Since the dawn of civilization, hospitality has been recognized, appreciated, and cultivated to a fine art. But only with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, and its subsequent impact on transportation and tourist business, has hospitality become a subject of scientific inquiry. As with the birth of any new field of inquiry, the initial attempts to define the domain have been derived from a variety of heuristically motivated methodologies. The developing paradigm has yet to reach a consensus between those who work within the tourism industry, and those who study it, on a unified definition of hospitality, and its constituent characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to present some of the critical arguments relating to the aforementioned task. Those motives for hospitality which fall within the domain of altruism, typically identified in the manners of those who work in the tourism industry, are examined through two disciplinary aspects-genetics and sociology. This is followed by a discussion of a recent theory of service which stipulates service as a combination of functional and emotional presentations. This paper concludes that an emotional service and an extension of hospitality are derived from totally different spirits-the former is derived from a professional attitude, and the latter from an altruistic behavior. The frequently observed misuse of the definitions of service and hospitality in the tourism industry and the literature of tourism research may consequently be the result of a guest's inability to distinguish between the emotional service presented by a host on duty as a business activity, and hospitality extended as interpersonal interaction.

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