Organizational attractiveness of hotel businesses within the scope of instrumental and symbolic attributes framework

Organizational attractiveness, described as ?a business is perceived as an attractive place to work by prospective employees?, is of critical importance to attract people to a business as employees. The competition among businesses to win the skilled people, along with changing profile of the workers, force today?s businesses to be attractive for existing and prospective human resources, and they make organizational attractiveness become more critical for hotel businesses that have unique sectoral characteristics. Despite it is commonly accepted that organizational attractiveness is important for hotel businesses in both the related literature and practice, it remains a problem what factors constitute organizational attractiveness for these businesses. In this regard, in the study, the factors affecting organizational attractiveness of hotel businesses were examined in terms of the instrumental and symbolic attributes framework. The field study has been conducted on two separate sets of participants that can be prospective employees of five-star hotels, located in city centers. The Structural Equation Model was used to explore the relationships between the instrumental and symbolic attributes of hotel businesses and the organizational attractiveness. The findings suggest that there is a difference in the perceptions of experienced and inexperienced prospective employees regarding instrumental and symbolic attributes and organizational attractiveness. Also, it is concluded that instrumental attributes affect organizational attractiveness directly while symbolic attributes have influence on organizational attractiveness through instrumental attributes.