호텔 하우스키핑 여성 객실 청소 업무종사원의 직업정체성 인식과 대응

Abstract

The aim of this study was to explore how elderly women, working as hotel room attendants, perceive and respond to their work experiences in order to establish a new job identity. An in-depth interview was conducted with hotel room attendants employed at a luxury hotel in Seoul for over two years. The collected data was analyzed using narrative methodology. The results of the analysis showed that a positive job among room attendants was constructed through four stages: ‘background of entry into the hotel labor market’, ‘negative perception of the reality of dirty work’, ‘response strategy to negative reality’ and ‘construction of a positive hotelier identity’. Although the participants entered the hotel labor market by conscious choice, they had to confront negative prejudice related to the concept of dirty work and experienced constraints in their profession. In response to this, they adopted diverse coping strategies to modify their psychological attitudes, which led to a favorable transformation in their job identity. This study has contributed to understanding how hotel housekeeping female room attendants maintain their occupation through a series of identity works in managing their job-related tasks and social relationships. Several practical implications were suggested regarding the adoption of human resource management strategies for female room attendants.