Examining Aesthetic Labour in the Hospitality Sector: A Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of aesthetic labour within the hospitality industry. It begins by defining aesthetic labour and its significance, emphasizing the management and control of employee appearance to enhance service quality and brand image. The report explores emotional labour, its relation to aesthetic labor, and the application of various theories such as the Affective Events Theory, Ashforth and Humphrey's theory, and Emotion Regulation Theory to understand employee behavior and customer interactions. It also examines the negative aspects of aesthetic and emotional labour, including the potential for employee burnout and emotional dissonance. The report incorporates Leiper's Tourism System to illustrate the broader context of the hospitality industry and discusses how aesthetic labour influences the overall customer experience and tourism dynamics. The literature review synthesizes the findings of previous studies, articles, and journals, providing a critical analysis of the topic and its implications for the hospitality sector.

The role of aesthetic labour in the Hospitality
Industry

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

Topic: The role of Aesthetic Labour in the Hospitality Industry.
INTRODUCTION
Aesthetic labour is practice of screening, managing and controlling the employees on the
basis of physical appearance. It advances on service economy through moving beyond focus on
the emotions to emphasize the worker corporeality. The aesthetic workers are mainly employed
through firm for their appearance or an accent with motive to promoting image of an
organisation. This is supply of the embodied attributes and capacities which possessed through
workers. Hospitality is a sector that consists casinos, restaurants, hotels, cruises and the services
related to tourism (Brown, 2017). This mainly consists the formal and informal travelling like
people travelling across world for different purposes such as entertainment, business, holidays,
education etc. Emotional labour means the several things to the several people. This is having
suppress or induce feeling to sustain outwards countenance that mainly produce proper mind of
state in the others. Emotional labour has received the enhanced attention because this is needed
where the interactions with the suppliers, consumers and colleagues are part of job. Hospitality
industry is fastest growing business that generate the more money and provide new opportunities
as well as employment to people with different backgrounds. Aesthetic Labour plays a necessary
role in the Hospitality Industry. This sector has used the aesthetic labour for the first line staff
members ion order to provide the consumers with better experience of the quality services. In
regards to this, behavioural intentions and positive emotions of consumers in the different
services in hospitality industry. Some of the company demand aesthetic labour or the staff
members with the specific embodied attributes and capacities that mainly appeal to sense of
consumers.
Importance of topic
This topic is important because it examines about the main role of the Aesthetic Labour
in the Hospitality Industry in detailed manner. The importance of this topic is that it provides the
clear description about the Aesthetic Labour and the emotional labour in detailed manner. This
helps in provide the proper understanding about these two different concepts and the related
theories. It is also helpful in increasing the knowledge area regarding the Aesthetic Labour in a
detailed or descriptive manner. This report explores the aesthetics labour as this is experienced
through interactive service staff members in hospitality industry (Tsai, 2019). Through extending
the awareness regarding aesthetic labour so that appearance and attitude of employee are

conceptually and empirically revealed. Employers are willing to specify the personal
characteristics according to required skills of job. It focuses on development of confident and
skilled workforce. Organisations possess a tendency to manage their employees in such a manner
that their contribution is aesthetic and productive. The study of aesthetic labour will provide
better insights of the way employee contribution can be maximized and their behaviour is
properly managed.
MAIN BODY
Literature review is explained as comprehensive summary of the previous investigation
on topic. For collection of information in literature review, secondary sources has been used such
as books, articles, journals and others. It consists the critical analysis on specific subject area.
There has been literature review conducted by including the different theories and concepts.
According to Chris Warhurst and Dennis Nickson (2020), Aesthetics labour is aspect of
hiring, choosing, developing and also deploying the presentable and physical features with aim
of bringing out better reputation (Brydges and Sjöholm, 2019). In context to present study, it
have established certain level of the classifications within the interactive service work and also
distinctions have been developed with requisite the aesthetics that echo market dimension of
company, brand relates strategies and appeal to various grouping of customers. Aesthetics labour
needs in the service sector that are the style conscious as comparison to the manufacturing sector.
As per opinion of FRANCESCA WILLOW (2019), Emotional labour is process for
managing the expressions and feelings in order to fulfil emotional needs of job. Employees are
mainly expected to regulate emotions at the time of interactions with consumers, superiors and
co- workers. It consists decision making and analysis in context of expression of the emotion
whether felt or not. Human resource is one of the necessary asset of hospitality sector as this is
necessary to determine the capabilities needed to perform the emotional labour successfully and
required managerial support. The staff members in hospitality sector are strained through stress
that subjected to the emotional labour in context to emotional display that is not authentic but
satisfy the expectations of guests. This kind of emotional labour mainly leads to the emotion
exhaustion of staff members (Timming, 2017).
Aesthetic and emotional labour - criticism, application of labour, negative side
In recreation by companies in an attempt to identify skilled workers has been largely
coherent yet aesthetic skills overlooked. The shift from producing to services sectors gave birth

