Description
The purpose of this paper is to discuss whether creative tourists can transform the service
encounter in city hotels in a way that can reduce the amount of emotional labor required from service
employees and its negative consequences
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Creative tourism and emotional labor: an investigatory model of possible interactions
Duygu Salman Duygu Uygur
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Duygu Salman Duygu Uygur, (2010),"Creative tourism and emotional labor: an investigatory model of possible interactions", International
J ournal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 4 Iss 3 pp. 186 - 197
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Lan-Lan Chang, Kenneth F. Backman, Yu Chih Huang, (2014),"Creative tourism: a preliminary examination of creative tourists’ motivation,
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401-419http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IJ CTHR-04-2014-0032
Kaija Lindroth, J armo Ritalahti, Tuovi Soisalon-Soininen, (2007),"Creative tourism in destination development", Tourism Review, Vol. 62 Iss
3/4 pp. 53-58http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/16605370780000322
Pirita Ihamäki, (2012),"Geocachers: the creative tourism experience", J ournal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, Vol. 3 Iss 3 pp.
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Creative tourism and emotional labor:
an investigatory model of possible
interactions
Duygu Salman and Duygu Uygur
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss whether creative tourists can transform the service
encounter in city hotels in a way that can reduce the amount of emotional labor required from service
employees and its negative consequences.
Design/methodology/approach – Based on current de?nitions of creative tourism, on the literature of
culture, culture’s relation to emotions and emotional labor, the researchers develop a conceptual spatial
model for the city. The model aims to understand how creative tourists can in?uence the hospitality
industry as they move between creative and standardized spaces.
Findings – The spatial model conceptualizes the city as having two divergent spaces for creative
tourists. The model suggests that differently constructed characteristics of these spaces interrupt the
continuity of the creative tourism experience. Therefore, the possibility of a transitive relationship
between these spaces may bene?t both creative tourists, by providing unity to their experiences, and
service employees, by reducing the amount of organizational control on their emotional displays during
service encounters.
Research limitations/implications – The paper offers a preliminary model. Therefore, empirical
research is obligatory to understand whether this proposed spatial model and the related
consequences have equivalence in real life situations.
Practical implications – The model can bring about various practical implications for human resources
processes of hotels ranging from selection to training.
Originality/value – The study offers a model proposing a continuity of creative tourist experiences in
different spaces. It also constitutes an effort to question the requirement of emotional labor from
hospitality employees.
Keywords Tourism, Culture, Hospitality services, Cities, Hotels, Service delivery
Paper type Conceptual paper
Introduction
The last decade has been a period of intensive interest for ‘‘creativity’’. Creative economy
(Howkins, 2001), creative industries, creative jobs, creative class (Florida, 2002), creative
cities have been some of the areas where scholars and practitioners utilized the concept to
relate the consequent ?elds to innovation and imagination.
The ?eld of tourism studies is no exception. Researchers and practitioners of tourism have
also adapted a new/alternative approach to cultural tourismthat nurtures creativity, mainly to
address the dilemma of the serial reproduction of culture. The concept of creative tourism
(Richards and Wilson, 2006) offers tourism researchers a comparatively unexplored area
where a new type of tourist steps beyond the traditional ways of tourism and constructs a
rede?nition of the notions of authentic experience and cultural interaction within the inventive
and imaginative framework of creativity.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential reciprocal in?uences between creative
tourism and the hospitality industry. The paper conceptually discusses whether creative
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VOL. 4 NO. 3 2010, pp. 186-197, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182 DOI 10.1108/17506181011067583
Duygu Salman is a lecturer
at Bog? azic¸ i University,
Bebek, Turkey.
Duygu Uygur is a research
assistant at Bilgi University,
Istanbul, Turkey.
Received December 2009
Revised January 2010
Accepted March 2010
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tourism may in any way stimulate change in the hospitality industry. More speci?cally, the
paper questions whether creative tourism and creative tourists, with their unique
characteristics, can have a transformative in?uence on the paradigm of standardized
service encounter in city hotels. Thus this study aims to explore the possibility that the
encounter of the creative tourists and the front-line hotel employees may require
comparatively less organizational control on the authentic feeling displays of employees,
eventually reducing emotional labor and its’ negative in?uences on employees.
The paper has four sections in order to build a discussion on the above mentioned
questions. Creative tourismis a very newconcept and although there are conceptualizations
and de?nitions of creative tourism, there is no empirical research de?ning the characteristics
of creative tourists. Therefore, the ?rst section of the paper is important in building a common
understanding of what creative tourism is and who creative tourists are. This section
explores the existing de?nitions of creative tourism and based on these de?nitions, this
section aims to clarify how researchers, until now, conceptually de?ne the characteristics of
creative tourists.
As the ?rst section will elucidate, tourism scholars de?ne creative tourists as being open to
real/authentic cultural experiences. Following this speci?cation, the second section of the
paper identi?es emotions as an essential part of real/authentic cultural experiences based
on the literature of culture and emotions. This section underlines that emotions are an
essential part of a culture and explains the concept of culture-bound, authentic emotional
displays/expressions.
The third section builds up on the previous two sections by discussing the phenomenon of
emotional labor. Authors discuss how the hospitality industry excludes the authentic
emotional displays/expressions of front line employees, who are also members of host
community, in order to build a standardized, con?ict free but also a culture-free service
experience.
As the ?nal building stone, the last section conceptualizes cities as having two divergent
spaces: the spaces of creative activities (SCAs) and the spaces of standardized services
(SSSs) (e.g. city hotels). This categorization of spaces within the city is obviously not
exclusive. The authors offer this preliminary model in order to develop an understanding of
the movement of creative tourists between different spaces in the city. This section
discusses that differently constructed characteristics of these two spaces interrupt the
continuity of the authentic cultural experiences of the creative tourists who may be open to
experience authentic encounters not only during creative tourism activities but also in their
interactions with front-line service employees (e.g. in city hotels). Finally, by proposing
questions for future empirical research, the paper discusses the possibility of a transitive
relationship between SCAs and SSSs, which may bene?t both creative tourists and front line
service employees.
Creative tourism and creative tourists
Richards and Raymond (2000, p. 18) are ?rst to identify creative tourism as a result of
dissatisfaction from traditional cultural tourism product or as an extension of it.
Consequently, they developed the concept of creative tourism where creativity plays an
essential role in the processes of cultural production and consumption. They de?ne creative
tourism as:
. . . tourism which offers visitors the opportunity to develop their creative potential through active
participation in courses and learning experiences which are characteristic of the holiday
destination where they are undertaken.
Furthermore, they conceptualize creative tourists as consumers who look for more
engaging, interactive experiences which can help them in their personal development and
identity creation.
More recent work by Richards and Wilson (2006) builds on the previous work of Richards
and Raymond and asserts that creative tourism is an active process that draws upon local
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skills, expertise and traditions and offers a learning, self-developmental and transformatory
experience for the creative tourist.
Following these developments of creativity-led tourism as an alternative for:
. . . destinations seeking to avoid problems of serial reproduction of culture (Richards and Wilson,
2006, p. 1221).
UNESCO (2006, p. 3) also offered its working de?nition of creative tourism as:
. . . travel directed towards an engaged and authentic experience, with participative learning in
the arts, heritage, or special character of a place. It provides a connection with those who reside
in this place and create this living culture.
