THE MOBILITIES OF HOSPITALITY WORK: An Exploration of Issues and Debates
Abstract
In this paper we highlight the contribution which an understanding of mobilities brings to an analysis
of hospitality work. The complex mobilities of hospitality employees are playing an increasing role
within global tourism and hospitality sectors. Our discussion explores notions of voluntary mobility as
motivated by work and lifestyle factors. We challenge the commonplace conceptualisation of
tourism and hospitality employment which has been predicated upon the nature of the work itself
rather than on the diverse experience backgrounds; social and geographical origins; and motivating
attributes of those who work in the sector. In taking this approach, we question conventional
management discourses of hospitality labour processes and illustrate the value of adopting a
mobilities framework within tourism and hospitality studies.
Key words: mobility, hospitality, work
1
THE MOBILITIES OF HOSPITALITY WORK: An Exploration of Issues and Debates
1 INTRODUCTION
The global tourism and hospitality sectors have witnessed exponential growth over the last few
decades and it has been suggested that, together, they now constitute the world’s largest services
industries (Cloke, 2000; Ottenbacher, Harrington & Parsa, 2009; Tisdell, 2001).
Whilst widely
suggested as offering predominantly unskilled or low-skilled employment opportunities (Crang, 1997;
Shaw & Williams, 1994; Westwood, 2002; Wood, 1997), this stereotype of tourism and hospitality
work is challenged in the context of hospitality by a number of authors (Baum, 1996; Burns, 1997;
Witz, Warhurst & Nickson, 2003). Here it is suggested that previous research and understanding
represents both a technical and western-centric perception of work and skills. This moreover,
underplays both the specific context where the work is undertaken and the experience backgrounds;
social and geographical origins; and motivating attributes of those who work in the sector. In
addition, previous understandings have, in part, been overly influenced by the economic and skillslabelling ideologies more commonly associated with manufacturing industries and, as such, are a
source of confusion in the interpretation of the meaning and value of skills across different cultures
(Clarke & Winch, 2006). Therefore, it is perhaps more appropriate to suggest that tourism and
hospitality employment involves interactive service work where increasingly the ‘person-to-person’
and ‘soft’ skills, along with aesthetic, emotion and authenticity dimensions, become the prevailing
requirements for those employed (Crouch, 2004; Warhurst & Nickson, 2007a). However, in
recognising the increasingly complex skills and personality traits necessary for effective (and
affective) work in the tourism and hospitality sectors globally (see Baum, 2006a, 2008a; Bell, 2011), it
is also necessary to acknowledge the interconnectedness of many other factors with and on key
stakeholders, notably employers, customers, the communities in which the businesses are located
and, of course, those working or aspiring to work in the sector themselves.
Common issues, from an industry perspective, frequently relate to the difficulties in attracting and
retaining suitable employees to work in tourism and hospitality, where consumer expectations are
evolving, complex and demanding. Specific factors can include a (often young) transient workforce,
low pay, a perceived and real lack of formal qualifications at all levels and a high ratio of female,
minority, student, part-time and casual workers (Deery & Shaw, 1999; Deery, 2002). These issues are
exacerbated by widely held perceptions of hospitality employment as primarily consisting of ‘low’
skilled jobs, negative lifestyle issues including a substantial percentage of hours worked outside
normal business hours, social stigma (within many western cultures) of working in this industry, poor
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utilisation of ‘Gen Y’ labour (Solnet & Hood, 2008), high levels of staff turnover and the consequent
images these may create in many potential employees (Baum, 2006b, 2007; Richardson 2009). Such
images provide reasons why many employees do not identify the tourism and hospitality industries
as a ‘career choice’ but rather as a ‘stop gap’ whilst looking for ‘something better’ (Baum, 2008b;
Richardson, 2009).
In order to begin to address these issues, throughout this paper we suggest that it is vital to reconceptualise and re-consider those who undertake tourism and hospitality work (see also Lugosi,
Lynch & Morrison, 2009; Ottenbacher et al., 2009).
As Ladkin (2011, p. 1135) suggests, “tourism
[and hospitality] labor remains a relatively minor player in academic research” yet within the wider
social sciences “there is no shortage of explorations into labor and employment, specifically in the
areas of economics and employment issues in relation to society, culture and identity” (see also
Veijola, 2010; Zampoukos & Ioannides, 2011). Thus, there is a continuing imperative to question and
challenge the way in which tourism and hospitality employees are and have been researched.
