NS34 Session 31

 

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Title: Work in Tourism and Hospitality: Precarity, Power, and Possibilities for Change

Organisers: Eleonora Rossi, Maria Thulemark, Tara Duncan and Susanna Heldt Cassel

Affiliation: Örebro University, Dalarna University and Thompson Rivers University

 

Description

The tourism and hospitality industry employs millions globally and is frequently positioned as a vehicle for inclusive growth, regional development, and social mobility. Yet, tourism and hospitality labour is also characterised by precarity; seasonality; informality; gendered and racialized hierarchies, migrant dependence, and exposure to environmental and economic shocks. As tourism systems confront climate change, digital transformation, overtourism, demographic shifts, and post-pandemic restructuring, questions of who benefits from tourism, and under what conditions, become increasingly urgent. If tourism is to act as an ‘active agent for good’, its labour regimes, employment practices, and value distributions require critical scrutiny.

This session invites contributions on the changing nature of work in tourism and hospitality and its implications for equity, sustainability, and justice. We welcome conceptual, empirical, and methodological papers that interrogate how work is organised, governed, experienced, and contested across tourism contexts. Contributions may examine tensions between growth-oriented tourism models and decent work aspirations; or the lived experiences of workers navigating insecurity, care responsibilities, and shifting regulatory environments. We are particularly interested in research that foregrounds workers’ voices and examines how labour practices shape tourism’s capacity to contribute positively to societies.

We welcome research grounded in diverse theoretical and empirical contexts, including but not limited to:

• Decent work, precarity, and labour market segmentation in tourism and hospitality
• Gendered, racialized, migrant, and youth labour inequalities
• Platformisation, algorithmic management, and digital labour in tourism services
• Emotional, embodied, and affective labour in hospitality settings
• Unionisation, collective organising, and new forms of labour activism

 

Abstracts

Title: Leadership-Oriented and Digital Skills in High-Contact Hospitality Occupations: Evidence from Norwegian Job Advertisements
Authors: Alireza Ebrahimi, University of Stavanger, Olga Gjerald, and Tom Brökel

Aim: This paper aims to identify leadership-oriented and digital skills in Norwegian high-contact hospitality occupations, and to examine how these skills are reflected in online job advertisements.

Theory and Method: More than 10,000 online job advertisements from 2012–2018 and 2020 were analyzed. The analysis is informed by leadership and self-leadership theories, alongside the digital competency framework (DigComp). First, SBERT-based semantic matching was applied to align job advertisements with skill entries from the European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations (ESCO) taxonomy, covering over 13,000 skills, to identify the top 50 matched skills for each occupation. Second, the top-ranked ESCO skills were analyzed to identify leadership-oriented skills based on theoretical frameworks. Third, the top matched skills were mapped to the DigComp framework to determine whether they represent digital, digitally applicable, or non-digital competencies. Finally, a three-layer keyword matching was conducted to capture explicitly digital skills not fully represented in ESCO.

Results: The results indicate a diverse set of skills, with leadership-oriented skills appearing among the top-ranked skills across occupations. In contrast, inherently digital skills are less prominent, while many of the identified skills are digitally applicable. The DigComp mapping shows that the top skills are most frequently associated with information and data literacy, as well as communication and collaboration, while safety-related competencies are least represented.

Implications: The findings suggest a gap between ESCO occupation profiles and skill demand signals from job advertisements in Norway, particularly regarding the representation of leadership-oriented skills and the linguistic formulation of skill definitions in ESCO classification.

 

Title: Working in the Kitchen: Labour, Space, and Inequality in Tourism and Hospitality
Author: Maria Thulemark, Dalarna University

This project examines the working conditions and labour environments of chefs and kitchen staff in restaurant settings in Sweden. Drawing on an intersectional perspective, it analyses how kitchen work is organised, managed and experienced, with particular attention to how gender, migration status and professional roles shape everyday working life. The study addresses questions concerning the factors that influence the organisation and execution of kitchen work, how workers perceive their conditions, and what shapes their experiences of power, control and well-being.

Methodologically, the study employs qualitative methods, combining working participant observation with semi-structured interviews across diverse workplace contexts. By capturing variation in gender composition and leadership, the project contributes to a deeper understanding of how intersecting power relations shape contemporary restaurant work.

