Labor In The Tourism And Hospitality Industry

An organization’s workforce is arguably the greatest asset of any organization, and tourism and hospitality is an extremely labor-intensive industry. This volume takes an in-depth look at workforce issues in the tourism and hospitality industry, focusing on labor skills, ethics, rights, and more. It examines manpower planning beyond forecasting estimates to include investigative techniques in a way that offers insight for economic planning in both tourism and tourism education. The authors use economic, sociological, and psychological analysis and take a pragmatic stance on the challenges of the workforce. The authors look at the specifics of the labor market of the tourism and hospitality industry, discussing the current status of the industry’s organizations and how they are suffering labor shortages (qualitative or quantitative) and constant turnover—resulting in significant costs to organizations. Topics such as low wages and overdependence on tipping, workforce diversity, technological change resistance, and seasonality issues, and more are examined. The volume also provides a section on labor rights in the tourism and hospitality industry, which looks at labor trafficking and issues in social justice and human rights. Key features: • Provides an in-depth understanding of tourism employment • Presents a critical analysis of labor supply and demand in the tourism and hospitality industries • Considers the need for specific labor skills and training • Examines the reasons for labor shortages and turnover in the tourism and hospitality industry • Discusses labor ethics and social responsibility in hospitality/tourism organizations

Human resource departments have been a crucial part of business practices for decades and particularly in modern times as professionals deal with multigenerational workers, diversity initiatives, and global health and economic crises. There is a necessity for human resource departments to change as well to adapt to new societal perspectives, technology, and business practices. It is important for human resource managers to keep up to date with all emerging human resource practices in order to support successful and productive organizations. The Research Anthology on Human Resource Practices for the Modern Workforce presents a dynamic and diverse collection of global practices for human resource departments. This anthology discusses the emerging practices as well as modern technologies and initiatives that affect the way human resources must be conducted. Covering topics such as machine learning, organizational culture, and social entrepreneurship, this book is an excellent resource for human resource employees, managers, CEOs, employees, business students and professors, researchers, and academicians.

This timely book is one of the first of its kind to consider contemporary issues such as skills shortages, labour turnover and training, as well as changes in employment protection law in different areas of the hospitality industry.

The hospitality and tourism sector is a large and rapidly expanding industry worldwide, and can rightfully be described as a vehicle of globalisation. Hotels are among the cornerstones of the industry often drawing workers from the most vulnerable segments of multicultural labour markets, accommodating and entertaining tourists and business travelers from around the world. This book explores the organisation of work, worker identities and worker strategies in hotel workplaces, as they are located in heterogeneous labour markets being changed by processes of globalisation. It uses an explicitly geographical approach to understand how different groups of workers experience and respond to challenges in the hospitality industry, and is based on recent theoretical debates and empirical research on hotel workplaces in cities as different as Oslo, Goa, London, Las Vegas and Toronto. A multi-scalar analysis is taken where concrete worker bodies and their physical, emotional and embodied labour are seen in relation to, among other aspects: the regulation of national and regional labour markets, city governments with global city ambitions, and global corporate actors and labour migration patterns. The book sheds light on the hotel workplace as a hierarchical and fragmented social space as well as addressing questions on worker mobility, the fragmentation of work, scales of organisation and how workers can help shape the regulation of their industry. This timely volume brings together contributions from international academics and is valuable reading for all those interested in hospitality, tourism, human geography and globalisation.

The tourism industry, of which the hospitality industry is the core element, is one of the largest and the fastest growing industries world-wide. According to World Tourism Organisation forecasts, the industry will continue to grow and employ more people in the twenty-first century. In parallel with the growth of the tourism and hospitality industry world-wide, consumer expectations and demands for quality are rising while consumer tastes are varying on the one hand, and competition among the firms, both nationally and internationally, is intensifying on the other. In this business environment of heightened consumer expectations, distinct market segments that demand unique products and services, and stiff competition, tourism and hospitality organisations are looking for ways to excel in service quality, customer satisfaction, competition and performance. This book takes the view that employees are one of the most, if not the most, important resources or assets for tourism and hospitality organisations in their endeavour to provide excellent service, meet and exceed consumer expectations, achieve competitive advantage and exceptional organisational performance. The purpose of this book is to emphasise the critical role of employees for tourism and hospitality organisations and to examine the ways and means of managing their attitudes and behaviours for the mutual benefit of both parties: tourism and hospitality organisations and their employees.

The hospitality and tourism sector is an increasingly significant contributor to GDP worldwide, as well as a key source of employment in developing regions. Drawing on contemporary research, this Handbook provides a provocative review of the major human resource challenges facing the hospitality and tourism sector today.

Resorts have become important to American society and its economy; one in eight Americans is now employed by the tourism industry. Yet despite the ubiquity of hotels, little has been written about those who labor there. Drawing on eight years of participant observation and in-depth interviews, the renowned ethnographers Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler reveal the occupational culture and lifestyles of workers at five luxury Hawaiian resorts. These resorts employ a workforce that is diverse in gender, class, ethnicity, and nationality. Hawaiian resort workers, like those in nearly all resorts, consist of four groups. New immigrants hold difficult and dirty low-status jobs for little pay. Locals provide an authentic Polynesian flavor for guests, a ready pool of youthful high-turnover employees, and a population trapped in a place that offers few occupational alternatives. Managers tend to be middle-class, college-educated young and middle-aged men from the mainland whose lifestyles are occupationally transient. Seekers, mostly young, white, and from the mainland as well, escape to paradise seeking adventure, warmth, extreme sports, or some alternate life experiences. The Adlers describe the work, lives, and careers of these four groups that labor in organizations that never close, with shifts scheduled around the clock and around the year. Paradise Laborers adds to the growing interest in the global flow of labor, as these immigrant workers display different trends in gendered opportunities and mobility than those exhibited by other groups. The authors propose a political economy of tourist labor in which they compare the different expectations and rewards of organizations, employees, and local labor markets.

This book is an attempt to understand tourism employment in a holistic way. Using ideas from labour economics, work psychology and industrial sociology the authors look at tourism employment in both its workplace context and its wider economic and social environment and attempt to tell a coherent story. Both behavioural and economic perspectives are used to address questions that are salient to manpower planning, education planning and tourism management. By examining the diversity and commonality within occupations against the background of a dynamic labour market the text develops themes that contribute to our understanding of the behaviour of workers and managers in the industry.