Hotel Room Attendants Research Articles

‘If you don’t rush, you don’t finish’: Accelerating work and production of a vector body in Spanish hotel room attendants

The growth of the hotel industry in Spain in recent decades has meant, among other things, the acceleration of the hotel room attendants’ labour. An overload of physical activity, illnesses, and physical and mental exhaustion are the most visible consequences. Based on a qualitative study carried out with hotel room attendants working in Spanish hotels, the article analyses the effects of work intensification on room attendants’ representation of their bodies. The results show that rather than the typical description of their body as a machine that must withstand high pressure, hotel room attendants define it as a vector body constructed through multiple flows and demands, which has to speed up its pace, being constantly overwhelmed and self-managed in the process. We discuss how the acceleration of work in hotels is the result of a series of organizational and individual practices, impacting the representation and corporal practice of the hotel room attendants.

호텔 하우스키핑 여성 객실 청소 업무종사원의 직업정체성 인식과 대응

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.

Employee Productivity of Hotel Room Attendants: An Input–Output Perspective

ABSTRACT This study examines the productivity of room attendants in a hotel housekeeping department by using the input and output (IO) approach and explores the influence of customer market segments and room types on employee productivity. Using the qualitative approaches of direct observation and in-depth interviews, time checks for 22 guestrooms were directly observed in terms of hotel room cleaning procedures. Interview results indicated that 18 room attendants had received proper training. However, the room attendants encountered many obstacles during their daily operations, such as long waiting times for linens, thereby negatively affecting their productivity. Customer segmentation and room type also resulted in additional time required for room cleaning. Previous theoretical contributions and future managerial implications are also discussed.

Realizing dignity in housekeeping work: Evidence of five star hotels

This article illuminates the difficulties of achieving dignity at work for hotel room attendants working at 5-star hotels in the Gold Coast region of South East Queensland, Australia. This exploratory research was founded on socialist-feminist epistemologies. In-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of 46 hotel room attendants. A qualitative, social-constructivist, grounded-theory methodology was used to render the empirical material into a basic social structural process of achievement of dignity. Despite exploitation, marginalization and oppression imbued in their working conditions, hotel room attendants achieve dignity through personal inclinations, dispositions, capabilities and affective domain qualities. This research has implications for hospitality industry practice.

Management perceptions of sexual harassment of hotel room attendants

ABSTRACT This research addresses calls for organizational perspectives of guest-initiated sexual harassment of employees; in this case, hotel room attendants. Workers, such as room attendants, working in jobs with high customer interaction, are particularly liable to sexual harassment. This exploratory study investigates the perspectives of personnel from hotel executive management as to how they understand and manage guest-initiated sexual harassment. To ascertain the level of management awareness of this issue, in-depth interviews were conducted with nine Directors of Human Resources (DHR) and two Executive Housekeeper Managers (ExHk) from nine five-star hotels in Brisbane, Australia. The outcome of our grounded theory analysis identified distinct areas within the praxis of DHRs’ and ExHks’ hotel operations given the results revealed hotel management had little knowledge of any sexual harassment by guests and therefore implemented few preventative strategies. From an epistemological perspective of socialist feminism, this research expands the field of knowledge related to room attendant employment, with implications for employer strategy and employee welfare in hotels.

Greetings from Emily! The effects of personalized greeting cards on tipping of hotel room attendants

Purpose In hotels, room attendants are often invisible to hotel guests. This study aims to understand how customers would increase their voluntary tips when there was less or no personal interaction and communication between customers and service providers. Specifically, the purpose of this study is to investigate whether providing different greeting cards in hotel rooms would affect hotel guest tipping behavior. Design/methodology/approach A field study was conducted in an upscale independent hotel. Four types of greeting cards through two personalized factors, perceived effort and personalization, were placed in the hotel rooms. The tipping amount for each room-night was recorded during the data collection. Findings There were 3,285 room-nights tip records collected in this study. The results indicated that non-personalized housekeeping greeting cards did not increase the likelihood of guests to tip, but they may increase the average tipping amount; the personalization of greeting cards from room attendants had positive effects on guest tipping behavior; the hand-written greeting card and name-introduction greeting card were predictors that can significantly increase the likelihood of hotel guests to tip. Research limitations/implications The empirical research results support social presence theory. With more consistent tipping in hotel rooms, attendants may be able to predict tips through their job performance; thus, creating a win-win in the lodging industry. Originality/value This study contributes to understanding guest-tipping behavior in the hotel rooms.