Adopting a geographical approach, the project foregrounds spatiality, social position and workplace hierarchies, responding to calls for further research on labour conditions in restaurant kitchens. Empirically, the paper traces three interconnected temporal dimensions. First, it examines the micro-geographies of kitchens, where spatial arrangements and task divisions produce fluid yet persistent hierarchies. Second, it explores daily space–time rhythms, including long and irregular working hours, commuting and limited recovery, as well as the normalisation of injury and disruption. Third, it situates kitchen work within broader rhythms of social reproduction, highlighting transnational family responsibilities, migration regimes and housing conditions.

 

Title: Performing National Identity through Embodied Sonic Practices in Italian Restaurants in Sweden
Author: Eleonora Rossi, Dalarna/Örebro University

Hospitality venues are performative spaces where front-line workers’ bodies function as material signifiers of organizational identity. While scholarship has extensively theorized the visual and affective dimensions of ‘looking the part’, the sonic dimensions of embodied performance, such as accent modulation and language choice, remain comparatively under-theorized. Furthermore, language in migrant work is frequently treated as a technical skill or adaptation strategy rather than a modality of embodied labour. This article addresses these gaps by examining how national identity (specifically, ‘Italianness’) is performed through embodied sonic practices within restaurant spaces. The study utilizes a participatory ethnographic design involving 174 hours of fieldwork as a researcher-waitress across six Italian casual dining restaurants in a major Swedish city. The findings reveal three inter-related themes: (1) voice regulation, which reveals how workers exercise audible self-discipline to remain seen, but not heard (2) accent modulation, which showcases how vocal traits are actively aestheticized and mobilized for national branding and (3) affective migrant regulation, which highlights the fragility and unevenness of these performances. Together, the findings reveal that in the context of Italian casual dining in Sweden, ‘Italianness’ is not an inherent trait but a spatially situated performance enacted through embodied sonic practices. By demonstrating that ‘Italianness’ is a spatially situated performance rather than a fixed trait, this study extends frameworks of labour research to include nationalized sonic dimensions and highlights the relational nature of identity in service spaces.

 

Title: Positive Practices of Multicultural Work Communities in Lapland
Authors: Sini Kestilä, Lapland University of Applied Sciences, and Minna Väyrynen

This research is part of the project Diverse Working Life in Lapland, and it is funded by European Social Fund. In this paper, we aim to emphasize positive experiences of multicultural work communities in Lapland. These positive examples can serve as an inspiration for employers that have not yet hired a person with an immigrant background or need support to operate in multicultural work communities.

In the future we must be able to work successfully with people from different backgrounds and cultures. Understanding that different cultures are an asset in the workplace may become a competitive advantage for businesses. Research has shown that investing in diversity leads to better financial performance in companies.

The data for this research was collected by interviewing employers that had experiences of hiring immigrant employees. According to preliminary results the attitudes of employers and the work community as a whole play a significant role. It is important that an employee with an immigrant background is allowed and welcomed to become part of the work community. The whole work community should be supportive towards employees with an immigrant background. This requires responsible and ethical leadership of the management level.

 

Title: Women Only - Women Only Networks, Precarity and Career Advancement in Hospitality
Authors: Francisca Farache, School of Business and Law, University of Brighton, Madhobi Hossain, and Adam Jones

This study examines the role of women-only networks (WONs) in facilitating women’s career advancement within the hospitality sector, a context characterised by persistent gender inequality despite women’s numerical dominance. While women comprise a significant proportion of the workforce, they remain underrepresented in senior leadership, reflecting enduring structural barriers embedded in organisational cultures, gendered career pathways, and unequal access to opportunities (Deiana & Fabbri, 2020; Kokkranikal et al., 2024). These challenges are further intensified by precarious working conditions, including irregular hours, low pay, and limited career stability, which disproportionately constrain women’s progression (Calinaud et al., 2021; Segovia-Pérez et al., 2021).

Positioned within debates on precarity, power, and the potential for change, this research explores whether WONs can function as alternative spaces of support and resistance within a structurally unequal industry. The study adopts a qualitative approach, drawing on data generated through an interactive workshop and eight in-depth semi-structured interviews with women working in hospitality. The workshop produced 37 written reflections (“cards”), capturing participants’ shared experiences of career barriers and perceptions of network-based support. These data are complemented by interview insights that provide deeper, individualised accounts of career trajectories and engagement with WONs.

Findings highlight that WONs offer both instrumental benefits, such as mentoring and access to opportunities, and expressive support, including confidence-building and solidarity (Durbin, 2016; Papafilippou et al., 2022). However, tensions remain regarding their positioning outside dominant organisational power structures, raising questions about their capacity to challenge entrenched inequalities (Hein et al., 2025; Ryan & Mooney, 2019). By foregrounding women’s lived experiences, this study contributes to hospitality scholarship by critically evaluating WONs as distinct career-enabling spaces (O’Neill et al., 2025).