When understood through a management lens, tourism and hospitality employees are often only
considered from a consolidated resource perspective (see for instance Enz, 2009) with little
recognition of individual proclivities or needs. However, the reality is that tourism and hospitality
work is undertaken by anything but a homogenous group. Research highlights that the industry is
made up of diverse groups of peoples and cultures, where for example, migrant labour (whether
temporary or permanent) is becoming increasingly important for the economic sustainability of these
industry sectors (see for instance Pantelidis & Wrobel, 2008; Wickham, Moriarty, Bobek &
Salamonska, 2008).
In setting out to challenge conventional management discourses of tourism and hospitality labour,
this paper will focus on hospitality ‘work’, which we consider to be the effort used by the employee
for exchange with the employer (Rosenfeld, 2000). In the case of the hospitality employee, this might
include monetary or ‘in kind’ exchange value, including, for example, food and lodgings. However, as
we will intimate, increasing importance can be attributed to the ‘place’ or destination in which the
worker is employed, as a value, or exchange in return for labour performed. Thus, a wider
understanding of those undertaking this work, the hospitality employee, needs to be considered.
As outlined above, who the tourism and hospitality employee is and what they do has been widely
discussed in the literature. However, one of the notions that does not come through with the
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mention of ‘soft skills’ and interactive service work is the imperative that, primarily, these employees
are offering some form of ‘hospitality’. Their welcome, their attention, their emotional involvement
(or not) are part of their (paid) work and as such, these elements are often about being hospitable.
We therefore immediately encounter the paradox of much commercial hospitality (see for instance
King, 1995; Lashley, 2000; Lynch, Germann Molz, McIntosh, Lugosi & Lashley, 2011; Telfer, 2000)
wherein the intensely personal (in the form of both emotions and physical embodiment) becomes a
public and commercially valuable commodity. Here, Bell’s (2011, p. 149) recent work helps extend
engagement with this paradox in suggesting that we need to “see hospitality as a doing – an affective
doing, an interactional doing and a relational doing”. Or, as Scott (2006) suggests, we need to think
about the possibilities afforded in thinking of hospitality as based on intersubjective relationships
rather than primarily commercial transactions, thus moving away from some of the inherent conflicts
within commercial hospitality. Hence, while some of the examples in this paper make use of a
normalised representation of what the hospitality employee is, i.e. that they work in this specific
industry sector and provide a certain amount of hospitality as part of a monetary exchange, there is
also a need to make clear that to prioritise such a functionalist (if not essentialised) view of the
concept of hospitality work undermines our ability to understand and furthermore engage with the
complexities of this type of tourism and hospitality work.
At this point, it is important to clarify our interpretation of hospitality. As we have shown earlier, any
attempt to singularly represent hospitality through language is fraught with difficulty – veering
backwards and forwards between hospitality as performances, hospitality as a way of being or
simplistically hospitality as an economic enterprise. Our intention throughout this paper is to
emphasise these tensions – not to define, rather to question the current thinking of tourism and
hospitality as an industry where much of the discourse is situated within particular ideological (more
often than not economic) frameworks. Thus, rather than the more deterministic perspectives of
hospitality found elsewhere (see for example, Barrows & Powers, 2008) we aim to adopt a
phenomenological approach to our interpretation of hospitality. In this sense, hospitality can be
regarded as something that might be both lived, and embodied and so, experienced (Heidegger,
1988). As such, the possibility is acknowledged of the individual hospitality employee-as-agent. It is
important therefore, to reflect upon how we come to ‘know’ about tourism and hospitality
employees and the vagaries of the complex social and cultural spaces in which they live and work so
that we can explore new ways of ‘knowing’ in relation to broader social science discourses.
In the following sections we turn to and consider the mobilities literature and how those who work in
tourism and hospitality might fit/exist within a mobilities framework. Following this, we discuss
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specific aspects of work, lifestyle and the effort needed to support lifestyle aspirations before
offering a brief critique about the ability to be mobile. We conclude by suggesting the need to
reconsider tourism and hospitality employees through more fluid, complex and mobile lenses. When
Ladkin (2011, p. 1136) suggests that knowledge of tourism and hospitality labour “clearly has a
contribution to make to current wider societal debates” she is, as we are, reflecting on the shifting
phenomenon of hospitality work. As such, in this paper we use mobilities to explore social, cultural,
economic and political elements within hospitality work, leading us closer to a more interdisciplinary
understanding of hospitality work.
