HOTELS AND THE BUSINESSWOMAN - A SUPPLY-SIDE ANALYSIS OF CONSUMER DISSATISFACTION

Complaints about the treatment of businesswomen by the hotel sector ar e evident in both popular anecdote and the research literature. It is argued in this article that such dissatisfaction can be ill afforded i n any service industry; furthermore, that the failure to address these complaints confounds the received direction within hotel management t hat argues for decentralized decision-making and customer orientation. Complementary surveys were conducted at the organisation and unit lev els of selected UK-based hotel chains in order to test the hypothesis that the propensity of a hotel to answer the dissatisfactions of busin esswomen is directly related to the extent of decentralized decision m aking and consumer orientation evident in the organization. Data gathe red did not support the hypothesis and the authors suggest that future studies should concentrate on challenging prevalent gender guest ster eotypes through an Equal Opportunities approach and exploring the infl uences of an ideology of domesticity on the employee and guest roles o f both men and women in the hotel industry.