 

Title: Union Activism Against Social Dumping in Tourism in Iceland
Authors: Magnfríður Birnu Júlíusdóttir, University of Iceland, Dep. of Geography and Tourism Studies, and Íris Hrund Halldórsdóttir

Since Iceland joined the European Economic Area (EEA) in 1994, trade unions have attempted to defend the Nordic model of universal coverage of collective agreement for all worker, in a borderless EEA market. Very high union density and collective bargaining coverage is still the case today, but with the rapid growth of tourism and migrant workers in the sector the battle against social dumping has increasingly included some sections of the tourism industry. In the paper we focus on trade union activism starting end of 2024 against union labelled as “bogus-union” set up by organisation of companies in restaurant operation, mainly active in the capital area. The activism was led by the largest union covering workers in tourism and hospitality, with over half of the members being of foreign origin. Based on analysis of media cover of this conflict and information from the trade union, the main disputes over work arrangement and wage, as well as labour rights gained in the last century is drawn out. Resurge of the battle in the 1990s, between the labour movement and neoliberal market ideologies, over the meaning of “freedom of association” is prominent. In the wider context of increased reliance on workers of foreign origin in tourism and hospitality in the Nordic countries, this case emphasises the importance of active and inclusive trade unions in resisting attempts by some companies to dismantle the labour regime of collective bargaining and capitalize on vulnerable group of workers. Many companies left the organisation in wake of the negative media coverage of this case, which was a positive move from the standpoint of the trade unions and goals of decent work conditions for all employees.

Keywords: Union activism, Unionisaton, Migrant workers, Iceland

 

Title: Sexual Harassment in Extended Client Relationships: A Case Study of Ski Instructors
Authors: Nelli Heiskanen, University of Eastern Finland, and Kelsey M. Johansen

Sexual harassment generates substantial organizational costs while undermining employee job satisfaction, performance, and commitment (Chen et al., 2023; Zhang & Shum, 2025). While tourism and hospitality research has examined harassment in hotels, restaurants, and guiding (Alrawadieh & Alrawadieh, 2020; Mousa et al., 2024), they largely focus on brief or group-based encounters. Ski instruction differs: instructors spend entire days — sometimes weeks — with the same clients, involving sustained physical proximity, blurred professional-social boundaries, and limited managerial oversight. These conditions make harassment more likely to occur and more difficult to interrupt. Extended client relationships can constrain disengage, tie income and evaluation to individual clients, and enable gradual escalation and normalization of inappropriate behaviour – dynamics that remain underexamined.

Drawing on the Pressure-Disorganization-Regulatory Failure framework (Knox & Bohle, 2024), and Conservation of Resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989), this study links structural conditions to lived experience. Seasonal employment and limited oversight sustain exposure to risk, while repeated, inescapable interactions result in cumulative resource depletion, inhibiting recovery.

This study asks: (1) how harassment develops under prolonged one-on-one contact; (2) which environmental characteristic and features of ski instructions invite, increase, and sustain vulnerability; (3) how organizational practices shape instructors’ responses; and (4) which organizational policies and leadership-driven interventions effectively disrupt these dynamics. A sequential mixed-methods design combines anonymous narratives (n = 50–100) with follow-up semi-structured interviews (n = 25) to identify patterns, mechanisms, and interventions through thematic analysis.

Findings advance beyond documenting prevalence by showing how temporally extended, relationally dependent interactions produce self-reinforcing harassment dynamics, and generate prevention strategies including boundary-setting protocols, structured client pairing, and support systems for low-oversight environments.

Keywords: sexual harassment; Extended Client Relationships; ski instructors

 

Title: Challenges in Addressing Customer Sexual Harassment of Frontline Service Workers in Scotland's Tourism and Hospitality Sector
Author: Paul Prescott, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow UK

Customer sexual harassment (CSH) of frontline service workers in the tourism and hospitality industry is a widespread and persistent issue (Dawson et al., 2021). This problem is often viewed as part of the job (Hadjisolomou et al., 2023), and despite the increasing awareness, particularly post-pandemic, little has changed to protect workers, especially women (Beltramini et al., 2020). CSH prospers in hospitality services due to ingrained idiosyncrasies of hospitality service provision and service effort, with the nature of hospitality service fostering close involvement with customers (Folger­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Ø ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­and Fjeldstad, 1995; Poulston, 2008). The customer-centric nature of service work, however, creates unequal power and gender dynamics, which normalise undesirable and distressing sexualised experiences, particularly for women in the sector (Matulewicz, 2016).

