In this lively study, Rachel Sherman goes behind the scenes in two urban luxury hotels to give a nuanced picture of the workers who care for and cater to wealthy guests by providing seemingly ...unlimited personal attention. Drawing on in-depth interviews and extended ethnographic research in a range of hotel jobs, including concierge, bellperson, and housekeeper, Sherman gives an insightful analysis of what exactly luxury service consists of, how managers organize its production, and how workers and guests negotiate the inequality between them. She finds that workers employ a variety of practices to assert a powerful sense of self, including playing games, comparing themselves to other workers and guests, and forming meaningful and reciprocal relations with guests. Through their contact with hotel staff, guests learn how to behave in the luxury environment and come to see themselves as deserving of luxury consumption. These practices, Sherman argues, help make class inequality seem normal, something to be taken for granted. Throughout,Class Actssheds new light on the complex relationship between class and service work, an increasingly relevant topic in light of the growing economic inequality in the United States that underlies luxury consumption.
Provides, variously, a textbook for use in college-level schools of hospitality management; a reference manual for use by hotel, motel, restaurant, and club owners and operators on site and by ...corporate executives managing multiple units; and an aid for attorneys in the general practice of law who encounter legal problems in the field of public hos
When George Washington embarked on his presidential tours of 1789-91, the rudimentary inns and taverns of the day suddenly seemed dismally inadequate. But within a decade, Americans had built the ...first hotels-large and elegant structures that boasted private bedchambers and grand public ballrooms. This book recounts the enthralling history of the hotel in America-a saga in which politicians and prostitutes, tourists and tramps, conventioneers and confidence men, celebrities and salesmen all rub elbows.Hotelexplores why the hotel was invented, how its architecture developed, and the many ways it influenced the course of United States history. The volume also presents a beautiful collection of more than 120 illustrations, many in full color, of hotel life in every era.
Hotelexplores these topics and more:
· What it was like to sleep, eat, and socialize at a hotel in the mid-1800s
· How hotelkeepers dealt with the illicit activities of adulterers, thieves, and violent guests
· The stories behind America's greatest hotels, including the Waldorf-Astoria, the Plaza, the Willard, the Blackstone, and the Fairmont
· Why Confederate spies plotted to burn down thirteen hotels in New York City during the Civil War
· How the development of steamboats and locomotives helped create a nationwide network of hotels
· How hotels became architectural models for apartment buildings
· The pivotal role of hotels in the civil rights movement
Abstract The mobile robot market is experiencing rapid growth, playing a pivotal role in various human-centric environments like restaurants, offices, hotels, hospitals, apartments, and factories. ...However, current differential-driven mobile robots, employing conventional casters and wheel motors, encounter limitations in surmounting uneven surfaces and high steps due to constraints caused by wheel and caster dimensions. While some robots address these challenges by incorporating optimized wheel shapes and additional motors, this invariably leads to an increase in both size and cost. This research introduces an innovative solution; a novel caster-wheel mechanism designed to enhance the high-step overcoming capability of mobile robots without necessitating alterations to their overall size and structure. By incorporating a sub-wheel linked to a passive joint, the driving force is effeciently converted into a vertical force, thereby empowering the mobile robot to navigate obstacles 85% larger than its caster-wheel radius. Crucially, this innovative caster can be seamlessly manufactured and integrated, offering the potential for widespread adoption as a replacement for conventional casters. Validation through comprehensive simulations and experiments conducted on a prototype robot has been presented in this article, demonstrating its effectiveness even at a robot velocity of 0.1 m/s. This pioneering solution holds significant promise for diverse applications across various mobile robot configurations, presenting a compelling avenue for further exploration and implementation in the field.
One of the great pleasures of staying in a hotel is spending time in a spotless, neat, and organized space that you don't have to clean. That doesn't, however, mean the work disappears—when we're not ...looking, someone else is doing it.With Housekeeping by Design, David Brody introduces us to those people—the housekeepers whose labor keeps the rooms clean and the guests happy. Through unprecedented access to staff at several hotels, Brody shows us just how much work goes on behind the scenes—and how much management goes out of its way to make sure that labor stays hidden. We see the incredible amount of hard physical work that is involved in cleaning and preparing a room, how spaces, furniture, and other objects are designed to facilitate a smooth flow of hidden labor, and, crucially, how that design could be improved for workers and management alike if front-line staff were involved in the design process. After reading this fascinating exposé of the ways hotels work—or don't for housekeepers—one thing is certain: checking in will never be the same again.
