Stress management in hotel operations a study on front office departments in five star hotels in Istanbul

This research has been prepared in order to define the elements which causes stress on the Front Office employees in five-star hotels in İstanbul, to examine the effects of stress factors on the attitudes under stress and strategies of coping with stress, to search the variability of stress factors according to demographical characteristics. The survey which was prepared accordingly, has been applied to 109 Front-Office employees at five-star hotels in Beşiktaş, İstanbul.The survey results have been analyzed using the SPSS 17.0 programme. To test the reliability of the survey Alpha Coefficient has been made use of. The distribution of the sample group according to its demographical characteristics has been examined by frequency and percentage defining statistics. To define the effects of the factors that cause stress on hotel employees, the strategies of dealing with stress and the attitude in time of stress; arithmetical mean and standard deviation statistics have been used. To determine the effects of factors which cause stress, on strategies of dealing with stress and on the attitudes towards stress; regression analysis has been used. The differentiation of factors which cause stress according to the demographical characteristics have been examined by t-test and variation analysis techniques.As a result of the study, statistically substantive results have been achieved that there is no distinctive difference between the effects of the factors that cause stress such as salaries, career, work load and lack of confidence; hotel employees? mostly prefer the method of avoidance to fight stress; the relation of stress factors? effect on the employees? attitude under stress, the effect of coping with stress strategies and the relation of stress causing factors and demographical characteristics.Key Words: Stress, stress management, hotel, accomodation companies,front office.