2 MOBILITIES
Over the last ten to fifteen years, there has been significant movement away from seeing the world
“as a cultural mosaic, of separate pieces with hard, well-defined edges” (Hannerz, 1992, p. 218)
towards acknowledging a world which is more appropriately concerned with “the diverse mobilities
of peoples, objects, images, information and wastes: and of the complex interdependencies
between, and social consequences of, these diverse mobilities” (Urry, 2000a, p. 185; see also Hall,
2005). In adopting Urry’s (2007, p. 207) claim that the world is now “on the move”, it might be
suggested that we privilege movement over the situatedness of the human experience (Ahmed,
Castaneda, Fortier & Sheller, 2003).
However, rather than this leading to greater equity or
“flattening out” (Skeggs, 2004, p. 48) (of class structures for instance) these experiences, a mobilities
framework allows for reflection on how the often transitory lives of many hospitality workers
challenge notions of identity. This can illustrate, for example, tensions of (multiple) citizenship and,
in turn, question understanding of labour and those who undertake it. Moreover, instead of limiting
insights of hospitality workers to the specific processes of being mobile (Hannam, 2009; Urry, 2007),
we can instead use the mobilities paradigm to think about and conceptualise the (im)mobile,
migratory, transnational movement (and stillness) of individuals involved in the hospitality industry
and their diverse involvements, ties and interactions through and with other people involved in
multiple societies, communities and/or nation-states (see Elliott & Urry, 2010; Mitchell, 2009;
Vertovec, 2009).
Here it can be argued that adapting a mobilities approach when researching those who work in
tourism and hospitality allows for a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of experiences. Thus,
it is not only individual working practices that need to be examined but also actors’ (im)mobile,
everyday lives and the tensions, checks and balances that exist in and between work, leisure and
lifestyle. Subsequently what is needed is an understanding of tourism and hospitality work and
5
workers as “it is not just how people make knowledge of the world, but how they physically and
socially make the world through the ways they move and mobilise people, objects, information and
ideas” (Büscher & Urry, 2009, p. 112) that allows us to construct new knowledge.
2.1 Undertaking tourism and hospitality work
In re-considering how tourism and hospitality workers are conceptualised, Warhurst & Nickson
(2007b) argue that their characterization as a ‘service proletariat’ (see Bradley, Erickson, Stephenson
& Williams, 2000), who are subordinate to customers, “while often true is … empirically archetypal
and conceptually limiting, ignoring changes to jobs, the economy and society” (Warhurst & Nickson,
2007b, p. 787). Thus we begin to recognise the inherent tensions in understanding those who
undertake tourism and hospitality work. Current thinking has it that there is a negation of any form
of individual agency with the resultant alienation of a worker who has lost control of the outputs of
their labour, thus perhaps locating the worker decisively (back) in Weber’s (1930/2001) ‘iron cage’.
The tension here is that in removing the tourism and hospitality employee from their function and
output, we challenge the notion of hospitality as relational – as about the interactions of hosts and
guests and embodied performance and praxis.
This might represent a reality that has been
constructed as a consequence of particular world views adopted by an academy that seeks to
privilege knowledge gained through situating the hospitality worker as an object of research.
However, and for us, significantly, there are the possibilities offered by an understanding gained
from recognising and gaining knowledge of employees’ subjective involvement in the construction of
their own realities derived from their engagement with the wider world around them (MerleauPonty, 1962). Here for example, Baum (1997, 2006b ) in addressing the notion of social structures,
implicates contemporary mobility in the movement across and erosion of social boundaries, further
suggesting that changes to the way people travel in developed countries has allowed the ‘social
distance’ between tourist and employee to collapse so that “in theory at least, employee and guest
are equal” (Baum, 1997, p. 96). Therefore, this ‘social distance’ has “much less potency than in the
past in most parts of the developed world” (Baum, 1997, p. 96).
In addressing issues of ‘social distance’ other concerns arise that impact upon the hospitality industry
and its employees. Thus the corporeal mobility that has challenged the producer-consumer
relationship might be suggested as having also exacerbated other issues within the industry. The
often transitory (in temporal and locational terms) and seasonal nature of much hospitality work has
given rise to considerable angst in the industry, concerning not only the ability to retain employees
but also about the ‘authentic’ nature of the service or experience these (often migrant) employees
6
are providing (Baum, Hearns & Devine, 2007, 2008). As Molz & Gibson (2007, p. 2) rightly point out
“the plethora of different journeys in today’s mobile world has … led to a diversity of hospitalities”
which then problematises the production and consumption of commercial hospitality.
