HAT303 : Hotel and Accommodation Management : Issues in the Accommodat

Introduction: 

Accommodation sector in every country plays a major role in the customer management and satisfaction of any industry. Accommodation refers to providing convenience or catering to the needs and expectations of customers. The need may relate to the lodging, food, or the travelling space related services. It is defined as a place to live, work or stay especially during vacations. The nature of hospitality industry is complex, and it includes various sectors such as accommodation, food, and beverage. The other services included are the gaming, entertainment, and recreation facilities of the individuals, and tourism services. Therefore, the report describes the accommodation sector of Australia and the current challenges or the problems faced (Soeg Jobs, 2018).

Industry Overview

The Australian accommodation sector is given high importance and accommodation is an absolutely broad sector of the hospitality industry. It ranges from bed and breakfast enterprise and the hotels to the other facilities such as lodging. The accommodation sector includes the services from other segments of the hospitality industry; they are Lodging, suites, and resorts. Food and beverage, travel and tourism, and the entertainment industry that further includes bars, nightclubs and others. The hospitality industry also includes the convention centres where people can gather in large number for seminars, and similar other things. With respect to the country Australia, it can be stated that the accommodation association of Australia is 100% member-owned, non-profit organisation. The outlook for the Australia’s accommodation sector is strong which reflects both, the increase in demand for the rooms, in the domestic and the international markets and the low levels of supply (AHS advisory, 2018).

The Australian accommodation sector comprises of around 4,300 hotels, motels, guesthouses, and serviced apartments, with over 2, 25,000 rooms. The majority of these properties are small, and the hospitality industry of Australia is growing over years rapidly. Despite the growth  the hospitality industry faced some challenges or issues. The individuals from different countries shifts to work and gain experience in the Australian’s hospitality industry. As the Australian’s hospitality, industry is quick-paced and dynamic in terms of the workplace and the culture. This keeps the individuals and the employees to consistently and continually improve themselves as per the trends in the industry. In the coming years, the industry is expecting a rise in terms of vacancies and employment opportunities (Clarke, 2016).

Identification of the issues in the Accommodation sector 

The hospitality industry is the critical area of the Australian economy. Apart from giving livelihood to more than 300,000 individuals over the country. The hotels purchase privately supplied products, local sporting and communities’ organisations, and others. There are various issues and challenges identified in the Australian’s industry. Amongst those issues, the top 3 issues observed are difficulty in attracting or hiring and then retaining staff in the industry for the longer time period, increasing operating costs and other expenses. In addition, there are some policy and regulation issues faced by the industry (Cheng, 2016).

The issues observed related to the labour shortage for the fulfilment of the positions, also they reported the skill deficiencies, which influenced the productivity, and the competitiveness of the sector. Including the requirements of the other staff, the industry noticed the main issue related to the unavailability of the highly skilled chef, cooks, and the cleaners. One of the major issues in the hospitality industry observed is the high growth of the industry, which led to the increase in competition. The increasing competition in the sector led to the revenue loss in their hospitality business. The other challenges relate to the problems in finding and keeping valued customers. Preventing the massive food waste is another challenge that the hotels are facing. Therefore, it requires a proper stock management plan (Australian Hotels Association, 2018).

Airbnb as a platform in the emerging Accommodation Sector

Airbnb is a platform a company which is based in San-Francisco, operating the hospitality services and the online marketplace for the people, who want to rent out or lease short-term lodging facilities. These include the holiday cottages, apartments, hotel rooms, hostel beds, and many others. However, networked businesses such as Airbnb, as a recent factor has rapidly growing as a strong competitor in the hospitality sector; that has some considerable consequences on the tourism and tourist destinations.  It is considered as a part of the ‘sharing economy’. The speed, number and the adoption of the technological innovations has grown exponentially. Airbnb has been offering the listings in about 191 countries, and the total number of listings count for about 4 million. Airbnb has been revolutionizing and significantly impacting the hotel industry by making the lodging and the hotel rates in check (Hoisington, 2018). Also, the company contributes in making the rooms available at the times when there is the condition of unavailability and the benefit to the travellers (Kenney and Zysman,2016).
The most common factor that hinders the businesses according to the requirements of the restaurateurs, cafe, and bar owners is their operating costs. Hospitality industry or the accommodation services reported other challenges such as constructions costs, technology, or the changes in demographics and their impact on travel trends and the capital availability. Job stress refers to the reactions of the employees towards the challenges in the environment at the workplace. This was likely the result of the increasing pressure on the individuals or employees to perform better; leading to the pertinent issues in the industry. The issue that relates to the workforce in these industries is the lack of holidays, which states that there were provided fewer public holidays. The high cost of wages on the event of public holidays, serves as a major disincentive for them. In addition, the industry at Australia reported the presence of illegal accommodation faced by the hotels, due to the increase in number of residential apartments (Assaf and Agbola, 2014).

Recommendations:

As per the observed changes and trends in the hospitality industry or the accommodation sector in Australia, many problems have been observed. The issues need to be resolved as they affect the productivity and growth of the sector in the long-term. Therefore, the problem such as staff variation can be resolved with the help of maintaining the cloud-based reporting tools or system. These will help in giving the information for effectively maintaining and monitoring the budgets and the transactions. In addition, for the management of the data that gets overloaded sometimes, the management teams can use centralised platform or the database management system.

Conclusion:

To conclude the above discussion over the accommodation sector, Australia has accounted as the rapidly growing economy in this sector. Despite the growth and opportunities, there are certain challenges and issues, which affected the competitive success of the industry in the future. The major reported issues were the difficulties arising in hiring the prospective candidates for the industry, also attracting, and retaining the skilled personnel. Therefore, the services provided needs to be improved to maintain the customers leading to increase in revenues and profits in the long-run.

References: 

AHS advisory (2018) A brief overview of the Australian Hospitality Sector. [online] Available from: https://www.ahsadvisory.com.au/articles/australia-hospitality-sector-overview/ [Accessed 25/07/18].

Assaf, G. A. and Agbola, F. W. (2014) Efficiency Analysis of the Australian Accommodation Industry. United States:  SAGE Publications.

Australian Hotels Association (2018) Top 3 Federal Issues for AHA State & Territory branches. [online] Available from: https://aha.org.au/state-territory-branch-issues/ [Accessed 25/07/18].

Cheng, M. (2016) Sharing economy: A review and agenda for future research. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 57, pp. 60-70.

Clarke, R. (2016) Time to address key issues facing the Australian hotel industry: attracting and growing quality staff. [online] Available from: https://www.accomnews.com.au/2016/05/time-to-address-a-key-issues-facing-the-australian-hotel-industry-attracting-and-growing-quality-staff/ [Accessed 25/07/18].

Hoisington, A. (2018) 4 Hotel accounting challenges and solutions. [online] Available from: https://www.hotelmanagement.net/property-management/4-challenges-and-solutions-to-hotel-accounting [Accessed 25/07/18].

Kenney, M. and Zysman, J. (2016) The rise of the platform economy. Issues in Science and Technology, 32(3), p. 61.

Soeg Jobs (2018) What are the different sectors of the Hospitality Industry. [online] Available from: https://www.soegjobs.com/2016/09/07/different-sectors-hospitality-industry/ [Accessed 25/07/18].

Weber, K., Bradley, G. L., and Sparks, B. (2017) Stressor effects of negative online reviews on anger and burnout in the restaurant industry. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 29(11), pp. 2847-2866.