Pergamon Int. J. Hospitality Management Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 207--209, 1996 Copyright ~) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0278~1319/96 $15.00 + 0.00 S0278-4319(96)00023-0 Viewpoint Unskilled work and the hospitality industry: myth or reality? Tom Baum* It is commonly held and rarely challenged that the hospitality industry offers predominantly unskilled or semi-skilled work opportunities. Riley (1991), using earlier Hotel and Catering Industry Training Board data, is widely quoted as attributing 64% of positions in the UK industry to operative (semi- and unskilled) positions. Likewise, it is inherent in Wood's (1992) thesis that the skills profile of hospitality work is one of the explanations for its reputation as a low pay, poor working conditions industry. Again, in the UK context, discussion of low pay in relation to issues such as wages Councils, minimum wage legislation and the European Union's Social Chapter opt-out, all implicitly focus on the situation of the low skilled majority within the industry ~Lucas, 1995). This concept of the skills balance within the hospitalitY industry is one that is largely unchallenged and is often generalised as a universal model. In reality, it represents an overwhelmingly developed world stereotype, one that may adequately describe the hospitality industries of western Europe, north America and some of the countries of the Asia Pacific region. It is argued, here, that this stereotypical skills model is woefully inadequate when analysing work in the hospitality industries of many less developed countries, particularly in services offered to international standards. The unskilled or semi-skilled dominance argument derives, in part, from a conception of work, Within hospitality, where technical attributes are seen as paramount and measurable. Thus, work at these levels is defined in terms of the physical or manipulative skills component in tasks involved within food preparation, food service, housekeeping, front office and related areas. This understanding of hospitality work has been perpetuated by a number of studies and reports, notably the influential International Labour Office report Tasks to Jobs (1979). The attraction of this approach is that it permits almost universal descriptions of work in hospitality, largely uncluttered by cultural diversity and differing industry contexts. The fallacy of this approach, of course, is that it largely neglects dimensions of service and communication within hospitality work, arguably today the critical component at the international level. The technical approach, while seductively international in its approach, also neglects to consider that the culture of international hospitality, especially in its technical dimensions, *Present address: Scottish Hotel School, University of Strathclyde, Curran Building, 94 Cathedral Street, Glasgow G4 0LG. 207