ABSTRACT
The foregoing chapters have presented a rich cornucopia of ways of viewing, understanding, and knowing hospitality, across multiple disciplines, interpretations, times, forms, purposes, sites, and social and cultural contexts. What this chapter does is to identify, capture and consolidate some of the emerging robust themes, surfaced through the explicit adoption of liberal, social sciences and arts, and critical perspectives. This allows for the observation, deconstruction, and analysis of the dominant theme that characterises hospitality as a human phenomenon; that of the nexus of the host/guest transaction in different social, cultural and physical contexts. Furthermore, it is recognised that this phenomenon exists at multiple societal levels, such as, that of nations, communities, civic, domestic environments, and commercial operations. For example, O’Mahony adopts a nation as host approach relative to Irish immigrants to Australia, which is reflected in an Indonesian community in Cole's contribution pertaining to the hosting by villagers of tourists, within a quasi-domestic level in the commercial home sector by Di Domenico and Lynch, while Wharton focuses on host/guest transactions within a commercial hotel commodity trading framework. Irrespective of level, Santich believes that three basic and underpinning characteristics persist and remain relevant in the contemporary world: the host is concerned with the happiness of the guest; benefits (actual or potential) are derived by the host; and obligations are imposed on the guest.
