2008年國際金融危機(jī)使酒店和旅游業(yè)遭受了許多沖擊，并的引發(fā)了美國房地產(chǎn)及相關(guān)泡沫金融衍生品。當(dāng)金融危機(jī)席卷整個國際金融市場之時許多發(fā)達(dá)國家的金融市場開始出現(xiàn)信貸緊縮并對市場喪失了信心。盡管存在很多的管理障礙，管理人員在酒店和旅游企業(yè)必須關(guān)心企業(yè)面臨巨大的壓力之時如何保持良好的盈利能力尤其是食品和飲料管理盈利。事實(shí)上,現(xiàn)在很多酒店選擇外包業(yè)務(wù)來幫助企業(yè)縮減成本加強(qiáng)自身的競爭力度。

酒店和旅游企業(yè)面臨的問題是什么? 隨著全球金融危機(jī)出現(xiàn)在2008年下半年,酒店和旅游業(yè)明顯的存在市場收縮跡象,并且游客數(shù)量下降。根據(jù)Hotels.com酒店價格指數(shù)顯示,在世界各地的酒店房間的平均價格比去年2009年同期降低14%。實(shí)際上是一個酒店房間的價格2009年比2004年更便宜。在2009年歐洲房間費(fèi)用減少13%,在美國減少了14%,在亞洲16%以及拉丁美洲減少21%。然而,到2009年底,價格下跌開始穩(wěn)定。那么為什么酒店價格下降?酒店和旅游業(yè)的出發(fā)點(diǎn)是想要穩(wěn)定正常的市場運(yùn)作，從而降低價格。

The hospitality and tourism industry has suffered form numerous challenges as a result of the 2008 international financial crisis triggered by the United States real estate and related financial derivatives bubble. The financial crisis swept instantly the whole international financial markets and consequently the financial market of the developed economies began to show credit squeeze resulted form a loss of confidence. A truth that the managers in hotels and tourism enterprises have to care about is that hospitality businesses are under intense pressure to maintain levels of profitability especially in managing profitable food and beverage, despite increasingly difficult operating conditions. In fact, nowadays many hotels are opting for the outsourcing business strategy to help the enterprises in keeping up with their rival hotels as well as cutting on their cost. The essay will firstly discuss the problems that the hospitality and tourism enterprises are confronted with at present. Following this, it will illustrate the reason why many enterprises are willing to conduct outsourcing so as to make profitable food and beverage from the objectives, functions, outputs as well as production possesses of outsourcing. And this part will be addressed form the example of Holiday Inn Hotel outsourcing food and beverage. Finally, it will look at the operational efficiency and improvement of performance of outsourcing in hospitality and tourism before the conclusion.

What are the problems for the hospitality and tourism enterprises?
In the second half of 2008, as the global financial crisis emerged, a significant contraction of hospitality and tourism industry arose because of a decline of tourists amounts. According to the Hotels.com Hotel Price Index, the average price of a hotel room around the world was 14% cheaper in 2009 than in 2008. Actually a hotel room was cheaper in 2009 than it was in 2004. Rooms cost 13% less in Europe during 2009 than in 2008, 14% less in the United States, 16% less in Asia and 21% less in Latin America. However, towards the end of 2009, the price falls started to stabilize. Why do the hotel prices drop? The reason is that the hospitality and tourism industry want to keep their normal operations by reducing prices. Moreover, the decrease of disposable income for the households and the length of the tourists staying all contributed to the recession of the hospitality and tourism enterprises. In accordance with David and Francis (2011), the origins of the above problems are the unemployment of the public, increasing tourism spending and expense, and people’s lack of confidence in the economic conditions and so forth. 


The above chart is released by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), from which we can have a clear understanding that as a result of the 2008 economic recession, the tourism arrivals declined by nearly 3.8% in the following year. The hospitality and tourism enterprises are mainly operated on the basis of visitors, so decline in tourists numbers precisely lead to the recession these industries. Consequently, the functions of hospitality and tourism industry for contributing trillions of dollars annually to the global economy, providing working opportunities for the public and boosting taxes and stimulating investment for domestic as well as foreign firms slacked. And the direct outcome is that companies related to hospitality have got to lay off large amount of employees since they are unable to make profitability from food and beverage in traditional systems to keep the enterprises operate normally. Cathy (2009, p.177) stated that the stagnant economic conditions precisely led to the outsourcing, that’s to say, the hospitality and tourism enterprises will contract with another company to provide services such as food and beverage that were previously supplied from within the company.

Marc and Ashlyn (2007) stated that outsourcing can be defined as being one of allocating or reallocating business activities from an internal source to an external source where there are the real experts, specialists or professionals who can excellently deal with the customers’ requirements for good service. And nowadays outsourcing is one of the hottest topics in business practices, especially for the hotel and tourism for managing profitable food and beverage. Generally speaking, it is regarded in this essay as the method for hospitality and tourism industry to provide service or products like food and beverage for their customers, which precisely contributes to the profitability of the enterprise. By outsourcing food and beverage, the enterprises can not only reduce costs and expenses on employing workers for internal sourcing, but ensure more profitability as well as promote the brand image for the image. Thus the company can beat the other rival enterprises and enhance their service, reputation and working efficiency.

