Emotional labor of the tour leaders: An exploratory study

The concept of emotional labor was introduced by Hochschild, A. R. (1979). Emotion work, feeling rules, and social structure. American Journal of Sociology, 85(3), 551–575, Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: The commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press and is defined as “the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display.” Some recent studies have discovered the emotional labor of front-line service staff in the tourism context (e.g., Constanti, P., & Gibbs, P. (2005). Emotional labour and surplus value: the case of holiday ‘reps.’ Service Industries Journal, 25(1), 103–116; Guerrier, Y., & Adib, A. (2003). Work at leisure and leisure at work: a study of the emotional labour of tour reps. Human Relations, 56(11), 1399–1417) and have developed an exclusive hospitality emotional labor scale (HELS) for the hospitality industry (Chu, K. H.-L., & Murrmann, S. K. (2006). Development and validation of the hospitality emotional labor scale. Tourism Management, 27(6), 1181–1191). A thorough understanding about emotional labor of the tour leader, however, is still wanting. The purpose of this study is to add to what is known. Qualitative research approach was used to identify significant issues and draw out important managerial implications. Findings concluded that the job of tour leader requires the performance of significant emotional labor. Issues about emotional display rules, emotional labor strategies, antecedents, and consequences of emotional labor for the tour leader are discussed. Managerial implications and future research directions are also provided in this study.