasized the duties of the master, increasingly organized the training of staff perceived as mastering the codes of a hotel tradition in the process of recognition. The high demands of training in terms of self-presentation and discipline built bridges to the world of tourism services, in maritime and air transport; it also explained the perseverance of a very authoritarian managerial model. In this context, the codification of the hotel business was underway, based on the key words of distance and reserve, as a sign of respectful postures for a client treated like a king. This rigid and ceremonialized hotel business contributed to the perpetuation of the “lackey myth”2, to the noble/low-priced opposition (kitchen universe/hotel universe) and to the “robotization” of behaviors, as a way of preserving the self.
While the internationalization of the hotel industry began in the 19th Century, the active globalization in the middle of the 20th Century gave a new impetus to a movement henceforth fundamental, catalyzed by the financialization of the sector. The chain hotel business began to capture the new markets offered by the progress of air transport, after the rail transport boom, which had brought the inaugural phase of tourism to tourists, now associated with the massification and multiplicity of practices. The Sheraton was founded in 1937 in the United States, followed by Holiday Inn in the early 1950s (dedicated to families and business people) and Marriott International in 1957. Conrad Hilton bought Stalters in 1954 and created the first major modern chain. The Accor Group, inspired by American giants, launched the first Novotel in Lille and adopted the standardized recipe for peripheral hotels. In this movement, staff are assigned strict standards and instructions to comply with, which in the end is always in line with directional management. Nevertheless, the greatest mixing of customers now removes the possibility of “taking care” of the customer and bringing a personal touch to the way in which they are welcomed.
Hospitality is also becoming a practice subject to the “assembly-line work” principle: welcoming flows of customers, now in a queue, who see the hotel as a practical instrument serving another cause (the purpose of mobility), before being
2 A translation of the expression used by Barnu and Hamouche in the book Industrie du tourisme, le mythe du laquais published in 2014 by Eyrolles.
perceived as a destination. This excessive movement of standardization boosted the rise of another kind of hotel model (visible since 1950), such as Relais & Chateaux, based on a strong unique identity associated with each establishment. Later on, Boutique hotels and then Lifestyle hotels pursued the trend for original hospitality. All these forms of hotel business wish to highlight the spirit of the place, relayed by a staff in osmosis with that spirit and dedicated to the positive experience of the guest: the hotel’s tourist.
Nowadays, the boundaries between ways of welcoming depend less on the hotel model (chain/non-chain, budget/high end, etc.) than on the philosophy of welcoming adopted by the growing number of brands to cover the differentiated lifestyles of tourists, also defined by their desire to establish new ways of approaching interaction with the individuals who receive them more than they serve them. Under these conditions, staff must now “learn to partially unlearn” the prerequisites of a profession that has become too rigid to comply with the needs of agility (emotional, functional, operational, etc.) in line with the expectations of the so-called “postmodern” society. Management must undoubtedly lead the way, through its exemplarity and its ability to create positive contagion, in a spirit of abandoning the authoritarian postures of the past to make way for greater involvement and responsibility on the part of employees, which, to succeed, must also be translated into wage elements.
In the end, the hotel industry appears at a crossroads: reinventing itself to capture new tourist practices without abandoning everything from the long tradition that has also built it. Trust in its staff, many of whom are able to get involved according to passionate principles, and then recognition of these decisive contributions, seem essential to stabilize a sector and give it the air of social modernity that it still lacks to attract and retain. Indeed, turnover remains strong, illustrating several structural phenomena, sometimes maintained by the sector.
Nevertheless, since its inception, the hotel and restaurant industry has been able to allow certain types of emancipation: servants, cooks, minorities (immigrants, women, students, etc.). Because entry barriers remain low, allowing people without professional experience to start in the simplest tasks, the sector plays a bridging role: it provides an impetus to the beginning of a career limited by the lack of a diploma, or allows people to resume their careers before the earned employability is negotiated elsewhere. For those who were passionate from the very beginning, those for whom the choice of the sector is made on the basis of a vocation, the emphasis on several reasons seems to justify their determination and sustainability, in particular the passion for hospitality in the sense of “giving pleasure” and care, more
than the desire to evolve in luxury, the latter being perceived only as an environment that provides the means to “welcome better”.
