Editorial

Citation

Teare, R. (2012), "Editorial", Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, Vol. 4 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/whatt.2012.40804baa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, Volume 4, Issue 2

In May 2011 the Institute for International Management and Technology (IIMT), Gurgaon, India, hosted an international Services Management conference at which an executive group of hospitality industry executives shared their experiences, challenges and aspirations for the future. Arising from this event, Vinnie Jauhari, Meghna Rishi and their team of contributors have assembled a rich and authoritative picture of the prospects and challenges facing India’s hospitality industry. Thank you Vinnie, Meghna and the entire team at IIMT for facilitating this industry-education interchange and for your outstanding effort in capturing the outcomes and establishing an agenda for industry-led research in India.

WHATT aims to make a practical and theoretical contribution to hospitality and tourism development and we seek to do this by using a key question to focus attention on an industry issue. If you would like to contribute to our work by serving as a WHATT theme editor, do please contact me.

Richard TeareManaging Editor, WHATT

What are the challenges faced by the hospitality industry in India?

India’s GDP is growing at a steady pace and despite the global economic downturn; the country is demonstrating economic resilience. India’s buoyant service sector and demographic profile (India has the world’s youngest population) is prompting significant growth in India’s hospitality industry and most of the global hotel chains are expanding here. Given this scenario, it is helpful at this juncture to identify and review how the challenges faced by the Indian hospitality industry might be addressed. WHATT’s industry-led methodology is applied in this thematic issue and the team of contributors used an industry round table approach to solicit views from hospitality practitioners, academics and government representatives. The challenges have been considered from a strategic perspective as well as from marketing, human resources, technology, finance and destination management perspectives. The team also drew extensively on literature in support of their analysis and on international best practice examples. The main findings and implications are summarized in a concluding article.

We hope that this issue will initiate a debate among stakeholders and that this collection of articles will help to guide the development of India’s hospitality industry. We would like to thank Dr Richard Teare and Emerald for creating this platform for raising the issues and debates about areas which need attention. We are also grateful to IIMT Gurgaon for investing in and hosting the industry round tables during the Fifth International Conference on Services Management from May 19-21, 2011. We would also like to acknowledge the contributions made at this event by the industry practitioners who came from Delhi, Gurgaon and far off places to participate. Finally, we should like to thank Prof Sudhir Andrews, IIMT faculty, staff and all our colleagues who helped us to secure these theme issue outcomes. We hope that you will enjoy reading these articles and we look forward to your comments.

About the Theme Editors

Dr Vinnie Jauhari is Director, Institute for International Management and Technology (IIMT), Gurgaon, India. Prior to this she was the Region Lead for HP Labs Open Innovation Office, India, where she was part of a global team bringing together expertise from around the world to foster discovery and develop next generation technologies. She was earlier Professor and Head, School of Management and Entrepreneurship at IIMT. Dr Jauhari is the founding editor of the Journal of Services Research and the author of more than 100 journal articles. Dr Jauhari has authored eight books and serves as an editorial board member and reviewer for numerous international journals.

Dr Meghna Rishi is an Associate Professor, Institute for International Management and Technology, Gurgaon, India, where she specializes in marketing and communication management. Dr Rishi has published widely in national and international journals and is a member of numerous journal and conference review panels. Dr Rishi currently serves as Assistant Editor of two international journals and one national journal. Her research interests lie in the areas of advertising, communication management, entertainment and media, marketing management and hospitality management.

Vinnie Jauhari, Meghna RishiTheme Editors