Hospitality Industry in the UK Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Hospitality Industry in the UK - Essay Example Moreover, this sector contributes greatly towards the country's Gross Domestic Product. With the current trend of globalization, the UK has come to the full realization of the importance of international trade to its expenditure. The importance of the traded goods sector is slowly but steadily diminishing. The service sector is quickly replacing the traded goods sector in terms of contribution to the UK economy. The UK's economy is the fifth largest in the world as far as purchasing power parity is concerned and sixth largest in terms of the market exchange rates. In Europe, the economy of the United Kingdom is the third largest after that of Germany and France. This presents the hospitality industry with numerous opportunities for growth. The UK was among the first countries in the world to adopt industrialization. It played a very big role in the world economy especially in the 19th century. The United States started coming into the picture in the late 19th century, posing a great challenge to the UK. This also means it was among the very first countries in the world to embrace the service sector. The UK is among the most globalised nations in the world, with its capital London being a main financial centre in the world together with other cities such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and New York City. The UK economy comprises numerous economies including England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, and is a member of the European Union. The UK privatized most of its state-owned companies in the services and industrial sectors in the 1980s. The UK Government currently owns just a few businesses and industries such as the Royal Mail. After suffering a slow economic growth after the Second World War through to the 1980s, the UK economy experienced an economic boom in the from the 1980s to 2008 when it entered a an economic recession due to the global economic crunch. Just like many of the developed countries, the UK manufacturing sector has been on the decline over the years in relation to its services sector. Currently, the services sector accounts for about 67 per cent of its GDP, with manufacturing accounting for less than 20 per cent of the national output. That means the service sector, which includes the hospitality industry, holds a good portion of the UK economy (Allin, 1999). The fall of manufacturing has been more pronounced in the UK than the rest of the industrialized countries, probably because it is the country where industrial revolution began. Sixty per cent of the food needs in the UK is produced by just one per cent of labour force, a strong indication that its agriculture is efficient, highly mechanized and intensive. The UK financial business services sector and the financial services sector generally account for more than 70 per cent of the country's GDP. This strongly indicates how strong economically London City is, and how rapid the business services sector has grown in the last decade or so. The UK communications sector has also experienced a rapid growth, even though its prices have been falling due to the rapid growth in productivity (Worthington and Britton, 2006). The country's construction sector went into recession in the 1990s as a result of reduced government spending and quick falls in the prices of houses, recovering only in 1997. With the