This document discusses the concept of hospitality and proposes a new conceptual model for understanding hospitable tourism experiences. It suggests that hospitality involves generosity, hosting guests, and co-creating memorable experiences rather than just providing services. A key part of this experience is creating "flow" for both guests and staff through challenging jobs that allow for concentration, clear goals, feedback and a loss of self-consciousness. Co-creation with friends, performers, hosts and segmented experience spaces is also emphasized.

1. Hospitality
From Service to
Experience;
understanding the role of
people in the
tourism business
Nayeem Khan

3. Themes
Hospitable Experiences

Psychology of Flow

Co-Creation


4. Hospitality
• focus on industrial activity

5. • focus on food, drink and accommodation

6. • focus on service • service industry ?

7. Definitions of Hospitality
“A contemporaneous human exchange, which is voluntarily
entered into, and designed to enhance the mutual well being of
the parties concerned through the provision of accommodation,
and/or food, and/or drink”

8. We are the music makers,
and we are the dreamers of dreams

9. 
“Customers do not buy service delivery, they buy experiences;
they do not buy service quality, they buy memories; they do not
buy food and drink, they buy meal experiences; they do not buy
events or functions, they buy occasions”

10. Today’s consumers are looking for
experiences; experiences that are
personal, memorable and add
value to their lives

11. “friendly and generous reception of guests or strangers”
“entertaining strangers and guests kindly and without reward: showing kindness:
generous: bountiful”
“Generosity in this circumstance is proof of greatness”

12. “Hospitality requires the guest to feel
that the host is
being hospitable through feelings of
generosity, a desire
to please and a genuine regard for the
guest as an
individual”

13. “It is concerned with more than food, drink and shelter.
Traditionally the most important responsibility of all was
the guest’s safety - hospitality was a kind of sanctuary”

14. But is Hospitality something more ?

Hospitality in the private & social domains
• Hospitality as behavior – hospitableness
• Host-guest relationship
• Hospitality as performance
• Hospitality as experience

15. “A Movable Feast”

16. Hospitable Tourism Experiences

17. Creating Hospitable Tourism
Experiences
Services Hospitable Tourism
Customers Guests
Manager Host
Staff Cast/Hosts
Manufacturing Theatre
Service Delivery Staging
Customer Service Performance
Management Control Leadership Inspiration
Parsimony Generosity

18. Creating Hospitable Tourism
Experiences
Services Hospitable Tourism
Delivered on demand Lots of little surprises
Facts/information Stories/dreams
Benefits Emotions/sensations
Customer led Host led
Intangible Memorable
Security of goods and Security of strangers
processes

19. Flow Experiences
• Happiness
• process of total involvement in life”
• optimal experience”
• the best moments of our lives”
• the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to
matter: the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost for the
sheer sake of doing it”
• Involves stretch/difficult/worthwhile
• Autotelic experiences – intrinsic pleasures

20. Where Exercise, Reading, Comedy/laughter, Work ?
Art, Sport, Games, Hobbies,
is it achieved ?

21. Key Components of Flow
1. Challenge & Skills 2. Concentration and absorption
3. Clear goals & rules 4. Immediate feedback
5. Deep involvement – escape 6. Sense of control
7. Loss of self-consciousness – “go with the flow” 8. Transformation of time – “time flies”

22. Co-Creation • Friends
• Staff – cast
• Management – hosts
• Segmentation
• Experience Spaces

23. We are the music makers

24. A New Conceptual Model ?
Flow Experiences Hospitality
Challenge Deep involvement Host Guest
Concentration Control Generosity Security
Clear Goals Loss self-consciousness Lots of little surprises Host led
Feedback Transformation time Theatre Performance
Hospitable Tourism
Experiences
Co-creation
Friends Performers
Cast Hosts
Antagonists Segmentation
Social Intercourse Experience Spaces

25. and we are the dreamers of dreams

26. Yet we are the movers and shakers
of the world forever, it seems

27. A new approach to HR in Tourism
• Staff as cast, as performers
• Create challenging aspirational jobs
• Create “Flow” working experiences
• Recruit outgoing, enthusiastic people (emotional labour)
• Leadership is critical – inspiration NOT control
• Avoid scripts, use screen play and scenarios
• Empower – lots of little surprises
• Promote industry as challenging, creative and inspired