These two most commonly referred de?nitions of creative tourism paint a similar picture of
the creative tourist. As there are no empirical researches speci?cally on the characteristics
of creative tourists, the paper builds its assumptions about creative tourists based on these
two de?nitions. Therefore, creative tourists are visitors who:
B are willing to step beyond traditional ways of cultural tourism;
B search for alternatives;
B look for an authentic active, engaging, participative, learning and transformative holiday
experience;
B want to participate in creative activities for personal skill development;
B expect their active tourist experience to allow them to interact intensely and re?exively
with the host community; and
B use this touristic experience as a part of her identity formation;
These characteristics found in literature indicate that unlike the traditional cultural tourist,
creative tourists’ purpose is not looking at the culture but immersing themselves in the
culture, participating in the culture, interacting with people creating that culture and allowing
this authentic experience to transform and rede?ne them.
As the next section will discuss, emotions and authentic emotional displays are also an
essential part of each culture that people experience through personal, face to face
interactions. Hence this paper proposes that a holistic experience of culture, which the
creative tourist seeks, can only be possible in spaces where there is less outside (i.e.
organizational) control on interactions between hosts and tourists. Furthermore, based on
the above mentioned characteristics, creative tourists are likely to prefer less controlled,
culture-revealing interactions with their hosts instead of standardized, culture-free
interactions.
Emotions and culture
The literature on inter-disciplinary study of emotions has multiple approaches to explain
emotional experiences. On the one hand, certain approaches focus solely on internal factors
(e.g. biology, genetics, and instincts) for the explanation of emotional experiences. Darwin
(1965) for example, conceptualizes emotions as internal/natural and bases them on instinct.
Likewise the commonly referred universalist paradigm of emotions also suggests that a
universal human system exists not only for producing emotions but also for understanding
the expression of emotions (Grammer and Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1993 quoted in Eid and Diener,
2001).
On the other hand, other approaches like social constructionism focus on external factors
and base their explanation of emotional experiences on culture and cultural norms to
understand how speci?c sets of emotional concepts are used in cultures for various
purposes. Harre´ (1986) for example posits that there is no such thing as an emotion, but only
collectively manufactured states. Rosaldo (1984, p. 143) also contends that:
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. . . feelings are not substances to be discovered in our blood but social practices organized by
stories that we both enact and tell. They are structured by our forms of understanding.
In addition to these two extremes, a third group of researchers suggest that the internal and
external factors are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Eid and Diener (2001) for
example assert that researchers need to complement biological factors with a consideration
of the cultural context of emotions for a full understanding of emotional experiences and
expressions.
Likewise, Ko¨ vecses (2000) not only places importance to the role of physiological aspects
but he also emphasizes the importance of both the psychobiological basis of feeling and the
effects of culture in conceptualizing emotions. Ko¨ vecses (2000, p. 183) suggests that the
aspects of emotions which are not related to the physiology and thus not universal can be
explained by:
. . . cultural knowledge and pragmatic discourse functions that work according to divergent
culturally de?ned rules or scenarios.
Ko¨ veckses sees social, cognitive, pragmatic and bodily factors as complementary in
understanding the emotional experiences of society.
Although this paper acknowledges all three approaches, the physiological roots of emotions
are outside the scope of this paper. Hence, the paper focuses on the diversity of emotional
experiences and displays which are based on cultural differences. Therefore, there is a need
to understand culture and culture’s peculiar ways of shaping emotional experiences.
The question of what culture is has been a thrilling one for scholars in various ?elds since the
early de?nition of culture by Tyler (1924, quoted in Edles, 2002) as the:
. . . complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other
capabilities or habits acquired by man as a member of society.
After Geertz’s (1973, p. 89) seminal work of The Interpretation of Cultures, scholars replaced
Tyler’s expanded de?nition of culture with Geertz’s de?nition of culture as:
. . . shared symbols and/or meaning.
As many differences as these two approaches have, they also have some common points
such as culture being ‘‘collective’’, ‘‘shared’’ and ‘‘learned/acquired’’ among the members
of the same group and these qualities of culture ensure its strong in?uence on people from
their birth onward. Culture affects people by in?uencing how they think about the world, how
they understand the world, howthey viewthemselves and others. Emotional experiences are
no exception to this in?uence; culture also affects how people understand emotions and
emotional events and how they choose to display their emotions (see Markus and Kitayama,
1991).
Cultural norms and practices shape various aspects of emotions throughout individuals’
socializationprocessinasociety. Cultural institutions, rituals, artifacts, stories, languageandall
other means act astools throughwhichindividuals learnthepeculiar modesof behavior of that
society including the implicit norms related to emotions. Regarding that, Frijda and Mesquita
(1995) point out three aspects of emotions that are culturally in?uenced. The ?rst one is:
. . . the social consequences of emotions that regulate the expression and suppression of emotions.
Speci?c examples of how emotions are regulated by their consequences can easily be
found in languages, which have very pragmatic roles in creating shared norms in a culture.
For example in Turkey:
. . . the baby who doesn’t cry doesn’t get milk,
in Japan:
. . . the nail that stands out gets pounded on (Markus and Kitayama, 1991)
and in America:
. . . the squeaky wheel gets the grease (Markus and Kitayama, 1991).
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The second aspect is:
. . . the importance of cultural norms for experiencing different emotions.
Hochschild (1983) in her classical work ‘‘The Managed Heart’’ also discusses the role of
feeling rules, social norms that prescribe how people should feel in speci?c situations (e.g.
on a wedding day, at a funeral). A typical example is the individuals who are socialized by
the ‘‘Boys don’t cry’’ norm. When it comes to experiencing emotions which may lead to cry,
these individuals will be likely to automatically decrease their emotions for a more
culturally-?t emotional response (Mauss et al., 2008). For example, Nussbaum(2001, p. 157,
quoted in Wierzbicka, 2003) also provides an explanation of how different normative
teachings in different cultures diversify the emotional experiences:
Societies have different normative teachings with regard to the importance of honor, money,
bodily beauty and health, friendship, children, political power. They therefore have many
differences in anger, envy, fear, love, and grief . . .
Finally the third aspect that Frijda and Mesquita (1995) de?ne is:
. . . the social-cohesive functions of emotions.
Emotional norms of a culture are functional because they:
. . . ensure social stability and the well being of those involved (Bolton, 2005, p. 50)
they serve as the social lubricant of people’s everyday lives (Ashkanasy et al., 2002).
Most of the comparative research examining the above mentioned culturally in?uenced
aspects of emotion is based on the comparisons of Western and Eastern societies.
Cross-cultural psychologists for example distinguish between the independent (idiocentric)
and the interdependent (allocentric) self-construals (Markus and Kitayama, 1991). Cultures
in which idiocentrism is the predominant personality pattern are called individualistic
cultures (e.g., Western) and the cultures in which allocentrismis the predominant personality
pattern are called collectivistic cultures (e.g., Eastern cultures). In collectivistic cultures, the
social normis to maintain harmony with others, to meet social obligations, and to support the
goals of others who are in a social relationship with oneself. On the other hand, the norm in
individualistic cultures is to become independent from others and to pursue and assert
individual goals (Eid and Diener, 2001).
For example, North American cultural contexts which researchers consider as typical
individualistic cultures, place relatively strong value on happiness and the expression of
happiness (Matsumoto et al., 1998; Sommers, 1984). North American societies see
happiness as a sign of a ‘‘good self’’ and of psychological well-being (see Markus and
Kitayama, 1991), However, in Confucian contexts (Asian countries such China, Korea or
Japan) which researchers consider as typical collectivistic cultures, the society strongly
values the harmony among members of a group. As a result, intense personal happiness
might counteract that goal by elevating the individual above the group (e.g., Heine et al.,
2002). Thus, these socio-cultural contexts relatively encourage the decrease of happiness
while North-American contexts relatively encourage the increase of happiness (Mauss et al.,
2008).