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. During the breakdown of an unhappy marriage, writer Joanna Walsh got a job as a hotel ...reviewer, and began to gravitate towards places designed as alternatives to home. Luxury, sex, power, anonymity, privacyahotels are where our desires go on holiday, but also places where our desires are shaped by the hard realities of the marketplace. Part memoir and part meditation, this book visits a series of rooms, suites, hallways, and lobbies-the spaces and things that make up these modern sites of gathering and alienation, hotels.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
Through the colorful world of Berlin's grand hotels, this book charts a new history of German liberalism and explores the changing relationships among big business, society, and politics. Behind ...imposing facades, managers and workers were often the picture of orderly and harmonious service, despite living in sometimes uncomfortable proximity. Then, during World War I, class tensions rose to the surface and failed to resolve in the following years. Doubting the ability of the Weimar Republic to contain these conflicts, a group of hotel owners, some of the most prominent Jewish industrialists and financiers in the country, chose to let Adolf Hitler use their hotel, the Kaiserhof, as his Berlin headquarters in 1932. From a splendid suite opposite the chancellery, Hitler and his henchmen engineered the assumption of power, the death of the Weimar Republic, and the ruin of their hosts, the Kaiserhof's owners: Jewish liberals now fleeing for their lives. Big Business and the Crisis of German Democracy asks how this came about and explores the decision-making processes that produced such catastrophic consequences. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Firms'incentives to manufacture biased user reviews impede review usefulness. We examine the differences in reviews for a given hotel between two sites: Expedia. com (only a customer can post a ...review) and TripAdvisor. com (anyone can post). We argue that the net gains from promotional reviewing are highest for independent hotels with single-unit owners and lowest for branded chain hotels with multiunit owners. We demonstrate that the hotel neighbors of hotels with a high incentive to fake have more negative reviews on TripAdvisor relative to Expedia; hotels with a high incentive to fake have more positive reviews on TripAdvisor relative to Expedia.
Peer-to-peer markets, collectively known as the sharing economy, have emerged as alternative suppliers of goods and services traditionally provided by long-established industries. The authors explore ...the economic impact of the sharing economy on incumbent firms by studying the case of Airbnb, a prominent platform for short-term accommodations. They analyze Airbnb's entry into the state of Texas and quantify its impact on the Texas hotel industry over the subsequent decade. In Austin, where Airbnb supply is highest, the causal impact on hotel revenue is in the 8%-10% range; moreover, the impact is nonuniform, with lowerpriced hotels and hotels that do not cater to business travelers being the most affected. The impact manifests itself primarily through less aggressive hotel room pricing, benefiting all consumers, not just participants in the sharing economy. The price response is especially pronounced during periods of peak demand, such as during the South by Southwest festival, and is due to a differentiating feature of peerto-peer platforms--enabling instantaneous supply to scale to meet demand.
Online customer reviews (OCRs) have become increasingly important in travelers' decision-making. However, the proliferation of OCRs requires e-commerce organizations to identify the characteristics ...of the most helpful reviews to reduce information overload. This study focuses on OCRs of hotels and particularly on the factors moderating the relationship between extreme ratings and review helpfulness. The study reviewed 11,358 OCRs of 90 French hotels from TripAdvisor.com. Findings highlight that large hotels are more affected by extreme reviews than small hotels. Extreme reviews are more helpful to consumers when reviews are long and accompanied by the reviewers’ photos.
•This study assesses the moderators in the relationship between extreme ratings and review helpfulness.•We adopted a dataset of 11,358 online reviews of 90 French hotels from TripAdvisor.•Extreme ratings are more helpful than moderate ratings.•Extreme ratings are more helpful for large hotels and when the review is long and with photos.
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