The History of Hospitality Industry

Early History

& The concept of hospitality is extremely old; it is mentioned in writings dating back to Ancient Greece, ancient Rome and Biblical Times.

& Two possible explanations of why ancient times people felt required to be hospitable: they felt that hospitality to strangers was necessary to their religious well-being and in others, they were hospitable only because of their own superstitious fears.

& Therefore we find either religion or the supernatural as the principal motivating force in the concept of hospitality.

& Hospitality in ancient Greece is understandable that certain elements of religion were intermingled with the idea. Missionaries, priests, and pilgrims formed a very large part of the travelling public. Often they were journeying to holy places, perhaps oracles or temples that had a dominant position in their religion.

& During the Roman era, travellers who were not on the road for religious reasons were usually on military, diplomatic or political missions.

& Many military travellers disdained using the accommodations that were available along the route. Inn in the cities was of bad reputation and detrimental to travelers; outside the cities, they neither existed nor were needed. The military travelers preferred, therefore, to sleep in the tents they carried with them.

& In ancient Persia, travelling was done in large caravans, which carried elaborate tents for use along the caravan routes. However, at certain points on these routes, accommodations known as Khans were constructed. These were simple structure consisting of four walls that provided protection not only against natural elements but also against enemies who attacked under cover of darkness.

& In the later years of the Roman Empire, taverns and inns provided shelter for travelling merchants, actors, and scholars. Accommodations were still primitive. Sometimes there were rooms for the people but no stables for the horses; more often there were stables but no rooms.

& The high spot of that era in terms of hospitality was the development by the Persians of posthouses along the caravan routes.  These developed later than the khans and provided accommodations and nourishment for both soldiers and couriers.

& Marco Polo described the posthouses known as yams as apartments suitable for a king. They were located 25 miles apart, perhaps equivalent of a day’s ride, and supplied fresh horses for the couriers carrying messages throughout the land. By Marco Polo’s estimate, there were 10,000 such posthouses in existence at the time of his journey to the far east.

Middle Ages

A  During the Middle Ages, we find once again the intermingling of religion and hospitality.

A  It was considered as the duty of the Christians to offer hospitality to travelers and pilgrims.

A  Monasteries functioned as inns, providing accommodations and food for the weary traveler. Some monasteries and churches, concerned perhaps with the invasion of private meditations by the traveling public, constructed a separate building to accommodate travelers. These building were known as xenodocheions, a Greek word meaning inns or resting places.

A  Charlemagne during his reign enacted laws setting out the duty of a Christian to provide a free resting place for a traveler. However, in consideration perhaps of the possibility that a traveler might overstay his welcome, and also the burden or providing free food for  an indefinite period of time, the law limited the stay of any traveler in any place to three nights.

A  In 1282 in Florence Italy, the great innkeepers of the city incorporated an association for the purpose of turning hospitality into a business.

A  Inns became licensed and were permitted to import and resell wine. The inns themselves belonged not to the innkeepers but to the city, and they were operated under three-year leases, which was sold by auction. In the year 1290, 86 inns in Florence were members of the guild.

A  Shortly thereafter, the business of hospitality spread to Rome and other Italian cities. It is interesting to note that during that period many of the innkeepers were German rather than Italian- possibly because many of the merchants who were traveling themselves German and were eager to find accommodation where they would find their own language and food they were accustomed to.

The 16^th to 18^th Century

! During this period, considerable improvement took place, particularly in England, in the quality or accommodations. The common mode of transportation used then was stagecoach. Stagecoaches were forced to make overnight stops on long journeys. These called for not only food and rest for the horses but also food and accommodations for the passengers.

! A direct result was the construction of inns or taverns at suitable locations along the stagecoach routes. Since the passengers were mainly wealthy people, accustomed to certain luxuries, the stagecoaches contributed not only to growth in the number of inns but also to improvements in their quality.

! The inns or taverns also became popular meeting places for local nobility, politicians, priests and other. License for the inns were issued by the local lord or knight whose territory the inn lay.

! The design of the inns was in the form of quadrangle, with stagecoaches and people entering through a vaulted gateway. The yard within the quadrangle was used for many purposes, such as weddings. The quadrangular form provided outside was easy to control and protect. The various buildings or sections within provided sleeping accommodations for the travelers, a faculty in which food and drink was served, and shelter for both the drivers and the horses.

! In the 18^th century , coffeehouses became extremely popular in Europe and were incorporated into many of the inns.

! Hotel de Henri IV was built in Nantes in 1788 at a total cost of £17, 500. It had 60 beds and was considered the finest in Europe at that time.

Reference:

Hotel and MOtel Development Book