Another example would be Western societies, which stress positive aspects of emotions
(because they demonstrate one’s authentic and unique individuality), and, by extension,
generally encourage emotional experience and expression (see Markus and Kitayama,
1991; Tsai and Levenson, 1997). In contrast, many East- Asian societies more strongly value
emotion decrease, especially with respect to ‘‘high-activity’’ emotions such as excitement
(e.g., Eid and Diener, 2001; Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey, 1988; Matsumoto, 1990; Tsai et al.,
2006). Authors, such as Klineberg (1938) and Potter (1988) discuss that Chinese society
consider emotions as dangerous, irrelevant and illness causing. Eid and Diener (2001) also
point out that Chinese people highly value moderation or suppression of emotions.
Until now the paper aimed to clarify two important points based on previous research
?ndings:
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1. The identi?cation and marking of the dimensions of emotions, which are socio-cultural
constructions, is essential. Emotional experiences and expressions of people are
intangible products of social and cultural processes, just like other products of culture
such as art, architecture and historical heritage, which are tangible.
2. A culture, then, may be described in part by that culture’s characteristic organization of
emotions (Middleton, 1989). Thus, creative tourists who aim to understand the authentic
culture of a society need to be open to experience the authentic emotional displays of
their hosts.
Control on authentic emotional displays: emotional labor
The services sector, which has reached more than 66 percent of the European workforce
(Parent-Thirion et al., 2007) requires employees to have frequent social interactions with the
customers. Furthermore, the services sector in general and tourism in speci?c de?ne the
success of interaction between employees and customer upon employees’ creation of an
appealing, positive emotional climate. In order to create an organizationally de?ned
‘‘positive experience’’ for the customer:
Employees work on their own emotions and seek to manipulate those of the customer, working
within the commercial feeling and display rules set by the organization (Bolton, 2005, p. 113):
An airline attendant who smiles at a rude passenger, the waiter who creates an ‘‘atmosphere of
pleasant dining’’ and the tour guide or the receptionist who makes us feel ‘‘welcome’’ are all paid
to manifest a speci?c emotional state as a part of their job (Hochschild, 1983, p. 11).
This phenomenon is referred to as emotional labor. Hochschild (1983) is the ?rst one to
de?ne emotional labor as:
. . . the management of feelings to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display.
Since then emotional labor has been an important topic of research for scholars in many
?elds. The more recent de?nitions of emotional labor are also in alignment with Hochschild’s
de?nition of the term, for example Grandey (2000, p. 97) de?nes emotional labor as:
. . . the process of regulating both feelings and expressions for organizational goals
and Ashforth and Tomiuk (2000, p. 184) also use the de?nition of emotional labor as:
. . . the act of conforming (or attempting to conform) to display rules or affective requirements that
prescribe on-the-job emotion expression.
The use of term emotional labor is appropriate only when emotion work is exchanged for
something such as wage. In other words, emotional labor is different from other types of
emotion management that people engage in their personal lives by the fact that emotional
labor has exchange value and is controlled by the organization (Wharton, 1999) and not by
the individual.
Emotional labor is a common characteristic of all standardized, face to face service
encounters, which are prescribed and controlled by organizations (e.g. hotels, restaurants,
airlines, hospitals, banks). However, for the speci?c purposes of this paper which is to
understand the possible transformative interactions between creative tourists and hospitality
industry, this paper will only consider the case of emotional labor in hotels. Furthermore, the
focus will be speci?cally on city/urban hotels where standardization and organizational
control of face to face interactions between employees and guests is stricter compared to
accommodation units in rural areas.
Emotional labor results in impaired social and cognitive skills, as well as greater
physiological and psychological reactivity (Mauss et al., 2008). Emotional labor is most
commonly associated with greater negative affect, lesser feelings of authenticity, greater job
strain, greater rates of burnout (Mauss et al., 2008) and emotional dissonance which leads to
emotional exhaustion, low job satisfaction and high intention to quit (Zapf, 2002).
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The results of a study by Salman-Ozturk et al. (2008) exhibit the current situation of emotional
labor in Istanbul. The study reveals that staged/unauthentic emotional displays and the
negative consequences related to them prevail in front of?ce and concierge departments of
?ve-star, four-star, and boutique hotels of Istanbul. The major ?ndings of the study are in
alignment with the literature suggesting that emotional labor is a source of increased
physiological and psychological reactivity (Mauss et al., 2008). The results of the study show
that emotional labor results in higher levels of emotional exhaustion and employees perceive
emotional labor to be a source of increased health problems and intention to quit from their
job (Salman-Ozturk et al., 2008).
Divergent spaces in cities: SCAs and SSSs
The expectations of creative tourists are very different fromformer types of tourists who used
to settle for the ‘‘staged/unreal authenticity’’. As creative travelers demand to be ‘‘real
actors’’ in the ‘‘real/authentic lives of hosts’’, creative tourism inspires to assist them to get in
a closer contact with the host community and to explore diverse cultures of the world not on
surface but in depth. Examining the examples of creative tourism activities from around the
world shows that authenticity during workshops and hands-on cultural experiences are sine
qua non of creative tourism activities (Creative Tourism New Zealand, 2009); Santa Fe
Creative Tourism Experiences, 2009; Global Tourism Industry News, 2009; Art in Tropical
Australia, 2009).
However, during their experiences in cities such as Istanbul, creative tourists do not only
exist in spaces where they engage in creative activities, they move between different
spaces. The city offers tourists various spaces that are constructions of different realities.
Therefore, there is a need to understand what kind of experiences may emerge as the
creative tourist moves between these different spaces/realities. This paper chooses to focus
speci?cally on two spaces in the city for its explicit purposes. The ?rst one is spaces where
creative activities take place and the second one is spaces where creative travelers stay or
in other words accommodation units, such as hotels. The researchers name these spaces
respectively as SCAs (spaces for creative activities) and SSSs (spaces for standardized
services) and posit that they are divergent spaces. Figure 1 shows how the paper
conceptualizes these two new spatial constructs.
The authors conceptualize SCAs as places where creative activities take place with the aim
to offer the travelers authentic cultural experiences, help them understand the culture and
the people living in that culture. By being in SCAs, creative travelers separate themselves
from other tourists because the creative experience at SCAs offers a much deeper
exploration of the culture than that sought by the traditional tourist. SCAs provide
experiences to the very core of the culture which the creative traveler is curious about.
The examples of SCAs can be very diverse. The studio of a local artist where the tourist
learns the technique of a certain local art; the local music roomwhere the tourist experiences
listening and playing the local music, and the kitchen where the tourist takes cooking classes
to specialize in local cuisine are all examples of SCAs. Although activities are different in
each case, one thing is common to all and that is the fact that all SCAs provide personal
interaction with local people.
The personal interaction of the creative tourist and the locals within SCAs is a naturally
emerging intercultural exchange. An external structure (e.g. an organization) does not
control this interaction. The sole regulatory bodies of this interaction are the authentic norms
of speci?c cultures of the tourist and the host. Unlike the front line employees of hotels who
are controlled by organizational display rules, the local people in SCAs can interact with the
tourists in their authentic ways including their authentic emotional styles.
