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y the nobility suddenly found they had no nobles
to feed.
Throughout the 1800s both restaurants and
hotels developed, serving all strata of the population.
By 1848 in New York there was everything
from Sweeney's �a sixpenny eating house) through
Brown's �a restaurant catering for the gentility), up
to Delmonico's �the top American restaurant of its
day). For immigrants to the New World, setting up
in the restaurant business was a relatively easy way
to get established, especially if the menu catered for
the large numbers of immigrants from that country.
The diversity of American cuisine derives from
the blending together of all these different ethnic
traditions. At this time, most major European cities
and most eastern cities in North America had
luxury hotels, such as the Palmer House in Chicago
and the Ritz in London.
The link between food, drink and lodging
continued with the growth of the railways and air
travel. In the United Kingdom and other countries,
the railway companies were major investors in
hotels, often built as part of their concourse. The
companies also included restaurant cars in their
rolling stock, especially on long train journeys such
as the Orient Express and the Trans-Siberian
railway. Even the first commercial flights, by KLM
between London and Paris in 1919, included prepacked
meals. By the 1930s, Pan American's
clipper service included dining at tables like in a
restaurant.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, more
and more people worked some distance away from
home, in factories and offices. In the United States,
many new kinds of restaurant were developed to
cater for such people: diners �1872), lunch counters
�1873), self-service �1885), cafeterias �1890) and
short-order restaurants �1905) all entered into the
American vocabulary. Between 1910 and 1925 the
number of restaurants in America grew by 40 per
cent; New York alone had 17,000 outlets in 1925.
Four years earlier, in 1921, Bill Ingram and Walter
Anderson started the first hamburger chain when
they opened their first White Castle restaurant,
although it was not until 1954 that the term `fast
food' was coined. Since then, the hospitality
industry has grown into a global industry providing
food, drink and accommodation in an increasingly
wide range of settings and formats.
hospitality 285
There is considerable variation in the accuracy
of data about the hospitality industry collected in
different countries. For instance, there is in
practical usage no definitive definition of what
constitutes a hotel, although the World Tourism
Organization has established guidelines. In the
United States, the main sources of information
about the industry are two trade associations,
American Hotel and Motel Association and
National Restaurant Association. In the
United Kingdom, the official source of industry
data is the Standard Industrial Classification. The
classification tends to be based around the British
approach to licensing premises, either with
regards to health and safety or the sale of alcohol.
While this makes classification and data collection
relatively easy, licensing arrangements may not be
the best way to understand and analyse the
industry. Other UK sources of data include the
Hotel Training Foundation, the British Tourist
Authority, Home Office, British Hospitality Association
and Business Monitor.
According to World Tourism Organization
figures, there were 11.8 million hotel rooms in
the world in 1993, with an average growth of 2 per
cent over the previous five years. However, growth
is variable in different parts of the world: the
highest annual growth �6.8 per cent) is in the East
Asia Pacific region, whilst both the Middle East
and Eastern Europe experienced a reduction in the
number of rooms. Most of these hotel rooms are
located in Europe, with 44 per cent of the total.
North American has 32 per cent and Asia Pacific
12 per cent. Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia,
Latin America and the Middle East each has less
than 5 per cent. Sources of business for hotels also
varied by region. On average around the globe,
domestic business �48 per cent) is slightly less than
foreign business �52 per cent). However in North
American 85 per cent of business is domestic, while
in Africa, Asia and the Middle East only 20 per
cent is domestic.
Similar growth in global restaurant brands is
also occurring. In the mid-1990s, it was estimated
that the top 100 companies operated nearly
110,000 units in the United States and a further
20,000 outside the country. Seventy per cent of the
sales are in so-called quick service or fast food
restaurants, such as Burger King, KFC and Taco