Management perceptions of sexual harassment of hotel room attendants

This research addresses calls for organizational perspectives of guest-initiated sexual harassment of employees; in this case, hotel room attendants. Workers, such as room attendants, working in jobs with high customer interaction, are particularly liable to sexual harassment. This exploratory study investigates the perspectives of personnel from hotel executive management as to how they understand and manage guest-initiated sexual harassment. To ascertain the level of management awareness of this issue, in-depth interviews were conducted with nine Directors of Human Resources (DHR) and two Executive Housekeeper Managers (ExHk) from nine five-star hotels in Brisbane, Australia. The outcome of our grounded theory analysis identified distinct areas within the praxis of DHRs' and ExHks' hotel operations given the results revealed hotel management had little knowledge of any sexual harassment by guests and therefore implemented few preventative strategies. From an epistemological perspective of socialist feminism, this research expands the field of knowledge related to room attendant employment, with implications for employer strategy and employee welfare in hotels.