The communication of authentic emotional styles has bene?ts for both sides. For the creative
tourist, this type of communication can provide an in-depth learning of culture. This novel
and unfamiliar encounter helps the tourist to clarify the intentions, attitudes, identity and
meaning of the host. Eventually, the activity becomes the engaging, self-developing,
transformative experience that the creative tourist is after.
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For the host, the chance to communicate through authentic emotional style is even more
important since communicating authentic/real feelings protects him from experiencing
unnecessary and harmful emotional dissonance.
On the other hand, the reality of standardized service spaces (SSSs) is constructed for
different purposes. The model de?nes SSSs as places which offer more familiar, less
surprising and comforting experiences compared to the novel, surprising and
unaccustomed experiences offered at SCAs. SSSs are not only standard physically but
also emotionally. Organizationally prescribed feeling rules prevent front-line employees of
SSSs from communicating with their authentic emotional styles during interactions with the
guests. Organizations train and supervise their employees to provide the hotel customers
with a standardized ‘‘moment of truth’’ (Carlzon, 1987) each and every time.
There are various examples of SSSs in the city (e.g. hotels, restaurants, banks, hospitals,
airlines), however the focus of the paper is on accommodation units in cities such as hotels.
As typical examples of SSSs, hotels in cities mostly employ the same formulaic mechanisms
that control service interaction in order to offer better service experience. In fact, this
standardization may ful?ll the expectations of a typical mass or cultural tourist. However,
considering the characteristics and expectations of creative tourist discussed in the ?rst
section, a less controlled, natural, culture-led interaction may be preferable for creative
Figure 1 A new spatial model for the creative city
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tourists. Therefore a typical, standardized service encounter may diminish the ability of city
hotels to create uniqueness for creative tourists.
As the descriptions of these two spaces clarify, when travelers move between these
divergent spaces, they experience different and contradictory realities. As travelers move
from SCAs to SSSs, they also move away from an authentic experience to a staged
experience. The authentic cultural experience of the creative city traveler is interrupted once
he gets outside the creative context (e.g. workshop) to enter an accommodation unit (e.g.
hotel). Within a standardized hospitality unit, the creative tourist has no more the chance to
learn and experience the authentic local culture. Even more, the only experience that the
tourist can get is the unauthentic performances of hospitality employees during service
encounters. Or in other terms, while the suppliers of creative activities try to offer the most
original cultural experiences in SCAs, the accommodation suppliers work really hard to offer
the most standardized/staged service encounter in SSSs.
Conclusions and discussions
Employees of the hospitality industry as being an important part of the service industry
workforce have come to be de?ned as:
. . . mere simulacrums on the organizationally designed emotional stage (Bolton, 2005, p. 4).
Today, emotional labor is so embedded in service work that it goes unseen, unrewarded and
even exploited.
Many different variables lead to this current situation. All those variables are embedded in
the greater phenomenon of tourism, which historically has developed on the discourse of
sovereignty of the customer (du Gay and Salaman, 1992), disregarding the detrimental
in?uences that this sovereignty has on the environment, on the local community and on
tourism employees. However, the new generations of tourism are more sensitive to these
issues. The new generations of tourism, like creative tourism, aspire to achieve a progress
that can bene?t both people and places.
As this paper acknowledges this trend, it also hopes to stimulate discussion on whether the
bene?ts of creative tourism for cities and for local communities can also be extended to
include the hospitality workforce in order to intervene with the phenomenon of emotional
labor. The paper, by offering a preliminary model of two spaces with different characteristics,
questions whether hospitality industry can follow the example of SCAs to a certain extent,
allowing the front line employees more space for authentic emotional displays and offering
creative tourists a more culture-laden encounter.
This paper suggests that this discussion should start with a focus on the characteristics and
motivations of creative travelers. As far as the literature shows until now, creative travelers
prefer a type of tourism that differentiates them from the rest of the tourists, as for them
tourism is a source of building identity. They are after the original not the standard, they are
motivated by a need to learn new cultures in every creative way possible, they are open to
novel experiences and they are ready to appreciate authentic encounters.
Based on these characteristics, and the proposed conceptual framework, this paper
proposes the following questions for further empirical research: ‘‘What is the perception of
creative tourists about the staged emotional performances taking place in SSSs, such as
hotels? Considering their previously discussed motivations, can researchers assume that
anything standard and arti?cial will be repulsive to creative tourists, including the emotionally
prescribed interactions with service employees? Given the chance will they prefer to interact
with service employees within the emotional norms of that culture and will they perceive this
as a learning experience rather than a potential source of con?ict?’’
Any af?rmative answer on these questions will provide the possibility that creative tourists
prefer the continuity of their authentic, active, engaging, participative, learning and
transformative holiday experiences as they move between different spaces in the city.
Elaborating answers to the above questions in the theoretical realmwill not only contribute to
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the discussion of emotional labor and authenticity in different travel modes but can also
practically improve the quality of the creative travel experience, for such an effort will reveal
what creative tourists actually demand and appreciate and what the hospitality industry
takes for granted and delivers as the one best way of service. Furthermore, this paper
suggests that as far as different expectations of different types of tourists are concerned,
there can be no one best way for service encounters. In addition to that as the organizational
control on display rules increases the resemblance of service encounters in different hotels,
the human part of the service can no longer ensure differentiation of one hotel from another.
Eventually resulting in a feeling of ‘‘placelessness’’ (Relph, 1976) for the tourist.
Historically, standard service spaces are not designed for the needs of the creative traveler.
In many cases SSSs just adapt to commonly accepted industry practices in every way from
service encounter to design of physical space. However, in case of an incongruency
between what the creative tourists demand and what the hospitality industry provides, in a
way consistent with what this paper suggests, practical implications will be inevitable. For
any hotel aiming to accommodate creative tourists will need to reconsider the level of
standardization. The change might range from physical space design to operational issues
such as the current de?nition of service encounter, marketing activities and human
resources policies. The de?nition of creative tourist suggests that she is after an authentic
experience by nature, thus the paper claims that this type of tourist will not demand staged
emotional performances and consequently hotels will reduce their control on emotional
content of service encounter. Furthermore, the standardized service encounter will no longer
be the sole focus of marketing communication. Human resources activities will also
acknowledge the value of native culture as a service component; hence selection, training
and socialization processes will be designed accordingly. Considering these hypothesized
consequences, ?nding out answers to previously mentioned questions by further research
would practically make sense as well.
The authors of this paper are aware that the research on creative tourismis yet not enough to
support the conceptual model that this paper offers and the related hypothesized
consequences. However, the aim behind this paper is neither to offer facts nor foresee the
distant future of tourism. The aim is to foster discussion and research on how tourism and
tourists will evolve with the current search for creativity and how this transformation will
in?uence the tourism industry as a whole.
This paper chose to focus on potential impacts of this transformation on hospitality industry
and hospitality employees, for the authors propose that the discussions of a new concept
like creative tourism should include the clash of different socio-cultural realities and the
questioning of established organizational rules. Therefore, the literature needs further
empirical exploration of how far the creative tourist can go in her ambition for authenticity in
the city and how this will impact the stakeholders of the tourism industry.
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About the authors
Duygu Salman is a holder of an MSc in industrial/organizational psychology from City
University of NewYork, Weissman School of Arts and Sciences. She is currently pursuing her
PhD in organization studies at Istanbul Bilgi University and is a lecturer at the Department of
Tourism Administration at Bog? azic¸ i University. Duygu Salman is the corresponding author
and can be contacted at: [email protected]
Duygu Uygur is a holder of an MA in organizational behavior from Marmara University,
Institute of Social Sciences. She is currently pursuing her PhD in organization studies at
Istanbul Bilgi University and is a research assistant at the same university.