Exposure to organophosphate flame retardants of hotel room attendants in Wuhan City, China

Indoor environments provide sources of exposure to organophosphate flame retardants (PFRs), which are artificially synthesized fire-protecting agents used as additives in interior products. As public spaces, hotels are required to meet stricter fire-precaution criteria. As such, room attendants may be exposed to higher levels of PFRs. Our goal was to characterize the exposure of hotel room attendants to PFRs by measuring metabolites in their urine and the corresponding parent PFRs in dust and hand-wipes collected from 27 hotels located in Wuhan City, China. The exposure of the attendants was found to be omnipresent: urinary metabolites of PFRs, such as DPHP (diphenyl phosphate), BDCIPP (bis(1,3-dichloro-2-propyl) phosphate), and DoCP (di-o-cresyl phosphate) & DpCP (di-p-cresyl phosphate) were detected with high frequency (87%, 79% and 87%, respectively). We observed that metabolites in post-shift urine were consistently present at higher levels than those in the first morning voids (p < 0.05 for BDCIPP and DPHP). Regarding external exposure, 10 PFRs were determined in both dust samples and hand-wipes, with TCIPP (tris(2-chloroisopropyl) phosphate) being the most abundant compound in both matrices. The levels of PFRs in hand-wipes and dust samples were not correlated. PFRs in dust and their corresponding urinary metabolites were not significantly correlated, while a moderate significant correlation of TDCIPP (tris(1,3-dichloro-2-propyl) phosphate) in hand-wipes and its urinary metabolite, BDCIPP, was observed in both morning void samples (p = 0.01) and post-shift urine (p = 0.002). Moreover, we found that participants from high-rise buildings (defined as > 7 stories) had significantly higher BDCIPP and DPHP concentrations than those from low-rise buildings. A possible reason is that high-rise buildings may use high-grade fireproof building materials to meet stricter fire restrictions. Overall, these results indicate that PFRs exposure in hotels is a contributor to the personal exposure of hotel room attendants.

Hotel room attendants’ delivery of quality service

Illuminating the physical difficulties experienced by hotel room attendants in delivering service quality at five-star hotels on the Gold Coast region of South East Queensland, Australia, our research was founded on socialist-feminist and critical theory epistemologies. In-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of 46 hotel room attendants. We used a qualitative, social-constructivist, grounded theory methodology to render the empirical material into a basic social structural process of tasking. Tasking offers a conceptual framework of room attendants’ daily employment experiences as they transform hotel rooms to prescribed standards. Tasking illustrates the high physical demands placed on room attendants, tantamount to exploitation from their own perspectives. Tasking contributes to research on employment experiences in hospitality, particularly on hotel praxis, delivery of quality customer service and the operational demands placed on room attendants. This paper presents the results of the first i...

Examining job stress and burnout of hotel room attendants: Internal marketing and organizational commitment as moderators

ABSTRACTHousekeeping is a support department that helps provide and support quality service and products for hotel customers. Room attendants, however, face as much job stress as other staff. Therefore, this study examines the causal relationships among job stress, job burnout, and turnover intentions, while also verifying internal marketing and organizational commitment as moderators for the effect of job stress on burnout. Study results indicate that room attendants who suffer job stress do have higher job burnout, which, in turn, affects their turnover intentions. Further, internal marketing and organizational commitment significantly moderates job stress and job burnout.

Tipping: The case of hotel turndown service

Turndown services are experiential and value-added practices to make guests feel cared-for in luxury hotels. Previous research has found that when receiving an additional or exceptional service, people may feel obligated to respond with a reciprocal behavior, such as providing tips. This study aims to investigate the effects of hotel turndown services on tips given to hotel room attendants. The results revealed that the room attendants received more tips for providing turndown service, both in terms of the frequency of receiving tips and the amount of those tips. The findings suggest that without the existence of a tipping norm in hotel guest rooms, the relationship between service and tip seems much clearer.

Performing: Hotel room attendants’ employment experiences

Performing is a socio-psychological process of defining self as a room attendant and finding dignity in the course of completing daily tasks while interacting with other social actors—guests and hotel employees—on hotel stages. The grounded theory of performing emerged from qualitative research, informed by socialist-feminist critical theory and qualitative social constructivist grounded theory. Forty-six room attendants working in one of five participating 5-star hotels located in South East Queensland, Australia, were interviewed. Performing has ramifications for tourism service provision, specifically, hotel praxis and the need for greater acknowledgement of room attendants as a community of value, possessing practical knowledge that could be used to improve daily operations, enhancing guest interactions and tourism service experiences.

