Description of the sector

The hotel, catering and tourism (HCT) sector was defined by the ILO in 1980 in the framework of its sectoral activities. Most of the HCT enterprises fall under sections 55 (Hotels and Restaurants) and 6304 (Travel Agencies and Tour Operators, etc.) of the International Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC), Revision 3, 1990.

The ILO definition of the HCT sector is different from the definition of the tourism sector used by most organizations as it includes not only the services provided to travellers but also those for residents. The tourism ratio of the turnover of hotels and restaurants, i.e. the proportion of their services provided to travellers, may range from one quarter to three quarters. Still, it is standard language to subsume the whole sector under "tourism".

The hotel sub-sector comprises quite different types of accommodation, including, e.g., camping sites. The bulk of personnel is, however, employed in common hotels. Most of them are of moderate size, i.e. up to hundred beds, but hotel companies running several hotels can be quite large. The largest have as many as 3,000 hotels and 150,000 employees in hundred countries or more. Not all hotels run by large companies are owned by them. Many are franchised, or the companies run them through management contracts often also giving them their brand names. Independent hotels continue to exist, but they are losing ground to chain hotels, especially in North America.

Small enterprises play an important role in the whole sector, as they employ about half of its labour force, and make up more than 90 per cent of all enterprises. Large enterprises, however, are influential in the activities of many small ones through franchising or management contracts, whilst they stay legally independent, e.g. as far as workers' representation is concerned.

In the catering subsector, restaurants and eating places of all kinds can be distinguished from catering enterprises, many of them providing meals at large scale to institutional eating places such as canteens. Institutional catering provides up to one-half of all meals served outside homes, varying from country to country. Catering is an important activity for the whole sub-sector as even smaller restaurants increasingly rely on pre-prepared food from industrial services.

Tourism in a narrow sense is the subsector of travel-related activities: travel agencies, tour operating, tourist guiding and related activities. To the extent that tourist information is becoming available through the internet, traditional travel agencies are losing markets and have begun to offer more sophisticated travel advisory services.

Other activities in tourism are more difficult to define and are little represented at the institutional or associative level. As an example, communities in tourism destinations are very active in marketing as well as in running local public facilities for tourists. These activities are not properly covered by tourism statistics where they are called "collective tourism consumption," but they are very important for community strategies such as sustainable tourism development.