ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the concept of productivity as it applies to hospitality and presents the differentation of actual productivity from measures of it. It illustrates how labour supply can be matched to consumer demand and evaluates functional flexibility. Productivity management is therefore about adaptability to this uncertainty – it is a response issue. It is easy to say but not so easy to do. The performance of revenue management and marketing prowess are essential and must be to the fore in management's thinking. For labour economic and human resource management, the issue of how to measure productivity is secondary to producing it. The characteristic bequeaths to the task of achieving and measuring productivity intractable problems, which are: that of having to account for very short-term changes in demand. Labour does not have to depend on the productivity of a machine. The initial feasibility of most hospitality operations is built around estimated capital and throughput applied in an input/output calculation.
