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Emotional and Aesthetic Labour: hotel receptionists or Frontline workers in the hospitality and tourism industry

Emotional and Aesthetic Labour: hotel receptionists or Frontline workers in the hospitality and tourism industry
Author: Adeline Tasa
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Author: Adeline Valerie Parfaite Tasa: University of Lincoln



Abstract: Hospitality especially tourism constitute an important source of income for many countries worldwide. This paper seeks to explore the workplace problems faced by hotel receptionist or frontline employees’ in the hospitality and tourism industry


Key Words: Emotional labour, aesthetic labour, hotel receptionist, frontline employees, hospitality, tourism, industry, impacts.


Strand 4: Serving others: the world of tourism work


According to (Kim 2011) the front desk is both the entrance and exit for all hotel guests in the hospitality industry. The socialist Arlie Russell Hochschild in her seminal in 1983 known as ‘The Managed Heart’ defined the phenomenon of emotional labour as “… the management of feeling to create a publicity observable facial and bodily displays; emotional labour is sold for a wage and therefore has an exchange value” (Hochshild, 1983, 7). The concept of emotional labour as well as the concept of Aesthetic labour which on it turn is defines as “the employments of workers with desired corporeal dispositions have been the focus of many scholars especially in the hospitality and tourism industry in the past decades. Both concepts have also been in the heart of many debates by various authors and commenters as there is not single definition of both concepts (Warhurst and Nickson, 2007: 107).

Tourism has become a major economic activity and one of the fastest growing industries in the 21st century; in fact the industry has contributed 9.5% to the global economy in 2013 and 4.7 million new jobs were created as a result for tourism activity. The industry supported nearly 266 million jobs which is mean 1 in 11 of all jobs in the world (WTTC Reports, 2013). However despite these positive impacts, the industry have a poor reputation and poor image when come to it workers conditions.


Due to the significant emotional labour, receptionist role is perceived and characterised as a feminine role even though traditionally it belong to male (Burns et al, 2010, Guerrier and Adib, 2000; Adib et al, 2010). According to (Burns et al, 2010, 150; et al, 2009; Lam and Chen, 2012 cited in Lee and Kim 2012, 1030; Pugh 2001, Ashkanasy et al, 2002 mentioned in Kim, 2008, 152) been receptionist require looking good in a manner that draw male attention. Receptionist should be friendly, helpful, and sexually active. They are expected to enchant, capture, charm, magnetized, delight and enthral the client in a way of displaying positive emotion and transforming their negative emotions through the performance of labour (Burns et al, 2010, 150).

El is vital to personal and institution outcomes, arrayed from employee health and Psychological well-being to consumer service performance, customer orientation, and customer satisfaction (Grandey, 2003: Groth et al, 2009; Karatepe et al, 2009; Lam and Chen, 2012 cited in Lee and Kim 2012, 1030). This point of view is supported by (Pugh 2001, Ashkanasy et al, 2002 mentioned in Kim, 2008, 152) who stated that the display of positive emotional expression by frontline workers or staff have a favourable effect on customer retention, recovery and satisfaction in the fact that its related to customers positive effect after service transactions and evaluations of perceived service quality.

El workers often use two special acting approaches to delight organizational needs for EL expressions namely: surface acting (SA) defined has fake emotions and deep acting (DA) which is viewed as the desired and real emotions Hochshild, 1983 highlighted in Lee and Kim, 2012). However despite its benefit to hotel companies El can be harmful for workers both psychologically and physically.
On the other hand, Evidences showed that El is one of the major causes of occupational stress and burnout (Bares, 2008 mentioned in Kulshreshtha, 2014).

Correspondingly, a survey by the Camp data revealed that in 2008 the turnover rate was 27.2% and it the highest amongst all considered industries (Bares, 2008 cited in Kulshreshtha, 2014; watt, 2007, 56). Arguably El create job burnout to the workers leading to emotional exhaustion (EE) or Cynicism (depersonalization) according to Lee and Ashforth, 1990, 743 quoted in Kim, 2008 154).

Following (Chamir, 1980 quoted in Guerrier and Adib, 2000), hotels receptionists (especially women) are vulnerable and exposed to sexual harassment due to EL and AL expressions but also and mainly due to their marginal duties qualified as been poor low skills and low - paid jobs compared to their client’s status therefore, customers may think that there are in better position for bullying or assaulting them.


Conclusion

In the hospitality and tourism industry emotional and aesthetic labour hotels receptionist are paid to be nice, they have to smile while dealing with difficult customers however they also deserve the public’s respect.

References

Burns, p., Peter, M., Palmer, C., Lester, J. A. (2010) Tourism and visual culture: Volume 1 Theories and Concepts, Wallingford: C
Adkin, A. (2011) Exploring Tourism Labour. Annals of Tourism Research, 38(3) 1135 – 1155.
Kim, T. T., Yoo, J. J. E, Lee, G. and Kim, J. (2012) Emotional intelligence and emotional labour acting strategies among frontline hotel employees. International journal of Contemporary Hospitality, 24(7) 1029 – 1046.