Finally, the mastery of a know-how linked to a tradition brings pride and selfesteem (knowing how to cook, mastering the codes of the French way of life), which sometimes involve the whole person, leading the young apprentice on the progressive path of the entrepreneurial adventure. This logic of the passionate craftsman often comes up against the low investment of another category of employees, forced employees, present only in an instrumental perspective, without any other form of horizon. These personnel feed, for example, the ranks of assemblers in the chain restoration industry. A final figure emerges through the model of the manager, neither hotelier nor restaurateur, present on the market to capture a share of its dynamism. Its logic often contradicts that of “craftsmen” concerned with quality and the activation of local know-how.
In the end, the hotel industry hides a plurality of realities embodied by individuals who are often conquered by the dream of integrating one of the few sectors where the “logic of the heir” is not enough to succeed, and where individual talent or personal quality (knowing how to cook, being benevolent) can still serve either as a social lift for those who remain, or as a professional springboard for those who decide to leave it. In other words, the world of hotels, often ungrateful from the point of view of strict working conditions, acquires a proven social utility in terms of the employability it contributes to producing, albeit still too often in pain.
Through the following pages and after a presentation of the strategic challenges arising in particular from the arrival of new disruptive entrants in the sector (Chapter 1), we will consider how the front office professions (Chapter 2) but also the back office (Chapter 3) have evolved, before further examining the question of turnover from the perspective of commitment and job satisfaction (Chapter 4). Finally, we will attempt to make some intrusions into the “worlds” of the hotel industry to observe the sub-sectoral (Chapter 5) or cultural singularities in Eastern Europe (Chapter 6) or Asia (Chapter 7) that may still explain the complexity of establishing a common and uniform HRM there.
Disruption and the Strategy of Hotel Groups
1.1. The hotel market: multinational companies and new players
Societal changes characterized by individuation, access to tourism for certain social classes in emerging countries, aging populations and improved living conditions, coupled with the economic importance of tourism (10.4% of world GDP in 2018) and the digital and low cost revolution [CLE 14, VIO 16], increase the complexity and interdependence [BAR 15] of the tourism system.
The hotel business covers a highly diversified demand, in terms of comfort and budget, from the economic range to the luxury offer, including the intermediate ranges, but also in terms of experience, through the offer of distinct accommodation concepts. New entrants have redefined the fundamentals of the sector. The hotel industry was surprised by the disruptive nature of new market entrants such as Airbnb.
Due to increased competition, the pace of technological change and changes in consumer tastes, innovation is more than ever a condition for the survival of historically established firms [NIE 15]. In addition to innovating, these companies must now protect themselves against the arrival of disruptors, which can, for some, endanger their sustainability. Being disruptive is not about improving the value, price or speed of an existing offer [WIA 16].
Disruption is “a process by which a small company with limited resources is able to compete with established companies [...] . To be in a disruptive position, new
Chapter written by Régis DUMOULIN and Aurore GIACOMEL.
entrants must first target the neglected sectors, and thus gain a foothold in the market by offering more appropriate functionality – often at a lower price. [...] When mainstream customers start to opt for the offers of the new entrants in large numbers, the break occurs” [CHR 16, p. 31]. Traditional firms then struggle to find the large number of customers captured by these new entrants. The challenge for multinational hotel companies is to anticipate the evolution of the offer while responding to changes in consumer demand in terms of taking the environment into account, seeking experiences, well-being, authenticity, etc.
Thus, several questions are addressed in this chapter1: How do historical hotel companies defend themselves against these new players? How do we reconcile the challenges of globalization with the prevention of disruptive threats? And how do these strategic changes alter the professions and practices in the hotel industry? This chapter first presents the actors, old and new, in the hotel sector, as well as the major challenges facing global tourism. The main strategies implemented by the various actors are then analyzed.
The tourist hotel industry, both leisure and business, faces twofold competition. In France, family accommodation, at friends’ houses or in a secondary, non-market residence, represents two-thirds of overnight stays. In addition to this, there is competition from camping and above all rental between private individuals via Airbnb-type platforms2
In the chain hotel sector, the world leader is the Marriott International Group, with a turnover of 18.1 billion euros3 in 2018. Of the top 10 global operators in the sector, five are American – Marriott International, Hilton Worldwide, Wyndham Hotel Group, Choice Hotels and Best Western – three are Chinese – Jin Jiang, BTG/Home Inns and Huazhu – and two are European – the British Intercontinental Hotels Group and the French Accor. These groups are all present in the mid- and high-end hotel segments. Only four of them are positioned in the luxury segment and seven in the entry-level segment. Two operators – Intercontinental Hotel Group
1 The authors would like to thank Thomas Chrostowski, Master’s student in Economic Intelligence and International Competitive Strategies 2017/2018 at the University of Angers, for his help in researching information and discussing new business models in the sector.