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This article has been cited by:
1. Lan-Lan Chang, Kenneth F. Backman, Yu Chih Huang. 2014. Creative tourism: a preliminary examination of creative
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doc_510468857.pdf
The purpose of this paper is to discuss whether creative tourists can transform the service
encounter in city hotels in a way that can reduce the amount of emotional labor required from service
employees and its negative consequences
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Creative tourism and emotional labor: an investigatory model of possible interactions
Duygu Salman Duygu Uygur
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To cite this document:
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401-419http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IJ CTHR-04-2014-0032
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Creative tourism and emotional labor:
an investigatory model of possible
interactions
Duygu Salman and Duygu Uygur
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss whether creative tourists can transform the service
encounter in city hotels in a way that can reduce the amount of emotional labor required from service
employees and its negative consequences.
Design/methodology/approach – Based on current de?nitions of creative tourism, on the literature of
culture, culture’s relation to emotions and emotional labor, the researchers develop a conceptual spatial
model for the city. The model aims to understand how creative tourists can in?uence the hospitality
industry as they move between creative and standardized spaces.
Findings – The spatial model conceptualizes the city as having two divergent spaces for creative
tourists. The model suggests that differently constructed characteristics of these spaces interrupt the
continuity of the creative tourism experience. Therefore, the possibility of a transitive relationship
between these spaces may bene?t both creative tourists, by providing unity to their experiences, and
service employees, by reducing the amount of organizational control on their emotional displays during
service encounters.
Research limitations/implications – The paper offers a preliminary model. Therefore, empirical
research is obligatory to understand whether this proposed spatial model and the related
consequences have equivalence in real life situations.
Practical implications – The model can bring about various practical implications for human resources
processes of hotels ranging from selection to training.
Originality/value – The study offers a model proposing a continuity of creative tourist experiences in
different spaces. It also constitutes an effort to question the requirement of emotional labor from
hospitality employees.
Keywords Tourism, Culture, Hospitality services, Cities, Hotels, Service delivery
Paper type Conceptual paper
Introduction
The last decade has been a period of intensive interest for ‘‘creativity’’. Creative economy
(Howkins, 2001), creative industries, creative jobs, creative class (Florida, 2002), creative
cities have been some of the areas where scholars and practitioners utilized the concept to
relate the consequent ?elds to innovation and imagination.
The ?eld of tourism studies is no exception. Researchers and practitioners of tourism have
also adapted a new/alternative approach to cultural tourismthat nurtures creativity, mainly to
address the dilemma of the serial reproduction of culture. The concept of creative tourism
(Richards and Wilson, 2006) offers tourism researchers a comparatively unexplored area
where a new type of tourist steps beyond the traditional ways of tourism and constructs a
rede?nition of the notions of authentic experience and cultural interaction within the inventive
and imaginative framework of creativity.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential reciprocal in?uences between creative
tourism and the hospitality industry. The paper conceptually discusses whether creative
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VOL. 4 NO. 3 2010, pp. 186-197, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182 DOI 10.1108/17506181011067583
Duygu Salman is a lecturer
at Bog? azic¸ i University,
Bebek, Turkey.
Duygu Uygur is a research
assistant at Bilgi University,
Istanbul, Turkey.
Received December 2009
Revised January 2010
Accepted March 2010
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tourism may in any way stimulate change in the hospitality industry. More speci?cally, the
paper questions whether creative tourism and creative tourists, with their unique
characteristics, can have a transformative in?uence on the paradigm of standardized
service encounter in city hotels. Thus this study aims to explore the possibility that the
encounter of the creative tourists and the front-line hotel employees may require
comparatively less organizational control on the authentic feeling displays of employees,
eventually reducing emotional labor and its’ negative in?uences on employees.
The paper has four sections in order to build a discussion on the above mentioned
questions. Creative tourismis a very newconcept and although there are conceptualizations
and de?nitions of creative tourism, there is no empirical research de?ning the characteristics
of creative tourists. Therefore, the ?rst section of the paper is important in building a common
understanding of what creative tourism is and who creative tourists are. This section
explores the existing de?nitions of creative tourism and based on these de?nitions, this
section aims to clarify how researchers, until now, conceptually de?ne the characteristics of
creative tourists.
As the ?rst section will elucidate, tourism scholars de?ne creative tourists as being open to
real/authentic cultural experiences. Following this speci?cation, the second section of the
paper identi?es emotions as an essential part of real/authentic cultural experiences based
on the literature of culture and emotions. This section underlines that emotions are an
essential part of a culture and explains the concept of culture-bound, authentic emotional
displays/expressions.
The third section builds up on the previous two sections by discussing the phenomenon of
emotional labor. Authors discuss how the hospitality industry excludes the authentic
emotional displays/expressions of front line employees, who are also members of host
community, in order to build a standardized, con?ict free but also a culture-free service
experience.
As the ?nal building stone, the last section conceptualizes cities as having two divergent
spaces: the spaces of creative activities (SCAs) and the spaces of standardized services
(SSSs) (e.g. city hotels). This categorization of spaces within the city is obviously not
exclusive. The authors offer this preliminary model in order to develop an understanding of
the movement of creative tourists between different spaces in the city. This section
discusses that differently constructed characteristics of these two spaces interrupt the
continuity of the authentic cultural experiences of the creative tourists who may be open to
experience authentic encounters not only during creative tourism activities but also in their
interactions with front-line service employees (e.g. in city hotels). Finally, by proposing
questions for future empirical research, the paper discusses the possibility of a transitive
relationship between SCAs and SSSs, which may bene?t both creative tourists and front line
service employees.
Creative tourism and creative tourists
Richards and Raymond (2000, p. 18) are ?rst to identify creative tourism as a result of
dissatisfaction from traditional cultural tourism product or as an extension of it.
Consequently, they developed the concept of creative tourism where creativity plays an
essential role in the processes of cultural production and consumption. They de?ne creative
tourism as:
. . . tourism which offers visitors the opportunity to develop their creative potential through active
participation in courses and learning experiences which are characteristic of the holiday
destination where they are undertaken.
Furthermore, they conceptualize creative tourists as consumers who look for more
engaging, interactive experiences which can help them in their personal development and
identity creation.
More recent work by Richards and Wilson (2006) builds on the previous work of Richards
and Raymond and asserts that creative tourism is an active process that draws upon local
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skills, expertise and traditions and offers a learning, self-developmental and transformatory
experience for the creative tourist.
Following these developments of creativity-led tourism as an alternative for:
. . . destinations seeking to avoid problems of serial reproduction of culture (Richards and Wilson,
2006, p. 1221).
UNESCO (2006, p. 3) also offered its working de?nition of creative tourism as:
. . . travel directed towards an engaged and authentic experience, with participative learning in
the arts, heritage, or special character of a place. It provides a connection with those who reside
in this place and create this living culture.
