[custom_adv] The hospitality industry is a broad category of fields within the service industry that includes lodging, event planning, theme parks, transportation, cruise line, travelling and additional fields within the tourism industry. [custom_adv] The hospitality industry is a multibillion-dollar industry that depends on the availability of leisure time and disposable income. A hospitality unit such as a restaurant, hotel, or an amusement park consists of multiple groups such as facility maintenance and direct operations (servers, housekeepers, porters, kitchen workers, bartenders, management, marketing, and human resources etc.). [custom_adv] The global hotel industry was forecasted to generate 550 billion U.S. dollars in revenue in 2016. The hotel company contributing the most to this figure was the British hotel chain InterContinental Hotels Group which, in 2015, made 24 billion U.S. dollars in over 4,800 hotels worldwide. [custom_adv] Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tours. [custom_adv] Tourism can be domestic or international, and international tourism has both incoming and outgoing implications on a country's balance of payments. Today, tourism is a major source of income for many countries, and affects the economy of both the source and host countries, in some cases being of vital importance. [custom_adv] Tourism has become an important, even vital, source of income for many regions and even entire countries. The Manila Declaration on World Tourism of 1980 recognized its importance as "an activity essential to the life of nations because of its direct effects on the social, cultural, educational, and economic sectors of national societies and on their international relations." [custom_adv] Tourism brings large amounts of income into a local economy in the form of payment for goods and services needed by tourists, accounting as of 2011 for 30% of the world's trade in services, and for 6% of overall exports of goods and services. [custom_adv] It also generates opportunities for employment in the service sector of the economy associated with tourism. On the flip-side, tourism can degrade people and sour relationships between host and guest.
