France Terminale STHR (hospitality and catering) — Terminale specialties
Chapters: 6
1. Hospitality management — performance and the hotel business
What makes a hotel business perform? · Does the state affect hotel performance? · Tourist flows and performance
- Business Performance Indicators: KPIs, Goals and Dashboards – A performance indicator is a number that shows how well a business is doing against a goal. Efficiency means getting more output from the same input; effectiveness means reaching the goal. Overall performance has four sides: financial, commercial, social and environmental. A dashboard shows many indicators together, and the weakest side shows where to improve.
- Government Intervention in Markets – Markets often work well, but they can fail: harmful goods are over-used, useful ones under-used, public goods are not provided, firms gain monopoly power, and incomes become very unequal. Governments step in with indirect taxes (which raise price and cut quantity), subsidies (which lower price and raise quantity), maximum and minimum prices, regulation, state provision of public goods and services, public ownership or privatisation, competition policy, and redistribution through taxes and benefits. They also use fiscal and monetary policy to smooth the economic cycle. Intervention can itself go wrong – this is government failure.
- Tourism Geography: Resources, Types, Impacts and Planning – Tourism is travelling away from home for at least one night for leisure, business, health or visiting friends. Tourism geography asks where people go, why, and what tourism does to places. Places attract visitors with natural resources (mountains, beaches, wildlife) and cultural resources (heritage, festivals, food). People are pushed from home and pulled to destinations. Tourism can be domestic or international, and there are many types: eco, adventure, cultural, medical and marine. Resorts often follow a life cycle from exploration to stagnation and then decline or renewal. Tourism brings jobs and money but can harm nature and local culture if visitors exceed the carrying capacity, so good planning aims at sustainable tourism.
2. Hospitality management — economic performance
Measuring operating performance · Cost analysis for decisions · Managing cash · Setting prices
- Accounting Ratios: Liquidity, Solvency, Activity and Profitability – A ratio compares two related numbers from the financial statements. Liquidity ratios check if short-term debts can be paid; solvency ratios check long-term safety; activity (turnover) ratios check how fast assets are used; profitability ratios check how much profit each rupee earns.
- Break-Even Analysis – A business breaks even when total revenue equals total cost, so profit is zero. Each unit sold brings a contribution = price − variable cost per unit, which first pays off the fixed costs. Break-even output = fixed costs ÷ contribution per unit. Sales above this make a profit; below it make a loss. Margin of safety = actual sales − break-even sales. To earn a target profit, sell (fixed costs + target profit) ÷ contribution per unit.
- Cash Flow – Cash flow is the money moving into and out of a business. Net cash flow = cash inflows − cash outflows, and closing balance = opening balance + net cash flow. A cash flow forecast predicts this month by month so the firm can spot shortfalls early. A business can make a profit and still run out of cash, so managers improve cash flow with overdrafts, faster collection from customers, slower payment to suppliers, lower stock, factoring and sale and leaseback.
- Pricing Strategies: How Firms Set a Price – A price starts from cost (cost-plus: cost + mark-up), is limited by what customers will accept (price sensitivity or elasticity), and can be shaped by one price for all, different prices for different buyers, package prices, yield management and dynamic pricing, or even a free offer paid for in another way.
3. Hospitality management — social and environmental performance
Engaging staff · Managing the payroll · Contributing to sustainable growth
- Human Resource Management (HRM) – Human resource management is planning, finding, developing, rewarding and keeping the people a business needs. HR objectives include employee engagement, talent development, training, diversity, alignment of values and a right-sized, cost-effective workforce. HR performance is measured with labour turnover (leavers ÷ average staff × 100), retention rate, labour productivity (output ÷ workers), labour cost per unit and employee costs as a percentage of revenue. Hard HRM treats staff as a cost; soft HRM treats them as an asset.
- Remuneration: How Employees Are Paid and What It Costs – Remuneration is everything an employee gets for work: pay, bonuses, fringe benefits and shared profits. The employer pays more than the worker takes home, because of social contributions. Firms track labour cost, average hourly rate and staff cost ratios, and use bonuses, benefits and profit sharing to reward and keep staff.