These two most commonly referred de?nitions of creative tourism paint a similar picture of
the creative tourist. As there are no empirical researches speci?cally on the characteristics
of creative tourists, the paper builds its assumptions about creative tourists based on these
two de?nitions. Therefore, creative tourists are visitors who:
B are willing to step beyond traditional ways of cultural tourism;
B search for alternatives;
B look for an authentic active, engaging, participative, learning and transformative holiday
experience;
B want to participate in creative activities for personal skill development;
B expect their active tourist experience to allow them to interact intensely and re?exively
with the host community; and
B use this touristic experience as a part of her identity formation;
These characteristics found in literature indicate that unlike the traditional cultural tourist,
creative tourists’ purpose is not looking at the culture but immersing themselves in the
culture, participating in the culture, interacting with people creating that culture and allowing
this authentic experience to transform and rede?ne them.
As the next section will discuss, emotions and authentic emotional displays are also an
essential part of each culture that people experience through personal, face to face
interactions. Hence this paper proposes that a holistic experience of culture, which the
creative tourist seeks, can only be possible in spaces where there is less outside (i.e.
organizational) control on interactions between hosts and tourists. Furthermore, based on
the above mentioned characteristics, creative tourists are likely to prefer less controlled,
culture-revealing interactions with their hosts instead of standardized, culture-free
interactions.
Emotions and culture
The literature on inter-disciplinary study of emotions has multiple approaches to explain
emotional experiences. On the one hand, certain approaches focus solely on internal factors
(e.g. biology, genetics, and instincts) for the explanation of emotional experiences. Darwin
(1965) for example, conceptualizes emotions as internal/natural and bases them on instinct.
Likewise the commonly referred universalist paradigm of emotions also suggests that a
universal human system exists not only for producing emotions but also for understanding
the expression of emotions (Grammer and Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1993 quoted in Eid and Diener,
2001).
On the other hand, other approaches like social constructionism focus on external factors
and base their explanation of emotional experiences on culture and cultural norms to
understand how speci?c sets of emotional concepts are used in cultures for various
purposes. Harre´ (1986) for example posits that there is no such thing as an emotion, but only
collectively manufactured states. Rosaldo (1984, p. 143) also contends that:
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. . . feelings are not substances to be discovered in our blood but social practices organized by
stories that we both enact and tell. They are structured by our forms of understanding.
In addition to these two extremes, a third group of researchers suggest that the internal and
external factors are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Eid and Diener (2001) for
example assert that researchers need to complement biological factors with a consideration
of the cultural context of emotions for a full understanding of emotional experiences and
expressions.
Likewise, Ko¨ vecses (2000) not only places importance to the role of physiological aspects
but he also emphasizes the importance of both the psychobiological basis of feeling and the
effects of culture in conceptualizing emotions. Ko¨ vecses (2000, p. 183) suggests that the
aspects of emotions which are not related to the physiology and thus not universal can be
explained by:
. . . cultural knowledge and pragmatic discourse functions that work according to divergent
culturally de?ned rules or scenarios.
Ko¨ veckses sees social, cognitive, pragmatic and bodily factors as complementary in
understanding the emotional experiences of society.
Although this paper acknowledges all three approaches, the physiological roots of emotions
are outside the scope of this paper. Hence, the paper focuses on the diversity of emotional
experiences and displays which are based on cultural differences. Therefore, there is a need
to understand culture and culture’s peculiar ways of shaping emotional experiences.
The question of what culture is has been a thrilling one for scholars in various ?elds since the
early de?nition of culture by Tyler (1924, quoted in Edles, 2002) as the:
. . . complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other
capabilities or habits acquired by man as a member of society.
After Geertz’s (1973, p. 89) seminal work of The Interpretation of Cultures, scholars replaced
Tyler’s expanded de?nition of culture with Geertz’s de?nition of culture as:
. . . shared symbols and/or meaning.
As many differences as these two approaches have, they also have some common points
such as culture being ‘‘collective’’, ‘‘shared’’ and ‘‘learned/acquired’’ among the members
of the same group and these qualities of culture ensure its strong in?uence on people from
their birth onward. Culture affects people by in?uencing how they think about the world, how
they understand the world, howthey viewthemselves and others. Emotional experiences are
no exception to this in?uence; culture also affects how people understand emotions and
emotional events and how they choose to display their emotions (see Markus and Kitayama,
1991).
Cultural norms and practices shape various aspects of emotions throughout individuals’
socializationprocessinasociety. Cultural institutions, rituals, artifacts, stories, languageandall
other means act astools throughwhichindividuals learnthepeculiar modesof behavior of that
society including the implicit norms related to emotions. Regarding that, Frijda and Mesquita
(1995) point out three aspects of emotions that are culturally in?uenced. The ?rst one is:
. . . the social consequences of emotions that regulate the expression and suppression of emotions.
Speci?c examples of how emotions are regulated by their consequences can easily be
found in languages, which have very pragmatic roles in creating shared norms in a culture.
For example in Turkey:
. . . the baby who doesn’t cry doesn’t get milk,
in Japan:
. . . the nail that stands out gets pounded on (Markus and Kitayama, 1991)
and in America:
. . . the squeaky wheel gets the grease (Markus and Kitayama, 1991).
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The second aspect is:
. . . the importance of cultural norms for experiencing different emotions.
Hochschild (1983) in her classical work ‘‘The Managed Heart’’ also discusses the role of
feeling rules, social norms that prescribe how people should feel in speci?c situations (e.g.
on a wedding day, at a funeral). A typical example is the individuals who are socialized by
the ‘‘Boys don’t cry’’ norm. When it comes to experiencing emotions which may lead to cry,
these individuals will be likely to automatically decrease their emotions for a more
culturally-?t emotional response (Mauss et al., 2008). For example, Nussbaum(2001, p. 157,
quoted in Wierzbicka, 2003) also provides an explanation of how different normative
teachings in different cultures diversify the emotional experiences:
Societies have different normative teachings with regard to the importance of honor, money,
bodily beauty and health, friendship, children, political power. They therefore have many
differences in anger, envy, fear, love, and grief . . .
Finally the third aspect that Frijda and Mesquita (1995) de?ne is:
. . . the social-cohesive functions of emotions.
Emotional norms of a culture are functional because they:
. . . ensure social stability and the well being of those involved (Bolton, 2005, p. 50)
they serve as the social lubricant of people’s everyday lives (Ashkanasy et al., 2002).
Most of the comparative research examining the above mentioned culturally in?uenced
aspects of emotion is based on the comparisons of Western and Eastern societies.
Cross-cultural psychologists for example distinguish between the independent (idiocentric)
and the interdependent (allocentric) self-construals (Markus and Kitayama, 1991). Cultures
in which idiocentrism is the predominant personality pattern are called individualistic
cultures (e.g., Western) and the cultures in which allocentrismis the predominant personality
pattern are called collectivistic cultures (e.g., Eastern cultures). In collectivistic cultures, the
social normis to maintain harmony with others, to meet social obligations, and to support the
goals of others who are in a social relationship with oneself. On the other hand, the norm in
individualistic cultures is to become independent from others and to pursue and assert
individual goals (Eid and Diener, 2001).
For example, North American cultural contexts which researchers consider as typical
individualistic cultures, place relatively strong value on happiness and the expression of
happiness (Matsumoto et al., 1998; Sommers, 1984). North American societies see
happiness as a sign of a ‘‘good self’’ and of psychological well-being (see Markus and
Kitayama, 1991), However, in Confucian contexts (Asian countries such China, Korea or
Japan) which researchers consider as typical collectivistic cultures, the society strongly
values the harmony among members of a group. As a result, intense personal happiness
might counteract that goal by elevating the individual above the group (e.g., Heine et al.,
2002). Thus, these socio-cultural contexts relatively encourage the decrease of happiness
while North-American contexts relatively encourage the increase of happiness (Mauss et al.,
2008).
