CHARACTERISTICS OF THE HOSPITALITY SECTOR: DEFINITION OF THE CONCEPT OF HOSPITALITY

Hospitality as a fundamental characteristic of human existence at different stages of cultural-and-historical development of mankind acquired specific ethnocultural features and various historical forms. Hospitality had a long way in evolution and underwent significant qualitative changes, transforming into one of the most important components of a social-and-cultural service in a modern society. The purpose of this research is the development and substantiation of theoretical and methodological provisions to describe the concept of “hospitality”. The evolution of the main approaches was analyzed and the definition of the concept of “hospitality”, “hospitality industry” was specified. The main stages, factors and current tendencies in the development of hospitality industry were analyzed and specified. It was established that the hospitality sector had a long evolutionary development, a complex organization; together with tourism industry formed a single system of tourist services, played an important role in the economy. In the course of the research it was determined that the main factors of formation and development of the hospitality area were: social, economic, cultural, scientific-and-technical progress, political, natural-and-resource and historical factors. A retrospective of the formation of the genesis of hospitality and the development of its interpretation with the development of social production was considered. Hospitality is a complex economic, social, cultural, psychological phenomenon, a universal category of everyday-and-domestic culture, reflected in national traditions, tolerance and care for the guest. Researchers, studying this category, divided it into two components – hospitality and the hospitality industry. Hospitality was mainly considered from the standpoint of cultural, moral-and-ethical norms, and the hospitality industry – from the standpoint of entrepreneurial activity. The hospitality industry is a complex social-and-economic system for the creation, promotion and implementation of services for accommodation, meal service, household services, leisure, as well as the sale of goods in the hotel and restaurant industry. Hospitality is proposed to be considered as a set of services provided to the guest in order to meet his needs and get a positive impression of being in various spheres of society living environment. The current tendencies in the development of the hospitality sector requiring the creation of a mechanism that would allow intensifying the development of the domestic sector of hospitality were outlined. In view of this, it is necessary to determine the main directions of state policy in the hospitality sector. That is, it is essential to develop organizational, economic, and technological measures to increase the competitiveness of the hospitality sector.