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While former literature has shown that people have a strong tendency to seek religious support during difficult times, knowledge gaps exist in how the mechanism of religiosity works to support employees’ mental status and performance. Therefore, based on self-categorization theory, this study aims to examine the effects of employees’ intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity on building their mental toughness and mindfulness and the further formation of employees’ political skills.

Data was collected from 404 full-time hotel employees working in 34 hotels in Turkey during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in spring 2020. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the proposed hypotheses.

Results of this study show that intrinsic religiosity improves employees’ mental toughness, while extrinsic religiosity enhances employee mindfulness. Additionally, both mental toughness and mindfulness help employees to develop political skill.

This study enriches knowledge to workplace religiosity literature and expands the research scope of religion-related research in hospitality and tourism literature. Future studies are recommended to consider religious heterogeneity and longitudinal design.

To foster employee mental well-being, hotel firms should create a religious-friendly workplace and develop religion-friendly policies. Opportunities should be created within hospitality organizations for employees to develop and use their political skills in needed work aspects.

The findings of this study contribute to valuable theoretical and practical implications. To the best of the knowledge, this study is one of the first attempts to study hotel employees’ religiosity during the COVID-19 pandemic.