Emotional labour in tourism industry: perceptions of Eskisehir City Hotels' employees

Abstract

There is an intense interaction between employees and consumers in tourism, which is predominantly a subject of service industries. Accordingly, attitudes and behaviours of tourism employees when serving consumers are more important than any other service industry. The recent popular term “emotional labour” (EL) which indicates behaviours of employees besides physical efforts should also be considered in tourism industry. In this particular study, EL scales of Chu & Murrman (2006) as well as Pala & Tepeci (2014) have been modified for city hotel employees. The total population is the employees at varied positions in four and five star hotels of Eskişehir province. The sample of the study on the other hand, is 98 employees who agreed to participate in the survey from the mentioned hotels in 2018 fall. Employing Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), three dimensions have emerged, namely ‘pretending emotions’, ‘consistent emotions’ and ‘optimist emotions’ of hospitality employees. The quantities and the names of the dimensions revealed some differences in contrast to both Chu & Murrman (2006) and Pala & Tepeci (2014) scales. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was also employed in the study to verify the scale which was finalised with 12 items and three dimensions.