Such multiplicity can add spice to the experience of tourism and hospitality but can also challenge or
undermine the very reason that visitors seek to consume (or experience) hospitality in a particular
location. Furthermore, the emotional and aesthetic expectations demanded of hospitality
employees, and now encountered within all aspects of service work (also a much researched area –
see for instance, Bolton & Boyd, 2003; Hochschild, 1983: Lashley, 2002; Leidner, 1991; Warhurst &
Nickson, 2007a, 2007b) add further complexities to the delivery of commercial (touristic) hospitality.
In reflecting upon this we find support from Boon’s (2006, p. 604) suggestion that, “it is now possible
to acknowledge the idiosyncras[ies] and heterogeneity of contemporary working lives” for tourism
and hospitality employees. Wyn & Willis (2001), go further; in their work in the resort of Whistler,
British Columbia, they suggest that their respondents, the young people working in the resort, now
have a more flexible attitude to their careers and so now define themselves in terms of mixed
patterns of job and life commitments (Baum, 2007). This, in many ways, links back to Baum’s (1997)
work when he argues that, within service industries, and particularly interactive services industries,
there has been a conflation of producer and consumer (see also Crang, 1997; Du Gay, 1996).
Likewise, we begin to acknowledge the blurring of production and consumption, where given the
scale of the tourism and hospitality sector, it is little wonder that employees represent a substantial
market (in the western world at least) who also consume the outputs of their colleagues, both at
home and abroad. Key here is the challenge to the binary interpretation of work-leisure that has
dominated much of the tourism and hospitality literature. Boon (2006) suggests that leisure is more
than just a personal or social experience; it is also a major industry grouping responsible for
significant levels of economic activity – both through spending and employment. As such, the
centrality of leisure in many tourism and hospitality employees’ life choices suggests that the
relationship between leisure, work and travel is more complex than previously assumed (see Bianchi,
2000; Urry, 2002, Wyn & Willis, 2001).
If tourism and hospitality employees and the paid work they perform are regarded as, at least partly,
transitory, then through this temporary movement or migration, multiple and often contested spatial
and temporal factors come into play. It is these factors, or rather the tensions between and around
mobility and immobility (and the aspects of time that impact these) that must be understood. In
utilising a mobilities framework, the factors mentioned above also feature in this complex,
somewhat abrasive relationship. Acknowledging this as an evolving process encourages an
7
understanding of these employees in terms beyond just their mobility, to something that considers
how their sense of everyday life, in the contexts of living, working and travelling, is constituted by,
through and in, certain places/destinations. Moreover, this process and its consequences also
impacts upon the people they ‘serve’, the companies they work for and the communities where they
live their ‘everyday’ lives.
2.2 Employee Mobility
The transitory nature of much hospitality work in temporal and spatial terms has a myriad of impacts
on the tourism and hospitality employees themselves as well as many of the key hospitality industry
stakeholders (be they employers, landlords or local non-hospitality businesses). The influence of
temporal factors, seasonality in particular, as an illustration of the transitory nature of tourism and
hospitality work, is well documented in the literature (see for instance Baum, 2006b; Boon, 2006;
Jolliffe & Farnsworth, 2003). Therefore, attention now needs to be directed towards dimensions of
employee mobility and the ways in which this mobility provides insights and problematises the
current understandings of these tourism and hospitality workers and their relations to customer
service, place, experience and performance.
Tourism and hospitality is a sector with a strong tradition of diversity in its workforce across many
dimensions (Baum et al., 2007), notably in terms of the role that migrant staff have played within the
sector since the early development of commercial hospitality. Baum (2006b) traces examples of
vocational mobility within the sector in Europe back to the 13th century and discusses the important
role that, primarily, southern Europeans played in developing the culture and character of tourism
and hospitality operations in industrialised Europe in the 19th century and through much of the 20th
century. More recently, economic migration to post- industrial economies of North America, Europe,
Australia and the Middle East has seen the tourism and hospitality sector utilise incoming
employees/migrants across the workplace spectrum as a cheap and accessible source of what is seen
to be low skills labour (see Pantelidis & Wrobel 2008; Wickham et al., 2008). This new migration has
stimulated debate about its impact upon the form, quality and authenticity of interactive service
delivery. Our interest here, however, is around those whose mobility is voluntary, experiential and
potentially economic. We are focused on forms of mobility in tourism and hospitality work involving
(primarily) privileged individuals from the developed global North, who are often going through
distinct life stages.
8
It is arguable that these tourism and hospitality employees are frequently transients who spend an
extended amount of time in specific destinations in order to engage in and fulfil specific lifestyle
choices. Consequently, in consort with the mobility of their travel, there are sustained periods of
immobility. As such, the freedom of (im)mobility for this group of workers gives rise to a circulatory
movement, where citizens of developed nations are able to (re)locate in order to work/live/travel
abroad for a period of time before returning home (see Conradson & Latham, 2005a; Findlay, 1995).
