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by Dennis De Peiza
In countries where there is a high dependency on tourism, the hotel and hospitality sector is one of the largest employment and income-generating business activities. People are extremely important to the success generated in the hotel and hospitality sector. The delivery of services is key to the success of the sector and with this, quality customer service is essential. It is to be expected that customer service and the guest experiences will go hand-in-hand.
Hotels are a permanent fixture in a tourism-based economy. They provide travellers with shelter, food, refreshment, entertainment and a range of other services. When it comes to the hospitality sector, the concern here is with entertainment and leisure activities. These would generally include access to restaurants, bars, cafés, nightlife, social and cultural activities, tourist attractions and other travel and tourism services. Hotels offer accommodation for meetings and conferences and also cater to recreation and entertainment events. What stands out as a common expectation is a positive customer experience. This is important to marketing and promotional activities.
With the focus being primarily on the customer’s experience, it is important to understand that if the workers are dissatisfied, then this can run counterproductive to reaching the goals of good customer experience and high worker productivity.
The discussion on the hotel and hospitality sector somehow tends to be limited to land-based tourism. With the emphasis turning to cruise tourism, there is room for the discussion on standards in the hotel and hospitality sector to be extended to the on-the-sea vacation, leisure or business travel where there is a necessity for accommodation, hospitality, entertainment and related services.
The International Organisation for Standards (ISO) has created universal standards and guidelines that are meant to establish levels of homogeneity concerning the management, provision of services and product development in the industry. These standards relate to food and safety management, quality management, occupational health and safety, and several other areas. Interestingly, the ISO standards impose a high level of responsibility on management. Given that the ISO is a nongovernmental organisation that comprises standards bodies from more than 160 countries, it becomes questionable if it wields any influence without the force of legislation to make and hold employers accountable to the standards.
While trade unions concentrate their efforts on ensuring that standards apply to improving the land-based experience of workers, it ought not to be forgotten that nationals as workers seek employment on cruise ships, which should also be held to the same ISO standards. It may be speculative to assume that the interest of workers on cruise ships is in some way being looked after by local governments. The local authorities should have a vested interest in ensuring these nationals are not recruited to work under conditions of a government-approved programme where the foreign employer does not observe the ILO conventions signed by a home country.
Unions need to investigate if it is true that some of these foreign-registered cruise lines require workers to work ten hours a day for a seven-day week with only a two-hour break. Is it accurate that four workers are made to share a cabin and that no two nationals are allowed to share the same cabin? Is it true that while the guests pay gratuities, not a cent is passed on to the workers? Is it true that there is no pension plan offered to workers? It would be good to know if and which ISO standards apply on cruise ships, and further, to have an assessment made on the level of exploitation of workers on the seas.
Dennis De Peiza is a veteran labour and employee relations consultant with Regional Management Services Inc.
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