Highlights

Abstract

Keywords

۱٫ Introduction

۲٫ Literature review

۳٫ Methods

۴٫ Data analysis and results

۵٫ Discussion, implications and recommendations

Declarations of interest

Appendix

References

Abstract

Within luxury hotels targeting multinational segments, frontline service staff are essential to creating unique, personalized experiences for high-value, discerning clientele. Performing emotional labor and utilizing cultural intelligence are key to ensuring exceptional cross-cultural service encounters, but which also create additional pressures for frontline staff. This study aims to assess the impacts of a comprehensive range of emotional labor and cultural intelligence (CQ) on employees’ job satisfaction. Cognitive CQ, motivational CQ, emotive dissonance, and expression of naturally felt emotions were shown to influence job satisfaction. Moreover, the study engaged senior executives from luxury hotels to further discuss the survey results. This approach helped the researchers and practitioners to (re)contextualize the study’s key findings, which were used to reflect on managers’ understanding of cultural intelligence, emotional labor and job satisfaction. The discussions highlighted how these issues were incorporated in luxury hotels’ human resource practices in general and especially during the COVID-19 crisis.

۱٫ Introduction

Frontline service employees are key to reifying the experience of luxury (Lo and Au Yeung, 2020) because their high-quality service interactions are important determinants of guest satisfaction (Padma and Ahn, 2020). Hotels aiming to create luxury experiences therefore require employees to comprehend the unique needs of discerning, high-value clientele through exercising emotional labor (EL). During encounters, service employees are required to show understanding of guests’ emotions and to respond with appropriate, empathetic emotional expressions (Lee and Ok, 2015), performing authentic and personalized service to meet guests’ unique needs, leading to their satisfaction (Moreo et al., 2019, Wu and Liang, 2009).

Service employees are expected to display positive emotions and suppress negative ones according to the requirements of specific service encounters (Choi et al., 2019, Gursoy et al., 2011). The emotional states of a service employee (i.e. emotive dissonance, emotive effort or expression of naturally felt emotions) can bring positive organizational outcomes. Employees may use corresponding emotional labor strategies (i.e. surface, deep or genuine acting) to fulfill the hotel’s desired emotional display requirements in delivering high quality service (Wang, 2020). In service interactions, staff can use surface acting by suppressing their negative felt emotions and display fake positive emotions. They can engage in deep acting by attempting to change their inner feelings to make their internal emotional state conform to the organization’s required emotional expressions. Alternatively, genuine acting occurs when employees’ felt emotions align with organization’s desired emotional display (Chu and Murrmann, 2006). However, frequent emotional labor performances, particularly surface acting, can provoke frustration, discomfort and tension, which negatively affects employees’ physical and mental well-being over time (Hochschild, 1983).