The relationship between emotional labour and alienation: A research in tourism corporations

With the effect of globalization and media, the way of providing service is becoming more and more important in today's world. Tourism corporations, which are an important part of the service sector, are also affected by this situation. In this context, corporations aim to increase customer satisfaction as a competitive advantage. Providing, sustaining and increasing customer satisfaction depends to a great extent on the performance of employees communicate with customers on a one-to-one basis. This is where the concept of emotional labor comes into play. Emotional labor is controlling emotions to ensure customer satisfaction. For this purpose, corporations set some rules of emotional behavior under the leadership of human resources department. Employees must obey these rules when providing service to customers. Tourism sector, which has a labor intensive structure, can be very exhausting physically for employees with the effect of long and strenuous working hours. With the renewed service mentality, employees have to put their emotional effort in addition to their physical effort and this situation makes it possible for employees to feel themselves under more pressure. In addition to the aggravated working conditions, corporation's desire for controlling even their emotions paves the way for employees to experience alienation. When the studies conducted until today are examined, it is seen that there are few studies trying to explain the relationship between emotional labor and alienation in the field of tourism. Therefore, the study is thought to contribute to the literature. The main purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between emotional labor and alienation. For this purpose, the relationship between emotional labor and alienation in the tourism sector tried to be explained with the questionnaire applied to the employees in tourism corporations where located in Manisa and the district of İzmir, Seferihisar (Sığacık neighborhood). KEY WORDS: Emotional labor, alienation, tourism corporations