Tourism is the fourth largest foreign exchange earner in Sri Lanka [7]. In the year 2007 tourism earned US $ 384.4 million as foreign exchange, and this was a contribution of 3.1% to the total foreign exchange earnings in Sri Lanka (Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority, 2007). Employment generation in the tourism sector grew by 8.7% in 2007. This emphasis that the Sri Lankan hotel industry has continued to grow and has a significant role in the economy. Therefore, examining the hotel industry in Sri Lanka is significant in current context. Furthermore, HRM is relatively new to Sri Lankan organizations and there is little information on how Sri Lankan organizations are embedding HRM. Hence exploring HRM practices in hotels in Sri Lanka would provide insights on how HRM is shaping these organizations.
Previous studies in hotel industries have examined whether HRM practices are significantly influenced by ownership of hotel or type of hotel. The study conducted by Timo and Davidson (2005) compared HRM practices in Australian hotels based on type of ownership: whether hotels are MNCs or domestically owned. In their study, the domestically owned hotels were very few but yet the researchers found significant differences of HRM practices based on the ownership. Further the study conducted by Chand and Katou (2007) used type of hotel: chain or independent as a variable. Despite of lack of literature literature on hotel