Consequently, it is not just individuals who develop through transnational opportunities but the
relations within and between wider social networks which also become more mobile, complex and
fluid through transnational practices and experiences. That said, it is also necessary and important to
recognise that, within these same social and economic networks, informal pathways can be
established that encompass the precarious routes of refugees, asylum seekers and other guest
workers. Multiple interacting systems and networks of mobility appear, where (notional) groups as
diverse as backpackers and students, (legal and illegal) migrants and cosmopolitan professionals are
more likely than ever to merge and intersect in various ways, shaping and mediating the
communities in which they co-exist (Allon, Anderson & Bushell, 2008,; see also Batnitzky, McDowell
& Dyer, 2008).
Therefore, as Castree, Coe, Ward & Samers (2004, p. 8) point out, “the reality of paid work, even in
our shrinking globe, is one of different groups of workers living and labouring in “local worlds””.
Moreover, as suggested above these are often contested worlds where conflicting worldviews vie for
attention. Whether the work is paid or voluntary; in a restaurant or at a mega event such as the
Olympics, this group of hospitality employees, ‘discretionary workers’ as Sherlock (2001) might call
them, are emblematic of the ways in which labour migration and other forms of mobility are
becoming increasingly blurred (Duncan, 2007). Grint (2003) argues that what counts as work is
socially-constructed and varies in time and space (Jones, 2008). Not only is there a blurring between
traditional place-bound ideals of work (based on the notion that production processes are more
easily moved than labour) and mobility but also that the distinctions between work and leisure,
usually seen as opposites (Adler & Adler, 1999; Bianchi, 2000; Guerrier & Adib, 2003; Urry, 2002)
become equally blurred.
3 WORK
As conceptualisations of work have changed and the sociology of ‘new work’ has emerged (see
Pettinger, Parry, Taylor & Glucksmann, 2005), there is a pressing requirement to ask questions as to
where and how work gets done and what it might include in emotional, aesthetic and, indeed,
9
athletic terms (Huzell & Larsson, 2012). Without a doubt, the recognition of work within tourism and
hospitality has played a significant role in the emergent culture of near simultaneous production and
consumption (Aitchison, MacLeod & Shaw, 2000, p. 23). As Urry (2002, p. 91) says “[t]he pleasures of
tourism stem from complex processes of both production and consumption”. Thus, as already
intimated, tourism and hospitality work can no longer be seen as just an economic phenomenon, it
also has to be understood in terms of wider social and cultural interactions (Du Gay, 1996; Duncan,
2007).
Much of the multi-disciplinary research on service work has, therefore, highlighted the intersections
of class, gender and ethnicity (see for instance, McDowell, 2009) yet within accounts of tourism and
hospitality work, we can also find research that suggests this work can be a job, a career or even a
calling (Warhurst & Nickson, 2007a). Indeed, hospitality work can take place on an organized but
unpaid basis, as volunteers at major events illustrate (Holmes, Smith, Lockstone-Binney & Baum,
2010). What also comes across, as we have already suggested, are the performative elements of
much tourism and hospitality work, a kind of ‘performative labour’ (Crang, 1997, p. 153) where it is
the possibilities imbued within the encounter with the employee which is being ‘sold’ to the
consumer. As such, the role of work, the blurring between work and non-work can become
important as the employee looks for ways to reconcile work and identity either by using work to
define themselves or by discounting its importance in their lives (see Leidner, 1991; Crang, 1997).
Yet much of this understanding of tourism and hospitality work is based on the assumption that
there is a rational response to what is important to such work; for example personal attributes and
dispositions in turn leading to discussions of recruitment and selection processes, types of jobs
allocated to different workers and how these may impact on life and work opportunities (see Bell,
2011; McDowell, 2009). However, as we have suggested, seeing tourism and hospitality work as just
these processes and traits limits understanding of who the tourism and hospitality employee is and
how their mobility - or lack of mobility - impacts on hospitality work, as well as the individuals
themselves. As such, and as Bell’s (2011) argues, mobility should not be seen as ‘just’ about physical
movement rather, it is an amalgam of types of mobility. For example, Bell (2011) suggests that the
mobility of labour is also about the ability to transcend class boundaries or in the case of research by
Szivas, Riley & Airey (2003) the ability to move (for employment purposes) from other sectors of the
economy into the tourism and hospitality sectors.