Clayton and Tom (2008) illustrated that one of the objectives of outsourcing food and beverage is that the brand image can be surged. It is true that more and more companies began to realize that the traditional sub sourcing system can not longer satisfy the enterprises requirements, particularly against the backdrop of continued economic difficulties that the hospitality businesses are under intense pressure to maintain levels of profitability despite increasingly difficult operating conditions. So by outsourcing food and beverage, the enterprises are able to maximize their limited resources and reinforce their merits which may help them defeat their rival competitors.
As Elaine (2010) stated in his article, another important objective for food and outsourcing in hospitality industry is to reduce cost for the company. Moreover, food and beverage outsourcing in the hospitality and tourism enterprises enables the company to focus on their core competencies. For instance, by outsourcing food and beverage to the other companies which are expert in manufacturing the needed products for the customers, the hospitality and tourism industry can save the money, workers as well as equipments which are originally for in sourcing food and beverage, so that these resources can be applied correctly in developing the core services. Moreover, food and beverage outsourcing contributes to help the enterprise keep with cutting-edge technology, build partnerships and create value for the organization and for its customers. 

Lacey and Blumberg (2005) also illustrated that outsourcers who know how to manage the outsourcing of food and beverage can enhance their client company’s performance and achieve satisfaction for the customers.

Outsourcing of Holiday Inn Hotel on food and beverage
Holiday Inn Hotel is one of the most famous hotel brands with a global reputation for service, comfort and value which can ensure you with thoughtful and warm services, modern attractive facilities as well as convenient locations throughout the world. Just as Daniel (2010) stated, ‘there is no sincerer love than love of food ’. It is true that hotels can attract the customers by providing with delicious food and beverage, and from this hotels can make great success. So is the same with Holiday Inn. However, as an enterprise whose main businesses are providing the customers with satisfying accommodations, Holiday Inn hotels do not have the capacity of producing food or beverage inside the company since they have not the qualified human resources, adequate cost, and systematic procedure of manufacturing. More importantly, high real estate costs and increased manpower attrition have forced the decision-makers conduct resourcing food and beverage to external specific catering companies. And customers feel that hotels are not expert food and beverage service operators. If the customers lose confidence in the hotel dishes, then the profits would directly drop owing to the decline of tourists. So Holiday decided to cooperate with some specific food and beverage outsourcer to promote its competitiveness in the hospitality and tourism industry.

And the outsourcing process of Holiday Inn on food and beverage can be summarized as follows: 1) to ensure that the outsourcing process result in satisfaction of the customers, Holiday Inn chose a qualified subcontractor like world famous food contractor Cargill and beverage contractor Coca-cola. Then at the beginning Holiday Inn negotiated with them on the details of food and beverage operation on quality assurance ability, process capability, equipment capability, and the thorough labor resources of theses subcontractors. 2) In order to stipulate the responsibilities of both parties, a contract on which the foreign contractor requirements are clearly specified should be signed before further cooperation. And the contract includes the requirements for a qualified management system of outsourcers during the outsourcing process, and relevant laws and regulations. 3) In accordance with the provisions of the contract, Holiday Inn verified whether the food and beverage produced by the subcontractors can meet the requirements of their customers. And they tested the resulted by conducting trying food and beverage freely by the volunteers customers and then make complements according to the outcomes. 4) After several tries as well as necessary complements, Holiday Inn finally specified some foods and beverages which must be outsourced to the external subcontractors. 

The above graphic shows that in the past few years, Holiday Inn hotel made it a success to attract more visitors owing to its successful operations of food and beverage outsourcing to make profits. In 2012, the guest room quantities doubled that of 2008, when the financial crisis began. And by outsourcing, the Holiday Inn makes it a truth for annual profit increase of 5.6% percent after 2008, which is nearly two times of that in 2006. 

As Dallen and Victor (2009) stated, outsourcing food and beverage for focusing on the enterprises’ core competence is not merely adopted by Holiday Inn, but also other famous hotels. The outcomes and benefits from food and beverage outsourcing can be listed as follows:

Focus on its core competence: the core competence of Holiday Inn is the accommodation. So, if it operates a separate sector mainly dealing with the food and beverage which are intended for the customers, then the company has to collect all necessary sources – money, office, human resource, equipment as well as qualified cook and beverage-makers. All that will be fresh for the company and all the building process will cost as long as months. When the food and beverage is OK, then it may be confronted with problems related to dissatisfaction of guests on their food and drink. So, outsourcing can handle it since the company just has to inform the subcontractors what they want and then the company is capable to focus its money, workers as well as equipments on its core competence – accommodation.