to the identification of aesthetic labour as a way of selling the services. Basically aesthetic labour
as a form of expressing oneself that considers stylish, outgoing, attractive, or trendy and well
spoken and of smart appearance. Employers have now come to terms by co modifying and
developing these dispositions to the benefits when competing with other ventures (Warhurst and
Nickson, 2020). Thus, these dispositions can be trained and improved in the form that meets
organisational requirements. The notion begins at primary stage of being a candidate, when the
individual are desired to dress in the well presentable manner, well spoken to in the interview
session. Other firms also give an attention to human physical attributes and the body must be an
important part of work. These are determinates when they recruit and employee individual in
most if not many firms depending on the industry. Hotels, bars, cafes and restaurants have
received special attention through examination of aesthetic labour in to other section of
hospitality sector.
Emotional labour defined as labour that considers dealing with individual emotions that is
centred on the regulations of emotions to meet a certain criterion. It is an element of work
activity through which the employees must display certain feelings to successfully accomplish
the work in the form to meet the standards brought forward by the employer. There are two kinds
of emotional labour like deep and surface acting, The business industries which deal with
consumer service dwell on the notion of emotional labour, that create emotions of rules desired
to worker when they engage with consumer. Aesthetic labour demands are segmented into
diverse categories, one of which is liked to health issues. This form is labelled athletic demands
that entail workers’ search for healthy looking employees. It argued that the utilisation of
emotional and aesthetic labour is used as a proxy to avoid future costs for employees’ sickness
absence and rehabilitation.
The theory of Aesthetic labour is mainly originated from the empirical observations of
number of the job adverts in United Kingdom press for hospitality industry asking for the
potential staff members.
The Affective Events Theory (AET)
The importance of this theory states shows how necessary emotion of members is in the
organisational management. This theory suggests that an organisation's working environments
not only specifically influence the employees ' job actions and attitude, but also influence their
feelings, like psychological dissatisfaction (Yang, 2016). This announces that key characteristics

of members’ moderate positive or negative results. Finally, AET model was initial step for
research on the impact of the emotional influences of an organisation's participants on the
organisation's entire performance.
Ashforth and Humphrey
This theory offered perspective operationalizing the emotional labour as act of the
displaying appropriate emotion. In regards to this, Hoshchild's notion of the feeling rules as the
display rules (Ren, 2017). This kind of modification emphasized on the external observable
behaviour. Refocusing on internal to external decouples emotion experience from emotion
expression. In this, displays the rules are mainly shaped through organisational, societal and
emotional expectations and norms that give basis on which quality of the service work conducted
is mainly evaluated. The Model indicated that an organisation's efficiency, which is success of
the organisation must also include in addition to emotional reactions of member’s official profit.
Emotion regulation theory
The phenomenon that affects what feeling people have when they sense that emotion,
how they sense that emotion, or how they convey it.' Importance of SA and DA mostly during
emotional work success phase. It has been argued that emotional labour could result both in
positive and negative outcomes for SA and DA.
Dissonance theory
Emotional dissonance is regarded a pillar of emotional labour. This is defined as a
discrepancy between feelings perceived and expressed, encompassing feelings both possible and
actively manifested. When their ability for emotional dissonance is drained as result of
the emotional labour, workers steadily tend to feel burnout. Emotional dissonance is observed to
be correlated with burnout in a constructive manner.
All these labour market theories are crucial as they demonstrate about the welfare of
labour in diverse term like reduce absenteeism, maximise effectiveness and productivity
(Timming, 2017). Labour welfare is a comprehensive term which demonstrates about to the
several benefits, services and facilities provided by the management to employees with aim of
enhancing the working and social life of employees and to fulfil their needs in context of
improves efficiency.
Leiper’s Tourism System

