We have attempted to demonstrate the risks in the hospitality industry s use of a metaphor based on encounters in the home. The hosts performance is only occasionally secure, and may be judged inadequate by the guest (or vice versa) due to different expectations of gender roles, of the functions of home and of generation and social class. The home is a container of polluting activities from which a guest cannot always be shielded. It is women who are seen as responsible for standards of performance. If the entry of a guest into the home carries so many perils, is it wise for the hospitality industry to appropriate this metaphor?

Putting up is almost exclusively initiated by the guest and the host is frequently providing what Telfer described earlier as Good Samaritan hospitality. In these circumstances, the provision of hospitality represents mixed experiences and tensions for the host, particularly the hostess. Putting up involves more intimate and ongoing relationship between host and guest than is the case when providing hospitality in the form of meals or parties. The resident guest has access to the back region to an extent that would not apply to dinner guests. Furthermore, the precise nature of what both hosts and guests can and cannot do in the eyes of the other become more complex and difficult to manage.

In these circumstances it is perhaps not surprising that putting up represents a form of hospitality fraught with difficulties because of the different expectations of guests and hosts.