Abstract:
The hospitality industry plays a vital role in economic development in any country. Accordingly, to
maximize the return hoteliers execute cost controlling strategies that specifically covers the inventory
cost. Notably, inventory cost also reflects the significant amount of the total cost of hotel operation.
But, paying less attention to inventory control practices by hotels and lack of actual employee
readiness in inventory control are major concerns which should be considered by hoteliers. Because,
a substantial space is available for theft, pilferages, shortages, wastages, inappropriate accounting,
inadequate record-keeping, and other losses. Hence, the present study attempts to identify the
inventory control practices in hotels in the southern coastal belt followed by another two objectives;
to identify employee readiness for inventory control practices and identify the consequences of
employee readiness on inventory control practices towards hotels. Primary data collected from 10
department heads of five-star hotels in the research area and structured interviews were used with the
purposive sampling techniques. Data were transcribed and analyzed by using content analysis which
is one of the qualitative data analysis techniques. The findings revealed the existing unique inventory
controlling practices in each department and issues among those departments related to inventory
control. And Also, the study shows that there is a 100 percent influence of employee readiness on
inventory control practices in hotels like effective and efficient controlling procedure, time saves,
income earning, minimize wastages and accuracy of the procedures. Further, this study recommends
addressing the issues affecting the readiness of employees involved in inventory control and
achieving an effective control process. This study provides an overview of the importance of
increasing employee readiness for inventory control in the hotel industry in Sri Lanka.
Keywords: Inventory control practices; Employee Readiness; Hotel industry; Southern Coastal Belt
