The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism
Classical Greece
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010
DOMESTIC HOSPITALITY:
THE NOMAD AND THE HOMESTEAD
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010
Basis for understanding
 Just as Genesis set the foundations for the
Judaeo-Christian practices of hospitality the
Greco-Roman ones can only be understood
in the context of the Homeric writings.
 In Chapter 1 xenos, had the interchangeable
meaning of guest or stranger.
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010
Classical Authors
 Ancient Greece: Homer 800 BC
philoxenos was the law or custom of offering
protection and hospitality to strangers.
Hospitality brought expectations
The law / custom was felt by the Greeks to be
so central, so fundamental to civilized life
that its patron was the god of gods, Zeus
himself.
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010
“I will not detain you here for long…
I’d find fault with another host,
who acted excessively hospitable or
excessively hostile.
Balance is best in all things.
It’s bad either way,
to urge a guest to leave who does not want to go
as it is to detain the guest who wishes to leave.
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest”
 Homer Odyssey 15.68 - 74
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010
Evolution of Hospitality –
Domestic
 Based around the household
 All guests / strangers are treated the same
 Reciprocal
 Hereditary
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010
CIVIC HOSPITALITY:
COMMUNITIES AND THE EMERGENT CITY
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010
Evolution of Hospitality Public
 Proxenos – Greek City States c.490 BC
 Plato c. 400 BC different ways of treating different guests.
 Hospitality treats different people in different ways
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010
Plato’s Stratification of Guests
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010
COMMERCIAL HOSPITALITY:
THE GENESES OF AN INDUSTRY
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010
Commercial Hospitality
 The city the Thebans gave for about a year to
some political emigrants from Megara, and to
the surviving Plataeans of their own party to
inhabit, and afterwards razed it to the ground to
its very foundations, and built on to the precinct
of Hera an inn two hundred feet square, with
rooms all round above and below.
(Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 3:68)
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010
Commercial Hospitality
 When [city] funds were sufficient, it would be a fine
plan to build more inns for ship owners near the
harbours, and convenient places of exchange for
merchants, also inns to accommodate visitors.
Again, if inns and shops were put up both in
Peiraeus and in the city for retail traders, they
would be an ornament to the state and at the same
time the source of considerable revenue.
(Xenophon, Ways and Means 3:12–13)
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010
SUMMARY OF HOSPITALITY IN
CLASSICAL GREECE
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010
CLASSICAL GREECE
 Developments within the societies of Classical
Greece led to the formal stratification of hospitality
 Three different typologies of hospitality had
emerged:
Private or personal hospitality based around the entire
household
 Civic or public hospitality connected with the state
 An emergent, but important, commercial industry.

O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010
CLASSICAL GREECE
 Hospitality essentially organic and its evolution revealed a
great deal about the cultural values and beliefs of the
societies that existed
 Central was the concept of crossing thresholds; hospitality
was freely offered to a guest regardless of whether he had
entered a tent, a house or a temple, and the guest was
entitled to the hospitality of the host together with the
sanctuary and security that came with it
 Strangers without exception, were regarded as being under
the protection of the gods, and in general were treated as
guests
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010
CLASSICAL GREECE
 The concepts of guest, stranger, and host are closely related
but only when hospitality was based around the household,
all guests/strangers were to be treated the same
 Hospitality was central to virtually all the ethical and moral
behaviour; the gods, the great hosts, led by example
 Through practising hospitality, the household increased in
strength and status; hospitality itself could be hereditary and
reciprocal in nature
 As hospitality moved from being centred in and on the home
into the civic domain, guests were no longer treated equally
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010
CLASSICAL GREECE
 Civic and business hospitality developed from private
hospitality but retained the key foundation: treat others as to
make them feel at home even though they are not at home
 A distinct and rapidly developing commercial hospitality
sector represented a key source of income for a city and as a
necessary attraction to bring tourists or traders to the city
O’Gorman, The Origins of Hospitality and Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers © 2010