Service unseen: The hotel room attendant at work

Abstract

The work of the room attendant is central to the reinstatement of guest rooms, a particularly profitable product in most hotels. However, room attendant work remains, in large part, both academically and empirically unseen. To raise the visibility of this work quantitative and qualitative data has been gathered from room attendants in hotels in Cardiff, Wales. A profile of accommodation workers is constructed along with an examination of the ways in which their work is organised, controlled and rewarded. The perception of this work as ‘unskilled’ is reviewed. A consideration of intrinsic job satisfaction factors in both traditional and ‘empowered’ settings suggests that there may be more scope for job satisfaction than anticipated.