Emotional Alchemy in Hospitality: Transforming Discontent to Delight through Servant Leadership and Strategic Emotional Labor in Hotel Service Recovery Performance

Abstract

Hotel service dissatisfaction necessitates recovery for sustainable operations. Frontline employees, crucial for customer interactions, ensure quality service delivery and bear responsibility for rectifying service failures. Swift service complaint resolution is customer’s priority, with leader support impacting emotional labor and performance outcomes. This study explores servant leadership's vital role in fostering an environment where employees feel valued, contributing to successful service recovery. Employing SPSS, AMOS, and SEM, this study empirically extends existing leadership literature by exploring the uncharted relationship between servant leadership and service recovery performance within an underdeveloped nation's hotel industry, significantly contributing to the conservation of resource theory. Using a comprehensive survey of 625 frontline employees, findings of the study reveal servant leadership's positive impact on deep acting and negative effect on surface acting. The study confirms servant leadership fosters deep acting, positively influencing service recovery. Grounded in the conservation of resources theory, it proves hotels with servant leadership exhibit effective service recovery. This research contributes theoretically by linking emotional labor to the servant leadership and service recovery performance relationship, demonstrating its impact on genuine customer interaction restoration.