The Hospitality of the Kings

So far in The Odyssey, every place Telemachus has visited has been home to royalty, and they have all welcomed him with extreme hospitality, even though they were complete strangers at first. The kings thought it was an outrage to not invite them in to dine with them. They gave them their finest food and stayed up late talking with them, as well as sending them off with fine gifts. The obvious question is why did the kings go to such lengths to make their unknown visitors feel welcome?

The first reason I can think of is that they were raised as royalty and royalty has always been hospitable to visitors, no matter the circumstance. In today's society, it seems a bit odd that someone would give complete strangers the finest of their feast and invite them to sit with them at a royal dinner, but, back then, things could've been different. We don't know whether it was just common courtesy to invite guests, no matter whom, into your home. It could've been a widespread belief, or just one among royals. 

Going off of the previous reason is that kings had extreme abundances of wealth. They had tons of money and presumably nothing to do with it, so why not give strangers your best horses and your finest meat? In those days, there were no big charities to donate your money to, no Goodwill or Salvation Army to donate your clothes to, so you might as well give it to strangers. However, it isn't like they give them their second hand horses and food, but instead they share a sample of their life with the strangers.

I think that they use their abundance of wealth largely to help them get to know people and hear stories and share their own stories, since they are genuinely interested in people and also like to converse about themselves and just to exchange life's experiences with one another, and the wealth that they have just makes it very easy to do so.

Finally, the kings could be so deeply obsessed with pleasing the gods that they are always looking to impress them. They may be extremely grateful to the gods for making them king or something, so in everything they do, they try to find ways to make them happy. Yes, being welcoming and nice to complete strangers is something that would please the gods, but as we saw, any normal straggler could be a god in disguise, there for an unknown reason. If the kings are kind to everyone, they might happen to treat a god with respect someday and get rewarded for it.