INVESTIGATION OF THE EMOTIONAL LABOR LEVELS OF FOOD AND BEVERAGE EMPLOYEES IN THE HOTEL COMPANIES IN TERMS OF DEMOGRAPHIC VARIABLES

Abstract

In today's conditions, the concept of emotional labor is important especially for service sector where customer relationships requires not only displaying the right behaviors but also showing the right emotional reactions. Emotions are an important element of customer-employee interaction in the service sector. The service provider has become obliged to regulate the emotional response to the satisfaction of the customer. The tourism sector, which occupies an important place in the services sector, is one of the sectors in which emotional labor is predominant. Emotional labor in this sector and the related employee-customer relationship take an important place. Because at the end of the service, the benefit obtained by the customer is mostly abstracted and reflected on customer satisfaction through the experiences or memories obtained. Therefore, one of the basic conditions of providing customer satisfaction is the quality of emotional labor displayed by employees. In this respect, understanding of the concept of emotional labor will provide service quality and customer satisfaction in hotel businesses and thus contribute to their advantage over their competitors. Emotions of individuals may not be at the desired level due to reasons such as intensive labor in hotels, intensive working hours and working on holidays. However, some previous studies have found that emotional labor demonstrations differ depending on the demographic characteristics of the employees. The aim of this study is to investigate the emotional labor levels of employees working in food and beverage units of hotel enterprises in terms of demographic variables such as gender, age, marital status, education level and working time. For this purpose, data from 218 employees working in the food and beverage section of 5-star chain hotels in the city center of Izmir were collected. The obtained data were analyzed by difference tests. As a result of the research, it is seen that as the age increases, the surface acting decreases and the genuine acting increases. It was determined that the employees in the service departments showed more surface acting than those working in the kitchen/scullery departments. It has been determined that permanent employees exhibit more genuine acting and deep acting and less surface acting than the extra employees. At the end of the research, suggestions were given to hotel managers and the academy.