Management of Emotional Labour in Tourism and Hospitality Industry in Kerala

Abstract

"Tourism and hospitality” is the world's largest industry and creator of jobs across national and regional economies. It has great strategic importance for Kerala's economy due to its capacity for wealth-generation and job-creation.  Jobs generated by Travel & Tourism are spread across the economy - in retail, construction, manufacturing and telecommunications, as well as directly in Travel &Tourism companies. It thus, plays an important role in driving growth and bringing about economic prosperity.  The organizations and managers in the tourism and hospitality industry face real challenges in recruiting, developing and maintain a committed, competent, well managed and well motivated work force which is focused on offering a high quality product to the increasingly demanding and discerning customer. This study sought to extend the understanding of the ‘emotional labour' performed by service workers in the tourism industry, in order to identify more clearly the skills required to perform such labour and the management strategies which can support service workers in their client service work. The performance of emotional labour involves the display of organizationally desired emotion, such as friendliness, by customer service workers in their interactions with customers or clients. It is significant activity as the skill with which emotional labour is performed impacts on perceptions of service quality. Another contributing factor to perceptions of service quality is the personality of service workers, as the service exchange is essentially a social interaction. The present study also recognizes the importance of tourism and hospitality as an employment sector as it provides a large and diverse number of jobs and will be important for future job creations throughout the developed and developing world.

Key words:  HRM, Emotional labour, Tourism and hospitality industry.