‘Is he going to be sleazy?’ Women’s experiences of emotional labour connected to sexual harassment in the spa tourism industry

Abstract

Despite the popularity of spa tourism worldwide and the size of the labour force, there is a paucity of research about these employees. The casual, often low paid, workforce is largely comprised of women, and there are challenges associated with body work – touching another person’s naked body in intimate settings – and its association with “dirty work” in a moral sense. The potential for experiencing sexual harassment from clients and the emotional demands this can place on employees has negative implications for the social and economic sustainability of the industry, including employee wellbeing, and may contribute to staff turnover. A qualitative phenomenological study based on interviews with spa therapists in Victoria, Australia explored these women’s experiences of sexual harassment, with emotional labour used as a theoretical lens. Findings suggest that some therapists feel obliged to hide their true feelings when experiencing sexual harassment by their clients, which results in emotional dissonance and exacts an emotional toll. Participants discussed strategies to cope with the emotional dimension of their experiences, and to address the perceived taint arising from occupational stigma. Implications of these findings for gendered practices, decent work and sustainable employment within the spa tourism industry are discussed.

Keywords:

• Spa tourism
• sexual harassment
• emotional labour
• coping
• dirty work
• decent work

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the Department of Management, Monash University, Australia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer H. Frost

Dr Jennifer Frost (née Laing) is an Associate Professor (Management/HRM) in the Department of Management, Sport and Tourism and Chair of the Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce College Human Research Ethics Committee at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include rural and regional regeneration through tourism and events; and health and wellness tourism. Jennifer is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Heritage Tourism and Co-Editor of the Routledge Advances in Events Research book series. In 2017, Jennifer was recognised as an Emerging Scholar of Distinction by the International Academy for the Study of Tourism.

Natalie Ooi

Dr. Natalie Ooi is a Senior Instructor in the Master of Science in the Outdoor Recreation Economy (MORE) at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA. She bridges the academic and ski industry worlds, having worked as a rental technician at Steamboat Springs Ski & Resort in 2008/09, before returning in 2010/2011 to do her dissertation on mountain resort tourism development. Her research interests centre on sustainable ski area management and development, with particular interest in the complexities of tourism-community and other stakeholder relationships within mountain resort communities. She earned her Ph.D. from Monash University, Australia, where she was a Donald Cochrane Scholar and recipient of the Dean's Postgraduate Research Excellence Award for the Faculty of Business and Economics.

Pieter A. Van Dijk

Dr Pieter Van Dijk is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management and Course Director of the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) in the Monash Business School at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Pieter has a particular interest in employee well-being as well as the evaluation of factors that promote workforce participation and quality of work-life for people with chronic illness and disability. Recent research projects include an examination of psychosocial factors that facilitate the employment retention of people with Multiple Sclerosis, the role of psychological safety for chronically ill employees in predicting organisational citizenship behaviours, which have shown to improve the retention of employees and the psychosocial experiences of employees after the voluntary disclosure of diagnosis of MS to employers.