According to views of Dr Hayuley Staintom, 2020Leopers tourism system is regarded as
a basic conceptualisation as a structure of tourism industry. It is a widely accepted and well
known models that are part of tourism research and adopted for developing a detail overview of
the tourism system. According to Neliu leopre who was an Australian tourism scholar and his
work is influenced by tourism literature. He has basically focussed on four areas through is
research that includes partial industrialisation, Tourism stems, tourism attraction systems &
strategy. It is part of tourism system that possess an influence on tourism and travel academic
literature that is related to tourism discipline (Tsai, 2019). This theory is related to the connection
that is build up between strategy and theory that is leading to adopting of a system approach
towards understand the role of aesthetic labour in tourism. The main view of Leipers was that
tourism is a System that consist of deiscrtetinalt travel & temporary stay of people away from
their usual residence place for one or more than one nights. It is excluding the tours that are
made for primary purpose of earning of remuneration points on route. This consist of basic five
elements such as generating regions, transit routes, tourism destination regions & tourist
industry. According to functional and spatial connections these five elements have to be
arranged. The role of aesthetic labours is the first line employees who are willing to provide high
quality experiences services to their customers. There is connection between behavioural
intentions and positive emotions. Lepers theory is depended on understanding of destinations,
transit zones, environment and generating areas that can lead towards a wide tourism system. He
has divided the tourisms scenario of travellers in three different parts that is traveller generation
region from where travellers are departing to reach a specific destination. Another destination is
tourist destination region where the person has to reach and in between there is presence of
tourist transit region. Leopre had a belief that each aspect of tourism is never independent and
separate instead all the components of tourism are closely in interrelation with each other. For
instance, of one part of a system is not working efficiently then it may not run at all
(Rittichainuwat and et.al 2018). If one aspect that is tourism and travel of airlines are not running
flights for a specific destination, then the whole hospitality industry that is business of hotels will
not be functioning. If there are no hotels at a particular destination, then people will not be able
to book flights. This provides a basic insight of the concept that there is high interrelation
between different aspects of tourism industry. Different elements of Leipres tourism system can
be divided in separate differentia aspects such as the tourists are the actors that are part of

tourism industry and each activity is revolving around them. They are consuming different
element from the journey starting of a person thinking to visit a different tourism destination.
Another aspect are geographical features that are identified based on three geographical features
such as traveller generating region, tourism transit region and tourism destination region (Ito and
Kono, 2019). Other approach is the geographical features of Leopers tourism system that is
divided in three major geographical regions that are part of tourism system. The role played by
Aesthetic labours usually stars when tourist is reaching their destination or hotels for their stay.
Where they actually come in contact with the tourist and their way of treating them begins at this
particular stage. Tourist destination can be varying it could be a small area such as tourist resort
or a whole province such as Dahab in Egypt or it can be an entire province such as Washington
DC. There are many advantages associated with Leipres tourism system such as this model assist
in cisyakl depiction of tourism system and is a simple model that is widely part of academic
luetarire according to tourism based programmes. But there are certain disadvantages associated
woth Leopers tourism system model that this model is very simple to understand and this leads to
different people understand it in different ways. The postmodern tourism industry is not
accounted part of the model and it fails to address the tourism system interrelated as part of
network systems.
Plog’s Psychographic Personality Types
Oliver Cruz-Milan (2018) stated that on the basis of traveler's personality, it was first
model to segment the travellers in five different type such as psychocentric, near psychocentric,
mid-centric, near allocentric and allocentric. Plog introduces model of the travel that
characteristics through the psychographic scale to differentiate types of traveller like
personalities, patterns and the preferred destinations. Plog theory contains three different parts
such as Midcentric, psychocentric and Allocentric. If still the ambiguous in the decision, then
this can have divided down in to the Near psychocentric and Allocentric in among three. Each of
the part is segregated in this theory that can easily marked. In regards to this, Plog's
psychographic segmentation is personality scale that aids to explain about rise and fall of
destinations in context to popularity, revealing the personality characterises of visitors which are
the determinants for travel preferences and patterns (Yang, 2016). According to this model,
tourism destinations are evolving by psychographic curve that appealing to various travellers in
typology. First visitor to search new place are the allocentrics who mainly prefer to visiting