2 “A platform is a service that acts as an intermediary in accessing information, content, services or goods published or provided by third parties. Beyond its single technical interface, it organizes and prioritizes content for presentation and connection to end users. In addition to this common characteristic, there is sometimes an ecosystem dimension characterized by relationships between converging services.” Definition of the Conseil national du numérique.
3 Source: Marriott International Financial Data Inc., https://investir.lesechos.fr, accessed May 29, 2019.
and Accor – cover the entire range. However, since the late 2000s, these founding players in the international hotel market have been challenged by the emergence of new competitors with original business models who are taking advantage of the opportunities for innovation provided by digital networks.
1.1.1. Airbnb
Airbnb is a community platform for renting private homes. Founded in August 20084, the concept allows individuals to rent all or part of their own home. The offer of accommodation, the search for accommodation and the transaction are made through a highly designed internet platform. Airbnb is a broker, which is remunerated by a commission on transactions (from 6 to 12% on each reservation plus 3% service fee). The firm does not own any assets, nor does it provide hotel services.
In 2017, Airbnb’s value was $30 billion5. It is a “unicorn”: a large unlisted startup with a value of over a billion dollars6. Since its creation, the site has referred to more than 6 million places of stay in more than 81,000 cities and 191 countries. In February 2011, Airbnb announced its millionth reservation since its creation in August 2008. In January 2012, bookings reached 5 million. In June 2012, 10 million bookings were recorded worldwide. By 2014, this figure had risen to 20 million. The company has 17 million members and captures 10–12% of travel demand in megacities7 such as New York, Paris and London [BUR 18]. In addition to this capture of market share, boosted by digital technologies, there are other new entrants: online travel agencies (OTAs).
1.1.2. Online travel agencies
The hotel sector has also seen the emergence of OTAs, such as Expedia or Booking.com, which accounted for 80% of global distribution in 20178. This
4 https://press.airbnb.com/fr/about-us/, accessed April 20, 2019.
5 By way of comparison, on September 13, 2018, Marriott International’s market capitalization was $41.8 billion and Accor’s market capitalization was just under $15 billion.
6 https://www.letemps.ch/economie/airbnb-premiere-grande-licorne-devenir-rentable, accessed November 28, 2018.
7 Megacities that try, through their national legislation, to regulate exchanges that can escape taxation and distort the sociology of cities (https://www.lemonde.fr/argent/article/2019/03/ 07/airbnb-abritel-la-guerre-est-declaree_5432452_1657007.html, accessed April 20, 2019.
8 https://mbamci.com/Accor-disruption-dans-lhotellerie-francaise/, accessed December 19, 2018.
relatively abrupt phenomenon occurred in response to the growing demands of customers for a greater variety of accommodation choices at more affordable prices. OTAs do not generate excess hotel demand but they do have a role as a regulator and dispatcher of reservations. They also give independent hotels the opportunity to compete with hotel chains in terms of visibility9, but they charge commissions on all of them, which considerably reduce hoteliers’ margins.
The increasing use of OTAs by tourists to prepare and book their trips creates a disintermediation [CLE 14] between travel experts, traditional travel agencies and specialists in a specific package of offers on the one hand, whose role is to adapt it to consumer demands, and tourists on the other, who are now the sole designers of their trip. From this difficulty for the consumer to quickly find the offer corresponding to his/her expectations emerged infomediary sites such as Trip Advisor, which look for the most relevant offers according to the criteria defined by consumers. In response to these disruptive players, hotel groups are developing strategies to maintain their place in the market and prepare for their future.
1.1.3. International issues
The tourism and travel sector is growing rapidly all over the world. According to the World Tourism Organization10, there were 1.3 billion international tourists in 2017. France is the leading host country for tourist flows, followed by Spain, the USA, China and Italy. Tourism accounts for 7% of world exports worth $1,400 billion. It directly and indirectly accounts for 10% of global GDP and 10% of global employment. By 2030, the number of international tourists is expected to reach about 1.8 billion people (Table 1.1).
Table 1.1. World tourism trends and forecasts (source: World Tourism Organization)
9 Comité pour la modernisation de l’hôtellerie française, 2013.
10 http://www.unwto.org, accessed November 28, 2018.
