The Role of the Hospitality Industry in Cultural Assimilation: A Case Study from Colonial Australia

Abstract

According to Walton (2000, p. 57) ‘Commercial hospitality has its roots in supplying to travelers, through the market, the basic human needs of food, drink, shelter and rest’. Although the hospitality industry in the Australian state of Victoria did not commence until 1836, in the main, it followed the pattern outlined by Walton above. In the early years travelers were pastoralists and their basic needs end-route to market created a first demand for hospitality services. In the 1850s, the discovery of gold in rural Victoria opened up new travel routes, which led to a rapid expansion of the fledgling hospitality industry. Using public records newspapers of the period and a recently published family history, this chapter examines the involvement of Irish migrants in the hospitality industry in Victoria during the mid-to-late 1800s. The chapter explains the motivations for their engagement and discusses, with reference to recent hospitality studies theory, how their involvement in the industry allowed them to successfully assimilate into Australian society. In doing so it provides a powerful example of nation as host and immigrant as guest of the nation as referred to in the work associated with Derrida and Dufourmantelle (2002) and Ben Jelloun (1999), for example.