ABSTRACT
This chapter is about research in the field of hospitality management over the 20th century. It is a limited view of the epistemology of a relatively young field of study. As in any emerging discipline, scholars have tried to achieve credibility in their work as they pursued the opportunity to add to the body of literature. And, as in any new endeavour with little foundation, it is full of exploration, self-questioning and doubt. This has been driven in part by the need to serve two very powerful masters. On the one hand, researchers have had to measure up to the demands of scholars in general who, in many cases, had decades, even centuries, of prior research experience. On the other, the users of this research are very practical people who demand relevance and immediacy to the solutions of their problems.
