Abstract
Productivity in the hospitality industry is a major management concern. Productivity in hotels has not grown at all since 1979. In the restaurant industry, output has declined at an annual rate of 0.7 percent over the same period. While some productivity improvement techniques developed in manufacturing industries have ramifications for the hospitality industry, unique characteristics of the hotel and restaurant business mean that productivity improvement techniques borrowed from manufacturing have to be carefully selected and modified to be used in service industries. Since the work pace is largely determined by customer demand, and the service interaction is a crucial part of the total “product,” management must change its thinking about productivity before improvements are possible.
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