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Thus, whilst research has often concentrated on how people should ‘fit’ into tourism and hospitality
work (Ellis, 2003), McDowell reminds us that not all bodies do fit, that the ability to fit (or not) can
change over the life course and that these opportunities are themselves unevenly distributed across
society. Therefore, we can see a “hierarchy of acceptability” around different tourism and hospitality
employees and jobs (McDowell, 2009, p. 192).
3.1 Work and Migration
As already noted, migrants have historically formed a significant part of the tourism and hospitality
workforce (Baum, 2006b; Williams & Hall, 2000). As the International Labour Office (ILO) (2010, p.
93) says, the characteristics of migrant workers in the hotel, catering and tourism sectors “include
daily commuters, seasonal workers and permanent migrants. The majority [of whom] are drawn into
lower-paid informal or casual employment in the sector” (see also Baum, 2011: Janta, Brown, Lugosi
& Ladkin, 2011). Baum (2011) emphasises the complexities inherent within migration, and points to
Castle’s (2000) definitions of migration which include temporary migration, forced migrations
through to return migration. As the ILO (2010) states, temporary forms of migration are becoming
increasingly popular. Whilst migration, the reasons behind it and the impacts it has on host and guest
populations cannot be overlooked, within tourism and hospitality employment we also need to
consider those who fall beyond or between the definitions of migration – those which Conradson
and Latham (2005b) would frame within the ‘middling’ of transnationalism.
Migrants in tourism and hospitality have been said to be sources of innovation and, if ‘properly’
managed, can allow organisations to benefit from cultural diversity (Baum et al., 2007; Janta et al.,
2011; Williams, 2007). Yet they can also be the cause of issues if they are seen not to integrate into a
workplace, community or wider host society. Herein lays another of the tensions within any
definition of hospitality. The host-guest relationship
inherent in tourism and hospitality (see
definitions such as Brotherton, 1999; Lashley, 2000) suggests that the (so called) host is fixed, at
home or more broadly speaking, situated in a specific location (i.e. a home country) and the guest is
the incomer, visitor and/or stranger (Bell, 2007). The problem becomes one of ascertaining who
exactly the host is? If we see mobile tourism and hospitality workers as hosts then it is perhaps “safe
to say that the relationship [between host and guest] is defined by mobility” (Bell, 2007, p. 30). This
negotiation of identity acts to destabilise one of the common conceptions behind commercial
tourism and hospitality where mobile guests become commercial hosts serving tourist guests
(Sherlock, 2001)
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Perhaps then, the flexibility of hospitality employees, in terms of their lifestyles, their decision over
the places in which they work and live, combined with the relations they have with their employers
and the guest/consumers/customers/community around them can be seen as a collective
performance of hosting and guesting (Laurier & Philo 2006; see also Bell, 2007) or ‘hostessing’
(Veijola & Jokinen, 2008) or, more recently, hostguesting (Bell, 2011, p. 146) where “intersubjectivity
… [becomes] the basis for both a sense of place and for a structure of feeling within a community”
(Knox, 2005, p. 8; see also Bell, 2007, p. 37). This notion of hostguesting, therefore, recognises the
slipperiness of the terms ‘host’ and ‘guest’ and seeks to retain the relational whilst acknowledging
that contact with ‘others’ – be they hosts or guests – does not necessarily equate to an
understanding of this ‘other’ (Bell, 2011; see also Sherlock, 2001; Valentine, 2008). Yet, if we return
to Urry’s (2007) contention that (all) the world is on the move and furthermore, continue with the
various metaphors that suggest that contemporary society can be viewed through scapes, flux, flow,
mobility and liquidity (Appadurai, 1996; Bauman, 2000; Castells, 1996; Urry, 2000b; see also Molz &
Gibson, 2007), then the multiplicity of involvements, ties and interactions that these hospitality
employees experience can be seen to embody their increasingly mobile social relations (see Duncan,
2007; Molz & Gibson, 2007).
3.2 Living the dream: lifestyle work and youth travel
As Cohen (2011) suggests, whether we term it mobility or transnationalism, globalisation or travel,
being mobile is a crucial characteristic in how we understand identity and relationships with place. In
this instance, whether a backpacker, lifestyle traveller (Cohen, 2011) on a gap year (see Duncan,
2007), or an OE (overseas experience) traveller (see Wilson et al., 2009), work often plays an
important role in defining the temporarily (im)mobile nature of the experience. For many young
people, in various places globally, being (and being able to be) mobile and undertaking tourism and
hospitality work becomes intertwined. Linking back to Conradson and Latham’s (2005b) middling of
transnationalism, these young people are neither fully migrants (although you could perhaps term
them guest workers when on working holiday visas) nor are they merely tourists.