Sexual Harassment of Women Working as Room Attendants within 5‐Star Hotels

Given the gendered power relations and the isolated nature of women hotel room attendants' working environments, guest‐initiated sexual harassment experienced by room attendants is a significant, under‐investigated problem. This study of women attendants' experiences of sexual harassment was conducted in 5‐star hotels located on the Gold Coast — a notable tourism destination — of Queensland, Australia. Adopting a socialist–feminist critical theory epistemological perspective, the study used a qualitative constructivist grounded theory methodology. The research reveals the pervasiveness of sexual harassment experienced by women hotel room attendants. In particular, this study illuminates the varied forms, meanings and consequences of sexual harassment in a particular organizational context. In focusing on the interacting effects of the gendered nature of the hotel workplace and the hotel workplace culture, the near‐complete ‘normalization’ of sexual harassment within the hotels is revealed. This outcome is a source of considerable concern, with implications for the industry, for employment relations institutions and for public policy.

More than a feeling: using hotel room attendants to improve understanding of job quality

Recent research by Adler and Adler reveals contradictory claims about the job quality of hotel room attendants; suggesting that an objectively ‘bad’ job can be perceived as subjectively ‘good’ by workers. This contradiction resonates with wider issues about how job quality is conceived – objectively and/or subjectively. Drawing on empirical research of room attendant jobs in upper market hotels in three cities in the UK and Australia, this paper addresses the contradiction by examining both the objective and subjective dimensions of job quality for room attendants. In doing so it refines Adler and Adler's work, constructs a new typology of workers and a new categorisation of job quality informed by workers characteristics and preferences. This categorisation improves conceptual understanding of job quality by enjoining its objective and subjective dimensions.

‘The lowest rung’: Women room attendants’ perceptions of five star hotels’ operational hierarchies’

Hotel room attendants play a significant role in the overall performance and success of hotels. This study presents women room attendants’ perspectives of working in what they perceive is the lowest level of a hotel's operational hierarchy, and their experience of the power relationships inherent in these bureaucratic structures. A qualitative, constructionist grounded theory methodology was used, underpinned by a socialist-feminist, critical theory epistemology. Interviews were conducted with 46 room attendants from five ‘five-star’ hotels on the Gold Coast region of South East Queensland, Australia. Emerging from this study was the conceptualization of women room attendants’ daily work experiences at the lowest level of the operational hierarchy. Despite their conspicuous presence, women room attendants perceive themselves as near invisible through non-acknowledgement by hotel management and other staff due to their position at the lowest level of the operational hierarchy. This article contributes to theoretical research on employment experiences in hospitality, particularly on hotel operational praxis and methodologically presents the perceptions of women room attendants through embodiment of their particular voices.

The relationship between payment systems, work intensification and health and safety outcomes: a study of hotel room attendants

AbstractThis paper examines the impact of payment systems on workers’ exposure to body-stressing injuries. Data are drawn from interviews with managers and focus groups of room attendants in Australian luxury hotels. We find that the most important factor predicting work-related bodily injury is the payment system. Payment on the basis of the number of rooms cleaned (piece rates) was found to result in task ‘speed-up’. The capacity to earn a living wage was therefore reliant on work intensification, leading to the use of unsafe working methods and injury. By contrast, attendants paid an hourly wage worked at a slower pace, earned a living wage and sustained fewer, if any, injuries. Mediating factors include the shift towards the contracting-out of housekeeping services to labour hire agencies, which typically pay on a per room basis, and their preference for employing migrant workers on temporary work visas. The paper concludes by considering regulatory strategies that might be used to reduce the incidenc...

The Effects of Music on Room Attendants' Work Performance — An Exploratory Study

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influences of music on the work performance of hotel room attendants. Most of the hotels' guest rooms are equipped with radios. However, many room attendants are told not to turn on the music while cleaning the guest rooms. Is this policy effective? Can music enhance room attendants' work performance? An experiment was conducted in a business hotel in Taiwan. Music was found to have no significant impact on room attendants' work performance. Nevertheless, the majority of the participants did indicate that they liked to have music playing in the guestrooms while cleaning.