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Hospitality Management

This guide is designed to help students and faculty access credible resources related to the study of hospitality management..

Hotel Management Overview

Hotel Operations Management brings together multiple elements of the hospitality industry.     

In your coursework, you may be asked to:

  • research hotels, resorts, and other accommodations so that you can
    • Classify them in terms of ownership, affiliation and levels of service.
    • Describe how they are organized and explain how functional areas within them are classified
    • Identify typical service requests that guest make at the front desk

This guide is designed to illustrate the research skills and library resources that can help you to complete these tasks.

Classifying Properties: Ownership and Affiliation

Locating the ownership information for any company in today's modern business environment can be tricky.    In the area of accommodation, the additional entry of short term rental companies VRBO and AirBNB have added one more level of possibility.

Tips for locating hotel information:

  • Start with the hotel website.  

Is the hotel independent or part of some kind of franchise or chain? If they are a subsidiary, take note of the parent organization.  There are a couple of places you are likely to find this.   

  • The menu bar (top and bottom)

  • The 'about us' or the 'FAQ'

 Here are a couple of local examples

Top right of the Hotel Monaco website

Bottom left of the Asher Adams website

If there is no logo or familiar group name (Marriott, Hilton, IHG) look for a link or menu item that says "About us", "History" or "FAQ".

The Hotel Valley Ho in Scottsdale, Arizona is not part of a chain.  As you can see below, there is no logo for any of the major chains.

  • Next look for descriptions of the services and amenities.  Often these are in "FAQ" sections.  An important consideration here is to be sure to translate the marketing speak.  

A word of caution on the business's own websites: While its in their best interest to provide complete and up to date information updates and descriptions often aren't dated so its hard to know when a change might have happened. In addition, ownership in the contemporary economy can be complicated. 

Hospitality Management Books