Shapes of Tourism Employment

Introduction to Part 1

While hospitality is a form of social relationship with an anthropological dimension, the hotel business is a modern innovation whose development has been encouraged by the invention of the Grand Tour. In other words, for a long time, it would seem that welcoming the other or the host did not constitute the content of dedicated professions. Indeed, for centuries, hospitality has been socially embedded in customary practices, opening its home to foreigners in accordance with ordinary courtesies that can be declined according to the rank of stakeholders. The nobility has long been able to organize reciprocal receptions, ritualized around a relationship that has been developed in castles or mansions. These private establishments knew how to compete in finery and prestige, serving the glory and reputation of the welcoming owner, and whose hosts also came to break idleness, thus becoming pretexts for play and social life.

More soberly, the monasteries reserved single rooms for this category of exclusive guests, while the dormitory was open to low social conditions. Finally, the “common people” also had to submit to the “right of lodging” of the nobility on its subjects by undertaking to receive in all circumstances an aristocrat in transit and without a roof for the night. Opening one’s door to foreigners also made it possible to disseminate information (political, cultural and economic) that would otherwise remain scarce.

With the development of trade and ...