高星級酒店“商業(yè)性家”的營造:廣州案例

摘要： "商業(yè)性家"的營造是流動(dòng)性與商業(yè)化背景下交叉學(xué)科研究的熱點(diǎn)之一。文章援引"家"的相關(guān)理論,通過半結(jié)構(gòu)化深度訪談和文本分析的方法,深入分析高星級酒店生產(chǎn)者對酒店"商業(yè)性家"的核心內(nèi)涵與營造過程,并闡述在此過程中酒店商業(yè)性與"家"的矛盾互動(dòng)關(guān)系。研究發(fā)現(xiàn),酒店的商業(yè)性主要表現(xiàn)在酒店追求利潤最大化的過程中,以價(jià)格為杠桿差異化處理酒店空間以及提供匹配的服務(wù),為了規(guī)避財(cái)務(wù)風(fēng)險(xiǎn)而采取押金制度、消費(fèi)簽單制度、結(jié)賬查房制度等強(qiáng)化酒店的商業(yè)色彩。然而,被商業(yè)化的高星級酒店試圖通過主客互動(dòng)關(guān)系以及社區(qū)文化的嵌入為消費(fèi)者營造具有安全感、舒適感、個(gè)性化和當(dāng)?shù)厣鐓^(qū)文化的"家"氛圍。因此,一方面",商業(yè)性家"中的商業(yè)性與"家"處在動(dòng)態(tài)的矛盾互動(dòng)中;另一方面,經(jīng)濟(jì)與人際關(guān)系網(wǎng)絡(luò)的不可分離使酒店生產(chǎn)者與消費(fèi)者都嵌入在"家"的系統(tǒng)中,成為完整的"商業(yè)性家"。研究構(gòu)建了"商業(yè)性家"的理論模型,豐富了"商業(yè)性家"的內(nèi)涵與外延,為跨學(xué)科研究"家"提供了新的理論與實(shí)證研究視野;在實(shí)踐方面,研究有助于高星級酒店實(shí)現(xiàn)"家外之家"的理念經(jīng)營與管理實(shí)踐。
Home is an important concept to understand society and space. Earlier studies on home emphasize an existence with fixed boundary and comfortable lifestyle. In an era of high mobility,however, individuals are living with two interrelated conditions: home and away. Anxiety and discomfort brought by traveling away from home are mitigated through the construction of commercial home. This paper focuses high-star hotels as a form of commercial home in the process of tourism production and consumption. The established literature on commercial home mainly explores guesthouses where consumers stay in their hosts' own house and even share the common space of everyday life. This research strand analyzes two major topics: guest-host interactions in spaces of hospitality and the operation and management of commercial home.Thanks to the deep penetration of commercial logic into the tourism industry, modern hotels,particularly high-star hotels, provide new opportunities to study commercial home. The conventional guest-host interaction is transformed into a new producer-consumer relation and accordingly, hotel owners play a key role in shaping the culture of hotels. In high-star hotels, managers and workers replace guesthouse owners and family members to interact with consumers and greet these consumers with a sense of home. High-star hotels become a metaphor of commercial home in the contemporary world. This paper addresses the following research questions: What are the main features of commercial home in high-star hotels? How do hotel managers artfully obscure the commercial logic on the one hand and foster a sense of home on the other? In other words, how do star-hotels mobilize home-making to achieve the goal of profit-making?This research relies on qualitative method—semi-structured interview and text analysis. It is found that in the process of maximizing profit, high-star hotels normally rely on lever of price to differentiate the use of hotel spaces and services, and on commercial strategies such as deposits, written permission for consumption, and room scrutiny before checkout to avoid financial loss. All these strategies deepen the commercial aspect of high-star hotels. Nevertheless, these hotels try to incorporate a sense of home into operation by increasing staff-guest interactions and creating community culture. The purpose is to enable consumers to feel safe, comfortable, and unique, which work together to foster a feeling at home. Hence, profit and home are intertwined through a dynamic, but conflicting, process. The synthesis of economic relations and social networks integrates consumers and producers into a homely space of hospitality. This study attempts to create a theoretical framework of commercial home and expands the nature of commercial home to high-star hotels. Furthermore, it enriches the focus on home through new conceptual exploration and empirical analysis from an interdisciplinary perspective.Practically, this research can help high-star hotels to fulfill the ideal of home away from home.