Alarmingly, research underscores the gendered challenges women face within their roles, suggesting that they are more likely to experience CSH (Bragason, 2016; Gibbs et al., 2021). Despite the widespread nature of the problem, surprisingly little research has examined the role of hospitality management in supporting women who have experienced CSH.

This paper, therefore, drawing on 44 semi-structured interviews, considers how women in frontline service work experience CSH in the Scottish hospitality industry and how management reacts to this phenomenon. Findings indicate that individuals, both frontline workers and line managers, view CSH through their personal interpretive prism, which forms decision-making on reporting, handling, and addressing CSH. Furthermore, real-time decision- making and sovereignty of customers are commonplace pressures that affect line managers' judgement in dealing with the phenomenon, offering limited support to survivors.

References

Beltramini, L., Bastiani, F., Feresin, M., Romito, P. (2020), Coping with Sexual Harassment: The experience of young working women in Italy, Journal of Gender-Based Violence, 4(1), pp. 25-40, https://doi.org/10.1332/239868019X15764492137636

Bragason, K (2016), ‘Nordic Union HRCT report on sexual harassment: Overview on sexual harassment in the Nordic hotel, restaurant and tourism industry’, Nordic Union, HRCT, Copenhagen, Denmark

Dawson, M., Russen, M., Lee, L., Madera, J. (2021), The Unique Aesthetics of Organisational Climate that Contribute to the Prevalence of Sexual Harassment Incidents within the Restaurant Industry, Journal of Foodservice Business Research, Vol. 26, No.4, pp. 549-567, https://doi.org/10.1080/15378020.2021.1896941

Folgerø, I. S., & Fjeldstad, I. H. (1995). On Duty — Off Guard: Cultural Norms and Sexual Harassment in Service Organizations. Organisation Studies, 16(2), pp. 299-313. https://doi.org/10.1177/017084069501600205

Gibbs, D., Haven-Tang, C., Ritchie, C. (2021), Harmless flirtations or co-creation? Exploring flirtatious encounters in hospitable experiences, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 21(4), pp. 473-486, https://doi.org/10.1177/14673584211049297

Hadjisolomou, A, Nickson, D., Baum, T (2023), “He is the customer, I will say yes”: Notions of power, precarity and consent to sexual harassment by customers in the gay tourism industry, Gender, Work and Organisation, 30, pp. 1407-1428, https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12998

Matulewicz, K. (2016), Law’s Gendered Subtext: The Gender Order of Restaurant Work and Making Sexual Harassment Normal, Feminist Legal Studies, 24, pp. 127–145 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-016-9322-z

Poulston, J. (2008) ‘Metamorphosis in Hospitality: A tradition of sexual harassment’, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Vol. 27 (2), pp. 232-240, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2007.07.013

 

Title: Lost in Space: Imagining Tourism, Hospitality and Service Worker Futures
Authors: Richard Robinson, Northumbria University, Wilson, S., Newman, C., and Griffiths, E.

Space travel, exploration and habitation are rapidly becoming reality. Humanity’s extraterrestrial expansion is accelerating through ventures such as the International Space Station (ISS) and Artemis programs, private orbital stations, and ambitions for colonisation – both lunar and planetary. Communication, extractive celestial mining and energy, and indeed tourism (Spector & Higham, 2025) are industries pushing these new frontiers. Discourses of work in space have revolved around astronauts, scientists, and engineers. As missions and settlements become longer-term auxiliary hospitality/service staff (e.g., cooks, cleaners, carers and carriers) will become critical. This research aims to reframe employment discourses to avoid social and legal binaries and ensure service workers do not become second-class citizens in space. While the Outer Space Treaty (1967) and subsequent agreements provide precedence, labour law is non-existent (Hogan, 2022). Much terrestrial service work is considered as of diminished value to professional occupations and is characterised by lower pay, poor conditions and precarity (Mirabito et al., 2025). Replicating such occupational inequalities is contrary to the ethos of the affordances of the new frontiers and imaginings that space offers. Conceptual framings will be informed by other extreme workplaces e.g., Antarctica, sub-terranean and sub-nautical environments.

References

Hogan, C. (2022). The Development of Labor Law in Outer Space. Journal of Space Law, 46, 381.

Mirabito, A.M. et al. (2025). Crafting the road to well-being for precarious frontline workers. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 157, 104097.

Spector, S., & Higham, J. (2025). Space tourism and sustainable trajectory. Tourism Geographies, 27(6), 1343-1361.