Thus, lifestyle becomes important when thinking through these experiences and the relationships to
tourism and hospitality work. If we suggest that lifestyle is about the consumption of specific services
or goods (Shields, 1992), or at the very least, a tangible set of everyday behaviours (Sobel, 1981),
then we can see it as offering some meaning of and for everyday life. In suggesting that being mobile
allows these particular tourism and hospitality employees to blur understandings of work and
leisure, so their lifestyle can become equally, if not more important than career choice (Adler &
12
Adler, 1999; Lee-Ross, 1999; Wyn & Willis, 2001). For instance, Richards (1996, p. 33) has suggested
that “[m]any skiers seek to further their passion for skiing by gaining [tourism and hospitality]
employment in ski resorts, allowing them to combine work and pleasure”. Therefore their mobility –
and temporary immobility whilst taking advantage of these lifestyle choices – becomes bound up
with the everyday. Thus, to return to Baum’s (1997, 2006b) notion of social distance, in tourist
spaces the blurring between employee (or host) and guest is significantly enhanced through their
shared experiences of mobility (Duncan, 2007). Equally, the blurring between work and leisure
becomes more complex. In suggesting that tourism and hospitality employees have a more flexible
attitude to work and life commitments (Baum, 2007), so we can begin to argue that it is necessary
for the employers of these workers to recognise these changing priorities.
Therefore, for those able to be mobile, lifestyle opportunities are highly important considerations
when choosing where to work, both locationally and within specific industries (see Boon, 2003, 2006;
Wyn & Willis, 2001). Consequently, whilst being mobile or having the ability to travel may be one of
a number of motivators, so the suggestion that these workers then become temporally immobile
through lifestyle choice allows a reconceptualisation of the situatedness of their experiences within a
wider, more flexible mobilities framework.
In indicating that, for some tourism and hospitality employees, a mobilities framework can better help
to understand their lifestyle choices, there is also a need to recognise that this mobility, whether
seen as transnationalism (see Vertovec, 2009) or migration, is embedded in specific geographies,
networks, and economic conditions and that these determine how people move and are received
differently across the globe (Cresswell, 2001; see also Gogia, 2006). As Bianchi (2000, p. 118) points
out, there has been;
the persistent tendency to conceptualise tourism destination areas as bounded entities,
a practice inherited from the tradition of ethnographic field research (Clifford, 1997;
Selwyn, 1996: 4), rather than a series of fluid social formations through which
geographically mobile, capital, tourists, migrants and workers move and articulate with
local and regional formations.
It is also important to recognise concerns that this mobility often seems to concentrate on those who
have the freedom, legally, culturally and economically, to move across borders and between
cultures, thus eclipsing the stories of those with limited capital - economic, cultural and social - who
are embarking on a journey of uncertainty (Ghosh & Wang, 2003, p. 280) as refugees or forced
13
economic migrants. By accepting this mobilities-focused understanding of hospitality work and the
employees who undertake it, we raise further questions relating to the nature of the experience or
service that such mobile workers deliver when removed from their normal cultural and social
environment.
3.3 Being Mobile through Necessity
As evidenced through the examples above, the focus of this paper is on voluntary forms of mobility
in tourism and hospitality work, however it is important that we acknowledge that the tourism and
hospitality industries is also a space and site for those involved or undergoing less voluntary forms of
mobility. For instance, using Stephen Frears’ (2002) film ‘Dirty Pretty Things’, we can explore other
ways in which hospitality is performed. The hotel in the film represents an interface between the
glossy touristic spaces of London and those invisible hospitality workers who clean up and service the
global mobile elites who stay in these establishments. In foregrounding these alternative (and
perhaps hostile) mobilities, frontstage and backstage can take on different meanings where
backstage becomes the underworld of illegal workers and immigrants – “the ghosts of Britain and its
economy” (Gibson, 2006, p. 700). Gibson suggests that these ghost workers are offering a form of
absolute, unconditional hospitality (Derrida, 2000; Derrida & Dufourmatelle, 2000); in that they give
more than they take – not only to the hotel but to a nation. As she suggests;
Asylum seekers are therefore absolutely hospitable through their making of the host’s
home and through their making the host feel at home. …In addition to their hospitality,
these strangers service their host(s) but without being credited as hosts themselves. In
this way, they break the circle of economic hospitality even as they enable it (Gibson,
2006, p. 700-701).
