Human Resource Risks in the Hospitality Industry

Human resource management risks in the tourism and hospitality industry have largely remained as an unexplored area in the literature. Literature review on human resources risk management revealed that only a few of the research studies were limitedly relevant to chain or luxury hotels in general and none was relevant to hotel-industry specific HR risks as a bundle, from the perception of managers and employees in particular. This study fills this gap by identifying hospitality industry human resource risks in the chain hotel context. Chain hotels in Antalya, Turkey were chosen as a sample, as the city welcomes many international tourists and contains numerous chain hotels that provide employment to a considerable number of employees. To clarify the sources of human resource management risks in chain hotel settings, this study conducted focus group interviews to examine how hotel management and lower level staff perceive such risks. As a result of the intensive labor that it entails, the hospitality industry is facing a high level of human resource risk. Findings of the study shows that human resource risk types in chain hotels vary highly and that each type of risk requires close examination. The findings of this study make a considerable contribution to the hospitality industry by exploring new ways of identifying and classifying human resource management risks in chain hotels.