nontouristy and novel destinations which are not familiar with the people. In regards to this,
allocehtrics begin spreading word of mouth regarding exotic place they mainly visited, gradually
attract more number of the new allocentrics to underlevel- oped area.
As contrary to this Jeong-Yeol Park (2015) Any visitor cannot be stay in similar category
in its whole life. For an instance, if some person is travelling in young age with the high energy
the they would fall in to Allocentric category. After this, of they settle done and have family then
they will have inclined towards the travelling to better holidays destinations and also comes in
psychocentric category. As the time passes by, various destinations fall in to various categories
(Handyastuti, 2016).
Butler’s Tourism Area Life Cycle
Hassan Shuaibu Chiroma (2020) stated that Butler published this model in year 1980 as it
is Butler’s Tourism Area Life Cycle evolution of the tourist destinations which known as TALC
(Tourism Area Life Cycle). It stipulated that site mainly exploited for leisure and tourism known
six phrases in evolution like involvement, exploration development, stagnation, decline,
consolidation and rejuvenation. This model stated that many of the tourist resort begin on small
scale and get larger until the stagnation occurs. In regards to this, exploration is first stage where
limited number of the tourists visit area. They make the individual travelling arrangement and
visitation pattern is irregular. Area may have the attracted visitors, mainly non- local ones
because of scenic beauty and cultures. Involvement is the second stage where large number of
visitors visiting are is enhancing. Now residents see the economic advantages in providing
facilities like guides, transports, food and accommodation to visitors. This stage mainly puts the
pressure on national and local authorities in order to contribute to development of area through
proving the transportation and some of the other facilities to tourists. Development is stage
where area becomes recognised as tourist attraction because of more promotional as well as
advertising efforts. In Butler’s Tourism Area Life Cycle Model, Consolidation is stage where
number of the tourists are high than permanent residents (Warhurst and Nickson, 2020). In
regards to this, local economy is mainly dominated through tourism. Stagnation is stage where
several aspect of the attraction have been reached more capacity and also can not grow.
Attractions are mainly based on heavy reapat substantial and visitation marketing efforts which
help ion keep business going. In decline stage, area may face the various possibilities. This is
characterised through day trips and weekend as attraction has been lost appeal. Rejuvenation is

last stage and there is a need to attraction to change completely. There are two ways for change
suggested through Butler. First is related to new man- made attractions and second is that
attraction can tale benefit of previous untapped natural resources.
As contrary to this, Leo Hwang (2017) stated that rather than imaging tourist destination
always being visitor destination, Butler identified that the change is constant and initial reason
that location becomes desirable tourist destination that exist no longer and location will require
to face decline or rejuvenation. Embedded with in model of Butler is call for the sustainability
and resources conservation, enhancing length of location of time that can maintain destinations.
There is implicit call for the close collaboration and also integration of hospitality sector and
local community in order to shied local community from the potential exploration (Brydges and
Sjöholm, 2019).
RECOMMENDATION & SUGGESTIONS:
 Employers must specify the personal characteristics of skills that are required to
perform certain jobs that consist of sounding fine and looking good. The personnel
managers of hospitality industry must implement changes so that there can be further
skill development. There must be a tendency for organisations to manage the employees
so that their work is aesthetic and emotional at same time. It is a development process
that is part of interactive services where there ought to be emphasis on both training and
recruitment aspects of aesthetics & emotions of labour force that have to deliver specific
services.
 Emotional labour should be evaluated that includes consist of some feelings that are part
of effort, control and planning that are needed for development of certain denoted
emotions. It is going to highlight the visibility of emotional performance that is necessary
for generation of benefits for organisation. Emotional and aesthetic labour are related to
each other in form of emotionally managing of the work.
 Employers have to develop Emotional engagement that requires employees to grow
engagement with extra efforts (Brown, 2017). There are certain dimensions that is
emotional engagement where labours must be involved emotionally with the work. These
aspects have to be identified so that different aspects of employees will be carefully
identified to understand its impact on their assigned job roles & duties.

CONCLUSION
From above discussed aspect it can be concluded that tourism is a changing phenomenon
that is affected by factors that are part of external environment. Experience of tourism are
superficial and spirits that depends on numerous factors that are affecting the present tourist
experience according to significance and place of world view of tourists. Human factor is
affecting different industries that is changing because of highly competitive sector that is leading
to prospers of creative and cultural industries that is derived from their participation in modern
strategies of cultural management. In this report, there has been discussed about the aesthetic
labour and the emotional labour in detailed manner. The emotional labour is analysing of
managing the expressions and feelings in order to fulfil emotional job needs. There has been
discussed about the different theories such as The Affective Events Theory (AET), Ashforth and
Humphrey, Emotion regulation theory and Dissonance theory. There are different viewpoints
that reflect the changing nature of tourism industry according to various authors that further
reflected in the way tourist are perceiving the value of created for final customers.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
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