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Exercise 4

Read the article about hotel chains, and then complete the notes on the following page.

Hotel chains – past and present

People who travel always need somewhere to stay. In the past, not many people travelled, so there
was not a huge need for hotels. However, in the 20th century, flying became more affordable, and
globalisation meant that many people travelled for work and leisure. As a result, big hotel companies
developed chains of hotels across the world to meet this increased demand for accommodation.
It was essential for these hotels to offer their guests a high quality of service with an emphasis on
comfort.

In order to maintain the same standard across the whole chain, hotel owners developed contracts
with local managers which outlined specific requirements. These contracts stated that the food
must be of good quality and the rooms properly cleaned. Before these contracts were introduced,
standards of service and hygiene varied from hotel to hotel, and depended on the personality and
experience of the hotel manager and the staff. As a way of improving quality, the hotel companies
employed secret inspectors to stay in their hotels to check that these standards were met. The rules
were very detailed and had to be followed precisely. A manager in Dubai remembers, “There were
more than 2000 rules to follow, including a list of phrases that we had to use to greet guests. We
even had to put three pieces of fruit in exactly the same place in each guest’s room.” The interior
design of the hotels also had to be exactly the same. It was usual for hotel companies to have the
same furniture, whether the hotel was in Europe, Asia or Africa. Many of these large hotel companies
became easily recognisable and familiar global brands.

Large hotel chains may have been economically successful, but in the 21st century their lack of
individuality has made staying in one an impersonal experience. There are signs that nowadays
many travellers are rebelling. In fact, of the 100 leading hotels in the world, only around a third now
belong to one of the big companies.

Can these large hotel chains create a more personal identity for their guests? Nowadays the world’s
most luxurious hotels are certainly trying to compete with each other to make staying in them a
more memorable experience. Many hotel companies think that one way to achieve this is to offer a
personalised service by contacting the guests in advance to welcome them and find out if they are
coming for a special occasion.

More recently, there has been evidence of another solution to the problem of the impersonal
nature of hotels by providing a wider range of individual experiences. Some hotel companies
target their customers according to their interests. For example, hotels offer painting courses and
sports competitions, and there are even some that organise events for pop music fans and fashion
enthusiasts. Others are engaging their guests with the local culture by offering traditional food in
their restaurants and entertainment in the evenings.

Hotels cannot hope to satisfy everybody, but many are trying to appeal to a wider public. However,
the popularity of these new-style hotels may be short-lived, and they might in the end become just
as uniform as the hotels they were designed to replace.

© UCLES 2016 0511/22/O/N/16

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You have been asked to give a talk to your travel and tourism class about hotel chains. Prepare some
notes to use as the basis of your talk.

Make short notes under each heading.

The development of hotel chains in the 20th century

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Current and future development of hotel chains

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[Total: 9]

© UCLES 2016 0511/22/O/N/16 [Turn over

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Exercise 5

Read the following article about food.

On the opposite page, write a summary about modern food waste and about the traditional
ways that food can be preserved.

Your summary should be about 100 words long (and no more than 120 words long). You should
use your own words as far as possible.

You will receive up to 6 marks for the content of your summary, and up to 5 marks for the style and
accuracy of your language.

Avoid waste – preserve!

Each year, an estimated one third of all food produced – an astonishing 1.3 billion tonnes worth
around US$1 trillion – ends up rotting in the bins of consumers and retailers or spoiling due to
poor transportation practices. Such wastage cannot be allowed in a world where almost 900 million
people go hungry every day. Uneaten food wastes both the energy put into growing it and the fuel
spent on transporting produce across vast distances. Added to this, significant amounts of the
powerful greenhouse gas, methane, comes from rotting food.

It is strange that at a time when technology makes it very easy to store food for longer, most people
make less effort to conserve food than at any other time in history. “Reducing food waste and loss is
an economic, ethical and environmental challenge that we must face,” says environmentalist Khadija
Khan. “One of the ways everyone can contribute to this challenge is by looking at how less wasteful
cultures place such value on every scrap of food and by considering how to copy them.”

The ways that people around the world preserved food are as many and varied as the cultures and
countries they came from. The Turkish horsemen of Central Asia had their own solution. They would
preserve meat by placing it in pockets on their saddles to be crushed by their legs as they rode.
This meat was a direct ancestor of pastirma, a term which means ‘being pressed’ in Turkish, and is
also believed to be the origin of the Italian pastrami. In Greenland, the Inuit people ate a dish called
kiviak. This was a traditional wintertime food made from small birds called little auks. Hundreds of
whole birds were wrapped in a seal skin, which then had the air removed before being sewn up. The
skin was placed in the frozen ground under a stone to help keep the air out. The birds were dug up
after several months and eaten, often at celebrations.

Vegetarians need not despair, for there are plenty of ways to preserve non-meat dishes. In many
countries of South America, a freeze-dried potato delicacy known as chuño, which pre-dates the
Inca Empire, is widely eaten. Potatoes are alternately exposed to the freezing night air and hot
daytime sun for five days. They are then crushed to squeeze out all moisture. Chuño can last for
months or years. In Nigeria and several other West-African countries, a dry granular food called
garri is produced from cassava roots that are peeled, washed and grated. The resultant mash is
sieved and roasted for long-term storage. In many European countries, fruit is preserved so that
none is wasted and this means people enjoy its taste in the long, cold winters. Fruit is boiled, sugar
added, and the mixture is then put in a jar and sealed to produce what we know as jam.

There are many more examples which show just how careful people can be to preserve food. We
need to think again about looking after the food that we have, and we need to make sure that
nothing is wasted.

© UCLES 2016 0511/22/O/N/16

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[Total: 19]
© UCLES 2016 0511/22/O/N/16 [Turn over