Another example would be Western societies, which stress positive aspects of emotions
(because they demonstrate one’s authentic and unique individuality), and, by extension,
generally encourage emotional experience and expression (see Markus and Kitayama,
1991; Tsai and Levenson, 1997). In contrast, many East- Asian societies more strongly value
emotion decrease, especially with respect to ‘‘high-activity’’ emotions such as excitement
(e.g., Eid and Diener, 2001; Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey, 1988; Matsumoto, 1990; Tsai et al.,
2006). Authors, such as Klineberg (1938) and Potter (1988) discuss that Chinese society
consider emotions as dangerous, irrelevant and illness causing. Eid and Diener (2001) also
point out that Chinese people highly value moderation or suppression of emotions.
Until now the paper aimed to clarify two important points based on previous research
?ndings:
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1. The identi?cation and marking of the dimensions of emotions, which are socio-cultural
constructions, is essential. Emotional experiences and expressions of people are
intangible products of social and cultural processes, just like other products of culture
such as art, architecture and historical heritage, which are tangible.
2. A culture, then, may be described in part by that culture’s characteristic organization of
emotions (Middleton, 1989). Thus, creative tourists who aim to understand the authentic
culture of a society need to be open to experience the authentic emotional displays of
their hosts.
Control on authentic emotional displays: emotional labor
The services sector, which has reached more than 66 percent of the European workforce
(Parent-Thirion et al., 2007) requires employees to have frequent social interactions with the
customers. Furthermore, the services sector in general and tourism in speci?c de?ne the
success of interaction between employees and customer upon employees’ creation of an
appealing, positive emotional climate. In order to create an organizationally de?ned
‘‘positive experience’’ for the customer:
Employees work on their own emotions and seek to manipulate those of the customer, working
within the commercial feeling and display rules set by the organization (Bolton, 2005, p. 113):
An airline attendant who smiles at a rude passenger, the waiter who creates an ‘‘atmosphere of
pleasant dining’’ and the tour guide or the receptionist who makes us feel ‘‘welcome’’ are all paid
to manifest a speci?c emotional state as a part of their job (Hochschild, 1983, p. 11).
This phenomenon is referred to as emotional labor. Hochschild (1983) is the ?rst one to
de?ne emotional labor as:
. . . the management of feelings to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display.
Since then emotional labor has been an important topic of research for scholars in many
?elds. The more recent de?nitions of emotional labor are also in alignment with Hochschild’s
de?nition of the term, for example Grandey (2000, p. 97) de?nes emotional labor as:
. . . the process of regulating both feelings and expressions for organizational goals
and Ashforth and Tomiuk (2000, p. 184) also use the de?nition of emotional labor as:
. . . the act of conforming (or attempting to conform) to display rules or affective requirements that
prescribe on-the-job emotion expression.
The use of term emotional labor is appropriate only when emotion work is exchanged for
something such as wage. In other words, emotional labor is different from other types of
emotion management that people engage in their personal lives by the fact that emotional
labor has exchange value and is controlled by the organization (Wharton, 1999) and not by
the individual.
Emotional labor is a common characteristic of all standardized, face to face service
encounters, which are prescribed and controlled by organizations (e.g. hotels, restaurants,
airlines, hospitals, banks). However, for the speci?c purposes of this paper which is to
understand the possible transformative interactions between creative tourists and hospitality
industry, this paper will only consider the case of emotional labor in hotels. Furthermore, the
focus will be speci?cally on city/urban hotels where standardization and organizational
control of face to face interactions between employees and guests is stricter compared to
accommodation units in rural areas.
Emotional labor results in impaired social and cognitive skills, as well as greater
physiological and psychological reactivity (Mauss et al., 2008). Emotional labor is most
commonly associated with greater negative affect, lesser feelings of authenticity, greater job
strain, greater rates of burnout (Mauss et al., 2008) and emotional dissonance which leads to
emotional exhaustion, low job satisfaction and high intention to quit (Zapf, 2002).
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The results of a study by Salman-Ozturk et al. (2008) exhibit the current situation of emotional
labor in Istanbul. The study reveals that staged/unauthentic emotional displays and the
negative consequences related to them prevail in front of?ce and concierge departments of
?ve-star, four-star, and boutique hotels of Istanbul. The major ?ndings of the study are in
alignment with the literature suggesting that emotional labor is a source of increased
physiological and psychological reactivity (Mauss et al., 2008). The results of the study show
that emotional labor results in higher levels of emotional exhaustion and employees perceive
emotional labor to be a source of increased health problems and intention to quit from their
job (Salman-Ozturk et al., 2008).
Divergent spaces in cities: SCAs and SSSs
The expectations of creative tourists are very different fromformer types of tourists who used
to settle for the ‘‘staged/unreal authenticity’’. As creative travelers demand to be ‘‘real
actors’’ in the ‘‘real/authentic lives of hosts’’, creative tourism inspires to assist them to get in
a closer contact with the host community and to explore diverse cultures of the world not on
surface but in depth. Examining the examples of creative tourism activities from around the
world shows that authenticity during workshops and hands-on cultural experiences are sine
qua non of creative tourism activities (Creative Tourism New Zealand, 2009); Santa Fe
Creative Tourism Experiences, 2009; Global Tourism Industry News, 2009; Art in Tropical
Australia, 2009).
However, during their experiences in cities such as Istanbul, creative tourists do not only
exist in spaces where they engage in creative activities, they move between different
spaces. The city offers tourists various spaces that are constructions of different realities.
Therefore, there is a need to understand what kind of experiences may emerge as the
creative tourist moves between these different spaces/realities. This paper chooses to focus
speci?cally on two spaces in the city for its explicit purposes. The ?rst one is spaces where
creative activities take place and the second one is spaces where creative travelers stay or
in other words accommodation units, such as hotels. The researchers name these spaces
respectively as SCAs (spaces for creative activities) and SSSs (spaces for standardized
services) and posit that they are divergent spaces. Figure 1 shows how the paper
conceptualizes these two new spatial constructs.
The authors conceptualize SCAs as places where creative activities take place with the aim
to offer the travelers authentic cultural experiences, help them understand the culture and
the people living in that culture. By being in SCAs, creative travelers separate themselves
from other tourists because the creative experience at SCAs offers a much deeper
exploration of the culture than that sought by the traditional tourist. SCAs provide
experiences to the very core of the culture which the creative traveler is curious about.
The examples of SCAs can be very diverse. The studio of a local artist where the tourist
learns the technique of a certain local art; the local music roomwhere the tourist experiences
listening and playing the local music, and the kitchen where the tourist takes cooking classes
to specialize in local cuisine are all examples of SCAs. Although activities are different in
each case, one thing is common to all and that is the fact that all SCAs provide personal
interaction with local people.
The personal interaction of the creative tourist and the locals within SCAs is a naturally
emerging intercultural exchange. An external structure (e.g. an organization) does not
control this interaction. The sole regulatory bodies of this interaction are the authentic norms
of speci?c cultures of the tourist and the host. Unlike the front line employees of hotels who
are controlled by organizational display rules, the local people in SCAs can interact with the
tourists in their authentic ways including their authentic emotional styles.
The communication of authentic emotional styles has bene?ts for both sides. For the creative
tourist, this type of communication can provide an in-depth learning of culture. This novel
and unfamiliar encounter helps the tourist to clarify the intentions, attitudes, identity and
meaning of the host. Eventually, the activity becomes the engaging, self-developing,
transformative experience that the creative tourist is after.