Save a lot of cost and efficiency: Terrell (2008) discussed in his book that outsourcing will lead to cost and efficiency. So is the principle suitable in other kinds of outsourcings like food and beverage outsourcing for Holiday Inn. After conducting outsourcing, Holiday Inn started getting more efficiency in their business other than focusing on some more investigation, expansion, promotion, and delivery charge if they deal with food and beverage on their own. Moreover, by working with subcontractors on outsourcing food and beverage, they can focus their human resources where they require them mainly, thus saving a lot of labor costs.

Staffing Flexibility: Outsourcing will allow Holiday Inn to have operations which require seasonal or cyclical food and beverage demands to bring in additional resources when you need them and release them when you're done. For instance, when summer arrives, the company can work with fruit and seafood subcontractors to provide the customers with the needed seasonal food or beverage. When it comes to cold winter, Holiday Inn will communicate with warm food outsourcer or milk and coffee subcontractors. All the strategies should abide by the enterprises development as well as the customers’ requirements.

Instant Access to New Projects: Holiday Inn successfully holds its competitiveness in the heated struggle with other hotels by outsourcing food and beverage. When requirements form the customers update form time to time, Holiday Inn can have instant access to the new projects. For example, when the customers want to have something new and novel to eat or drink, Holiday Inn can conduct an investigation of the types, popular degrees, prices as well as the outsourcers of such products instantly. Then they can feed the information to the most suitable subcontractors so that the company can seize the opportunities to attract more visitors by launching the latest dishes, pastries and drinks. Moreover, such step will contribute to increasing the companies’ reputation and brand image as well.

Risk Management: Ed (2008) pointed out that the most prominent outcome or benefit of outsourcing food and beverage is that potential risks could be reduced. It is true that there are numerous risks are associated with the investments an organization makes, however, the outsourcing providers take for granted and handle this risk for the Holiday Inn Hotel, which normally a large amount better for the managers to draw a decision on how to avoid risk in their section of proficiency.

Wendy (2012) stated that outsourcing helps improve the financial and operational efficiency of an organization. And the same idea can also be drawn from the success of Holiday Inn. In the example of Holiday Inn Hotel, food and beverage outsourcing projects help reduce costs and help the company to focus on core business processes which should consequently improve service provision and quality. Vadims (2007) explained that recently more and more practical experience lead to the conclusion that companies focusing on their core competencies will outsource their services within their supply chain to external subcontractors. And it have been proven that outsourcing is an attempt to increase efficiency for the companies by reducing expenses as well as turning fixed costs into variable costs. In the case of Holiday Inn, the company saves up the money originally for inner food and beverage sectors to develop its core business – accommodation. And by outsourcing, the Holiday Inn makes it a truth for annual profit increase of 5.6% percent after 2008, which is nearly two times of that in 2006. Moreover, the outsourcers are all equipped with specialists having a lower cost base due to the large scope and size of its business markets.

Even though outsourcing food and beverage helps a lot in lessening the economic downturn of Holiday Inn form numerous benefits, it still has disadvantages and needs implemented on products and delivery service so as to satisfy the company’s development needs. For instance, the food and beverage outsourcers cannot meet the requirements of the company on catering for visitors, thus the company may suffer form lower than expected realization of benefits and results. Moreover, troubles related to quality and turnaround time, sluggish response times mixed together slow issue resolutions as well as weaknesses in performance vis-à-vis expectations will all contribute to the loss of Holiday Inn. So, when selecting food and beverage outsourcers, the managers should pay much attention to the performance and capability to achieve expectations. Only then can Holiday Inn enterprise gain profitable food and beverage and lessen the economic impact on the operation of the company. 

In conclusion, outsourcing has currently become a popular and efficient stratagem for many enterprises to lessen economic downturn. And there are numerous reasons for the companies to conduct outsourcing, such as improved efficiency, access to experts and specialists, instant approach to latest projects and other purposes. Form outsourcing food and beverage, the hospitality and tourism industry can well ease the economic problems they are confronted with since free management time of the subcontractors allows the client companies to focus on core competencies while not being concerned much about outsourced routine activities. Outsourcing efficiently helps enhance the competitiveness of the company in the market and reduce the operational risks which may emerge during the investment on inner food and beverage sectors. Moreover, outsourcing has positively contributed to the financial position of the hotel and Holiday Inn is capable to get profitable food and beverage from the subcontractors. Furthermore, outsourcing enables the company to save a lot of efficiency and labor cost as well as increases speed and the quality of delivery of outsourced food and beverage. More importantly, outsourcing reduces cash outflow and optimizes resource utilization greatly. Certainly there are both pros and cons to outsourcing. Each must be carefully considered before the decision-makers are determined to apply outsourcing. That’s to say, if the company want to outsource successfully, a contact on which responsibilities of both parties are clearly stipulated should be signed by both outsourcer and the client company. Only in this way can the outsource process be supervised under laws and conducted rightfully. And then the company is capable to shake off economic downturn subsequently.

Reference
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