Hospitality is the relationship of a host towards a guest, wherein the host receives the guest with some amount of goodwill and welcome. This includes the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers. Louis, chevalier de Jaucourt describes hospitality in the Encyclopédie as the virtue of a great soul that cares for the whole universe through the ties of humanity.[4] Hospitality is also the way people treat others, for example in the service of welcoming and receiving guests in hotels. Hospitality plays a role in augmenting or decreasing the volume of sales of an organization.
Hospitality ethics is a discipline that studies this usage of hospitality
"Hospitality" derives from the Latin hospes,[5] meaning "host", "guest", or "stranger". Hospes is formed from hostis, which means "stranger" or "enemy" (the latter being where terms like "hostile" derive). By metonymy, the Latin word hospitalis means a guest-chamber, guest's lodging, an inn.[6] Hospes/hostis is thus the root for the English words host, hospitality, hospice, hostel, and hotel.
In ancient cultures, hospitality involved welcoming the stranger and offering them food, shelter, and safety.
Among Albanians, hospitality (Albanian: mikpritja) is an indissoluble element of their traditional society, also regulated by the Albanian traditional customary law (Kanun). Hospitality, honor, and besa, are the pillars of the northern Albanian tribal society. Numerous foreign visitors have historically documented the hospitality of both northern and southern Albanians. Foreign travelers and diplomats, and a number of renowned historians and anthropologists have, in particular, "solemnized, romanticized, and glorified" the hospitality of the northern Albanian highlanders.
Some reasons that have been provided to explain the admiration of the Albanian hospitality by foreign visitors are: the rituals and forms in which it is expressed; its universal application with uncompromising protection of the guest, even in the case of blood feud (gjakmarrje) between the host and the guest; its central role as a moral principle in Albanian society and individual life, also regulated and sanctified in the Kanun as a basic societal institution; its exceptional altruistic appeal as well as application, conferred with the best available resources, regardless of the fact that the remote, harsh, and geographically inhospitable territory of the northern Albanian mountains is typically scarce in material resources.
The Albanian law of hospitality is simply clarified by the Kanun: "The house of the Albanian belongs to God and the guest." Which means that the guest – who represents the supreme ethical category – has a greater role than the master of the house himself. The guest's role is even more important than blood, because according to custom there is the possibility to pardon the man who spilled the blood of one's father or one's son, but a man who has spilled the blood of a guest cannot ever been pardoned. In Albanian tradition a guest is effectively regarded as a semi-god, admired above all other human relations.
A reflection of the Albanian solemn adherence to their traditional customs of hospitality and besa is notably considered to be their treatment of Jews at the time of the Italian and German occupation during World War II. Indeed, Jews in hiding in Albania were not betrayed or handed over to the Germans by Albanians, and as a result, there were eleven times more Jews at the end of the WWII than at the beginning of it in Albania.