The data collection covers data on the hotel performance (outputs) and the labour inputs for three large hotel chains in the UK and the Netherlands. The hotel performance variables mainly concern a hotel’s revenue and its financial productivity. The labour inputs variables mainly concern the number of workers and their working hours under different employment contracts. Flexibility of labour in terms of the shifts of working hours and inter-departmental transfer is also taken into consideration. The data are not only at the establishment level, but also at the departmental level for room service department and food and beverage departments. Each entry corresponds to an individual employee. The data collection is intended to be used for assessing and comparing hotels' labour productivity. This project analyses the extent to which labour productivity is determined by flexible work practices and the employment of international migrant workers in hotels, a relatively neglected but significant source of output and jobs. It also examines the extent to which there is a relationship between work flexibility and the employment of migrants, and how the interaction between these influences firm performance. In more general terms, the research contributes to the continuing debate about the performance of the UK economy, and its ‘productivity gap’. The project overcomes the limitations of secondary data by having privileged access to a unique data base for three large companies, with some 80 hotels in the UK and the Netherlands. This provides data not just at establishment level, or even at departmental level, but at individual employee level. Data is recorded on an hourly basis for different types of labour inputs (part time, contracted, seasonal etc.) over a continuous five year period. Outputs are measured in terms of both service outcomes (rooms occupied etc.) and financial terms. The availability of data for 2007-13 also allows analysis of how firms have responded to a changing operating environment through the economic crisis.
The data are secondary data. They were extracted from a data base. The research team had privileged access to a unique data base through collaborating with Eproductive, a data management company in London. Eproductive is able to provide detailed data sets on labour inputs and outputs for some 80+ hotels that belong to 3 anonymous companies in the UK and the Netherlands. The data were accessed via SQL Anywhere 16, which connects the research team's workstation to Eproductive's data server. The data were extracted using structured query language (SQL). The variables in the data collection were determined through literature review and through regular meetings between the research team, senior personnel from Eproductive and corporate representatives from the three hotel chains.