- Environment and Sustainable Development – The environment gives us resources, soaks up our waste, supports life and gives beauty. When we take resources faster than nature renews them, or throw waste faster than it can absorb, we cross its carrying capacity and face an environmental crisis. India faces land degradation, air and water pollution, forest and biodiversity loss. Burning fossil fuels traps heat and causes global warming; CFCs thin the ozone layer. Sustainable development meets today's needs without harming the ability of future generations to meet theirs, using clean energy, less waste and traditional knowledge.
4. Service science and technology
The guest at the centre · Staff at the heart of the system · Physical setting for service · Products and services that create value
- Hospitality Services: How Hotels and Restaurants Create Value – Hospitality means welcoming guests and meeting their needs for food, drink and rest. A service is made at the moment the guest, the staff and the physical setting meet: this is the servuction system. Guests differ (leisure, business, groups, guests with disabilities) and can be served in different styles (table, buffet, counter, room service). Staff work in teams with a clear hierarchy (restaurant and kitchen brigades, front desk, housekeeping) and pass information through documents. Quality has four faces: expected, designed, delivered and perceived; any gap between them leads to complaints.
5. Culinary science and technology
The customer at the centre · Kitchen staff at the heart · Physical kitchen setting · Products that create value
- Hospitality Services: How Hotels and Restaurants Create Value – Hospitality means welcoming guests and meeting their needs for food, drink and rest. A service is made at the moment the guest, the staff and the physical setting meet: this is the servuction system. Guests differ (leisure, business, groups, guests with disabilities) and can be served in different styles (table, buffet, counter, room service). Staff work in teams with a clear hierarchy (restaurant and kitchen brigades, front desk, housekeeping) and pass information through documents. Quality has four faces: expected, designed, delivered and perceived; any gap between them leads to complaints.
- Culinary Techniques: Stocks, Sauces, Doughs and Creams – Good cooking starts before the stove: choose the right product (quality, label, level of processing), buy in season, follow a recipe card and portion sheet, then do preliminary preparations (washing, cutting, weighing) and base preparations (stocks, sauces, doughs, creams). At the end, judge the dish with your senses: look, smell, taste and texture.
6. Food and environment science
Comfort and health in establishments · Diet, balance and health · Fermentations · Quality and hygiene approach · Cleaning premises and the environment
- Environmental Health – Environmental health is about how our surroundings — air, water, food, soil, chemicals, noise, heat and the buildings we live in — affect our health. Harm reaches the body by four roads: breathing, drinking, eating and touching. Risk depends on the dose and how long we are exposed. Some poisons build up along food chains. The One Health idea says human, animal and environmental health are linked, so we protect all three together.
- Human Digestive System and Heterotrophic Nutrition – Heterotrophs take ready-made food from other living things. Humans are holozoic: we eat whole food and break it down in a long tube, the alimentary canal. Teeth, saliva, stomach acid, enzymes, bile and pancreatic juice cut big food molecules into small ones that villi in the small intestine absorb into blood.
- Food Science: The Chemistry of What We Eat – Food science studies what food is made of and how it changes from farm to plate. Food contains carbohydrates, proteins, fats, water, vitamins and minerals. Cooking changes them: heat unfolds proteins (denaturation), starch swells in water (gelatinisation), and dry heat browns food through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Microbes ferment food into bread, curd and pickles, but can also spoil it. Processing, preservation and safe temperatures keep food safe and nutritious for a growing world population.
- Food Safety and Hygiene – Food can carry tiny living things (bacteria, viruses, moulds) that make us ill. Four habits keep food safe: clean (hands, tools, surfaces), separate (raw away from ready-to-eat), cook (to at least 75 °C in the centre) and chill (keep cold food at 5 °C or below). Bacteria multiply fastest in the danger zone, 5–60 °C, and can double every 20 minutes. Food businesses use a hazard-control plan (HACCP) and cleaning routines to keep food safe.