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For the host, the chance to communicate through authentic emotional style is even more
important since communicating authentic/real feelings protects him from experiencing
unnecessary and harmful emotional dissonance.
On the other hand, the reality of standardized service spaces (SSSs) is constructed for
different purposes. The model de?nes SSSs as places which offer more familiar, less
surprising and comforting experiences compared to the novel, surprising and
unaccustomed experiences offered at SCAs. SSSs are not only standard physically but
also emotionally. Organizationally prescribed feeling rules prevent front-line employees of
SSSs from communicating with their authentic emotional styles during interactions with the
guests. Organizations train and supervise their employees to provide the hotel customers
with a standardized ‘‘moment of truth’’ (Carlzon, 1987) each and every time.
There are various examples of SSSs in the city (e.g. hotels, restaurants, banks, hospitals,
airlines), however the focus of the paper is on accommodation units in cities such as hotels.
As typical examples of SSSs, hotels in cities mostly employ the same formulaic mechanisms
that control service interaction in order to offer better service experience. In fact, this
standardization may ful?ll the expectations of a typical mass or cultural tourist. However,
considering the characteristics and expectations of creative tourist discussed in the ?rst
section, a less controlled, natural, culture-led interaction may be preferable for creative
Figure 1 A new spatial model for the creative city
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tourists. Therefore a typical, standardized service encounter may diminish the ability of city
hotels to create uniqueness for creative tourists.
As the descriptions of these two spaces clarify, when travelers move between these
divergent spaces, they experience different and contradictory realities. As travelers move
from SCAs to SSSs, they also move away from an authentic experience to a staged
experience. The authentic cultural experience of the creative city traveler is interrupted once
he gets outside the creative context (e.g. workshop) to enter an accommodation unit (e.g.
hotel). Within a standardized hospitality unit, the creative tourist has no more the chance to
learn and experience the authentic local culture. Even more, the only experience that the
tourist can get is the unauthentic performances of hospitality employees during service
encounters. Or in other terms, while the suppliers of creative activities try to offer the most
original cultural experiences in SCAs, the accommodation suppliers work really hard to offer
the most standardized/staged service encounter in SSSs.
Conclusions and discussions
Employees of the hospitality industry as being an important part of the service industry
workforce have come to be de?ned as:
. . . mere simulacrums on the organizationally designed emotional stage (Bolton, 2005, p. 4).
Today, emotional labor is so embedded in service work that it goes unseen, unrewarded and
even exploited.
Many different variables lead to this current situation. All those variables are embedded in
the greater phenomenon of tourism, which historically has developed on the discourse of
sovereignty of the customer (du Gay and Salaman, 1992), disregarding the detrimental
in?uences that this sovereignty has on the environment, on the local community and on
tourism employees. However, the new generations of tourism are more sensitive to these
issues. The new generations of tourism, like creative tourism, aspire to achieve a progress
that can bene?t both people and places.
As this paper acknowledges this trend, it also hopes to stimulate discussion on whether the
bene?ts of creative tourism for cities and for local communities can also be extended to
include the hospitality workforce in order to intervene with the phenomenon of emotional
labor. The paper, by offering a preliminary model of two spaces with different characteristics,
questions whether hospitality industry can follow the example of SCAs to a certain extent,
allowing the front line employees more space for authentic emotional displays and offering
creative tourists a more culture-laden encounter.
This paper suggests that this discussion should start with a focus on the characteristics and
motivations of creative travelers. As far as the literature shows until now, creative travelers
prefer a type of tourism that differentiates them from the rest of the tourists, as for them
tourism is a source of building identity. They are after the original not the standard, they are
motivated by a need to learn new cultures in every creative way possible, they are open to
novel experiences and they are ready to appreciate authentic encounters.
Based on these characteristics, and the proposed conceptual framework, this paper
proposes the following questions for further empirical research: ‘‘What is the perception of
creative tourists about the staged emotional performances taking place in SSSs, such as
hotels? Considering their previously discussed motivations, can researchers assume that
anything standard and arti?cial will be repulsive to creative tourists, including the emotionally
prescribed interactions with service employees? Given the chance will they prefer to interact
with service employees within the emotional norms of that culture and will they perceive this
as a learning experience rather than a potential source of con?ict?’’
Any af?rmative answer on these questions will provide the possibility that creative tourists
prefer the continuity of their authentic, active, engaging, participative, learning and
transformative holiday experiences as they move between different spaces in the city.
Elaborating answers to the above questions in the theoretical realmwill not only contribute to
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the discussion of emotional labor and authenticity in different travel modes but can also
practically improve the quality of the creative travel experience, for such an effort will reveal
what creative tourists actually demand and appreciate and what the hospitality industry
takes for granted and delivers as the one best way of service. Furthermore, this paper
suggests that as far as different expectations of different types of tourists are concerned,
there can be no one best way for service encounters. In addition to that as the organizational
control on display rules increases the resemblance of service encounters in different hotels,
the human part of the service can no longer ensure differentiation of one hotel from another.
Eventually resulting in a feeling of ‘‘placelessness’’ (Relph, 1976) for the tourist.
Historically, standard service spaces are not designed for the needs of the creative traveler.
In many cases SSSs just adapt to commonly accepted industry practices in every way from
service encounter to design of physical space. However, in case of an incongruency
between what the creative tourists demand and what the hospitality industry provides, in a
way consistent with what this paper suggests, practical implications will be inevitable. For
any hotel aiming to accommodate creative tourists will need to reconsider the level of
standardization. The change might range from physical space design to operational issues
such as the current de?nition of service encounter, marketing activities and human
resources policies. The de?nition of creative tourist suggests that she is after an authentic
experience by nature, thus the paper claims that this type of tourist will not demand staged
emotional performances and consequently hotels will reduce their control on emotional
content of service encounter. Furthermore, the standardized service encounter will no longer
be the sole focus of marketing communication. Human resources activities will also
acknowledge the value of native culture as a service component; hence selection, training
and socialization processes will be designed accordingly. Considering these hypothesized
consequences, ?nding out answers to previously mentioned questions by further research
would practically make sense as well.
The authors of this paper are aware that the research on creative tourismis yet not enough to
support the conceptual model that this paper offers and the related hypothesized
consequences. However, the aim behind this paper is neither to offer facts nor foresee the
distant future of tourism. The aim is to foster discussion and research on how tourism and
tourists will evolve with the current search for creativity and how this transformation will
in?uence the tourism industry as a whole.
This paper chose to focus on potential impacts of this transformation on hospitality industry
and hospitality employees, for the authors propose that the discussions of a new concept
like creative tourism should include the clash of different socio-cultural realities and the
questioning of established organizational rules. Therefore, the literature needs further
empirical exploration of how far the creative tourist can go in her ambition for authenticity in
the city and how this will impact the stakeholders of the tourism industry.
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About the authors
Duygu Salman is a holder of an MSc in industrial/organizational psychology from City
University of NewYork, Weissman School of Arts and Sciences. She is currently pursuing her
PhD in organization studies at Istanbul Bilgi University and is a lecturer at the Department of
Tourism Administration at Bog? azic¸ i University. Duygu Salman is the corresponding author
and can be contacted at: [email protected]
Duygu Uygur is a holder of an MA in organizational behavior from Marmara University,
Institute of Social Sciences. She is currently pursuing her PhD in organization studies at
Istanbul Bilgi University and is a research assistant at the same university.
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