Here, tourism and hospitality work begins to take on different meanings; we need to consider those
whose motivations (or needs) to become mobile are very different. Here, Gibson (2006), and Frears
(2002), illustrate that migration, mobility, hospitality and work are entwined and integrated to such
an extent that we are impelled to see them on a social, cultural, economic and more importantly
political scale. The mobility of a tourism and hospitality workforce, whether voluntary or not, moves
beyond the concerns of performativity or authenticity. Thus Lashley & Lugosi’s (2011, p. 115)
contention that the practices of hospitality can lead to “more fluid neo-tribal affiliations (Maffesoli,
1996), networked socialities (Wittel, 2001) and network hospitalities (Germann Molz 2011)” or can
be seen as a way a way of “resisting the alienating effects of mobile lifestyles” (Lashley & Lugosi,
14
2011, p. 115) needs more serious consideration. If we take up Bell’s (2011) position that hospitality
is society, then the political, as well as the mobile, are not aspects of tourism and hospitality labour
research that we can ignore.
4 CONCLUSIONS
This paper challenges conventional representations of tourism and hospitality work by highlighting
how such a one-dimensional approach, focusing on skills (or the absence thereof) omits wider
contextual drivers of the work context within the sector, notable heterogeneity; temporal and
geographical impermanence; identity and authenticity; and host-guest relations. In seeking to
integrate these disparate themes, we have used mobilities as an exploratory framework which is able
to accommodate many of the issues and tensions which arise.
Therefore, this paper contends that in the multiple spaces, places and times in which tourism and
hospitality employees are mobile and/or immobile, that they may be seen to be bound up with a
more general process of societal individualisation. Within these spaces the relations within and
between social networks also become more extensive, mobile and fluid through transnational
practices and experiences (Duncan, 2007). Thus, tourism and hospitality employees are practising life
materially, discursively and strategically through their networks and throughout their work
experiences and travels. So, as they and their networks move, new networks and emergent senses of
identity and belonging develop. These networks can involve family, friends, short-lived
acquaintances and work colleagues. In being mobile, transnational or temporary migrants, these
hospitality workers can perhaps be seen as Ong’s (1999) ‘flexible citizens’.
The discussions have explored how an understanding of mobilities can contribute to troubling
particular discourse(s) surrounding tourism and hospitality labour. It allows us to begin to re-think
our understanding of tourism and hospitality work, the complex, entangled nature of the role played
by tourism and hospitality employees in delivering products and services and, going back to Ladkin
(2011), allows us to recognise the role tourism and hospitality labour play within contemporary
societal debates. A few key questions are therefore raised which merit further consideration. These
questions focus on the degree to which this mobile workforce disrupt dichotomies such as ‘home’
and ‘away’, ‘host’ and ‘guest’ and ‘producer’ and ‘consumer’. In addition, we need to question the
relationship of an internationally and culturally mobile workforce with the delivery of ‘authentic’
experiences, products and services and the extent to which these lifestyle and experience-seeking
tourism and hospitality employees might act to undermine local labour markets.
15
In highlighting mobilities as a lens through which to view the tourism and hospitality industry, this
paper illustrates that a more social scientific and interdisciplinary approach can challenge more
conventional management thinking of tourism and hospitality labour processes (see Lashley &
Lugosi, 2011; Lugosi et al., 2009). The paper therefore builds upon emerging, interdisciplinary,
theory-orientated conceptions which seek an understanding of a wider array of societal (social,
cultural, economic and political) elements (Lugosi et al., 2009). This approach allows us to begin to
understand how mobile hospitality workers might make sense of their everyday existences through a
complex mix of working, travelling (holidaying) and residential experiences whilst simultaneously
contesting, and so making problematic, classifications such as ‘migrant’, ‘tourist’, ‘worker’ and ‘local’.
Moreover, in stressing the blurring of the experiences of these (im)mobile hospitality workers there
is an awareness of the heterogeneous nature of their experiences. Thus we also go back to
Cresswell’s (2001: see also Clarke, 2005; Conradson & Latham, 2005b; Ghosh & Wang, 2003; Gogia,
2006) reservations about the often unproblematic research undertaken on exactly these groups of
employees (for exceptions see Batnitzky et al., 2008; McDowell, Batnitzky & Dyer, 2009; Janta et al.,
2011). What this paper therefore seeks to emphasise is the need for an awareness of the multiplicity
of mobilities amongst these workers and that many of them may (already) recognise the strategies
they use to manipulate, direct and control their own mobile lifestyles. The value of adopting a
mobilities framework within tourism and hospitality studies therefore allows a broader, more critical,
yet more inclusive way of understanding the contemporary tourism and hospitality workplace.
16
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