Engaging in hospitality and culinary research that makes a difference: The shape of things to come

Abstract

Engaging in hospitality research that matters now takes a fresh approach as to how we can contribute to shaping the future of best practices in both hospitality education and management, while engaging with problems worth investigating, and publishing the results The domain of hospitality activities suggests the need to study both the social and the physical contexts within which particular hospitality activities take place. Current researches in the field of hospitality are relatively recent. In pre-industrial societies, hospitality occupied a much more central position in the value-system. In both contemporary and pre-industrial societies, as in earlier historical periods, hospitality included the fundamental moral imperative and duty to welcome neighbours, and begged the fundamental question “who is my neighbour”? The centrality of hospitality and culinary activities has been noted in a wide range of studies from Homeric Greece, to early Rome, to medieval Provence, the Maori, Indian tribes of USA and Canada, and finally to early modern England and Mediterranean societies. Whilst modern industrial economies no longer have the same apparently overt moral obligations to be hospitable, and much hospitality experience takes place in commercial settings in the context of world tourism, the study of the social and cultural domains provides a valuable set of insights with which to critically evaluate and inform the commercial provision of accommodation, food and beverages in a secure and safe environment.