The range of employment opportunities in the industry includes positions in hotels and motels, restaurants, resorts, sports and recreation centers, condominiums, airlines, and marinas, and such institutions as schools and colleges, hospitals, nursing homes, and correctional facilities. In its three major branches – lodging, restaurants, and institutions – customer service and hospitality for the clients is the highest priority for this service. Inns have been in existence for as long as people have needed to travel long distances, requiring an overnight stay. Biblical stories recount the importance of receiving guests in a pleasant manner. As the Roman Empire expanded over two thousand years ago, inns sprang up to accommodate the large numbers of travelers going from town to town. Moreover, pilgrimages to the Holy Lands also aided in the development of hotels and inns throughout Europe and the Middle East. Monasteries were accustomed to housing visitors for the night throughout the middle ages. Eventually monasteries developed separate dormitory lodgings for such visitors, and it was the regular responsibility of some of the monks to tend to the guests’ needs. Eventually, hotels and inns began to flourish in England in the middle of the fourteenth century. By 1446, there were enough inns to warrant government regulation of the profession. The term hotel comes from the original concept of the word which was originally used in England for hotel workers called hostlers.
In England, some inns of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which offered various jobs in customer service were noted for their lavish rooms. In America, the first public inn was built in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. Most of the early American hotels were established on the East Coast, where travelers from Europe would disembark. As the country developed the western territories, farmhouse inns were maintained along the stagecoach routes. The railroad also created a demand for hotels and inns in both Europe and the United States. Having a railroad stop was usually a boon to small towns.
As lodgings developed, customer service employment also flourished. They began to offer more than a bed, a meal, and a roof over one’s head. People began to have parties and meetings at inns. The size of the average hotel increased. The largest hotels would have hundreds of rooms. The biggest hotel in the United States in 1930 was the Stevens in Chicago. It had 3,000 rooms. Likewise, free-standing or self-contained restaurants were once associated almost exclusively with hotels. However, Prohibition and the 1920s dramatically altered that association. Before the Volstead Act, which outlawed the consumption of alcohol in the United States, hotel guests could relax with a drink in the downstairs bar or restaurant. Denied their drinks during Prohibition, they left their hotel in the evening to scout the neighborhood for one of the many speakeasies that served liquor illegally. Most of the speakeasies also provided food, both to cover their illegal activities and to please their customers. Thus, Prohibition helped drive a wedge between the hotel and the restaurant, two institutions that had traditionally coexisted for mutual profit.
Evidence of the spectacular growth of the customer service job and hospitality professions were reflected in the numbers of motels built between 1948 and 1960. The establishment of the interstate highway system was as much a benefit to the industry as the stagecoach had been to the establishment of the industry in the United States. Chain hotels were beginning to take hold in the 1920s with Statler Hotels as one of the first large U.S. chains. Conrad Hilton also began his chain of hotels in the 1920s. He developed a corporation to support his business during the1940s, just before the company launched their international branches of the Hilton Hotels. The Hilton chains, along with many others, have worldwide facilities. The number of motels, hotels, and inns in the United States has surpassed 30,000 in number. Motels can be found virtually everywhere, many of them so elaborate that they resemble the multi-storied hotels that the early roadside motels originally replaced.
The greatest concentration of hospitality centers can be found in the trade-oriented and heavily populated cities of Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, New York, and Washington, D.C. The other concentrations appear in the vacation cities of Miami Beach, San Francisco, and Orlando. However, hotels and motels are located everywhere in the United States from the smallest towns to the largest cities. Until recently, inns and hotels were primarily set up to provide service for the wealthy traveler or the person going from place to place. As a bigger portion of the general public was able to afford leisure time, resorts also appeared. These resorts and fancy hotels are no longer simply places to stay while visiting a certain location. They have become travel destinations and attract millions of tourists which also multiplied the opportunities for customer service rep jobs and other hospitality services.
