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This is an invited 75article for Tourism Review addressing tourism employment, past and future.

Conceptual analysis of tourism employment with a focus on paradox.

Inherent paradox which underpins tourism employment.

A wholly original take on tourism employment.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the problem with how gender is positioned in hospitality and tourism management studies. It recommends critical theories to investigate how gender is researched in the sector’s academic and institutional systems.

The conceptual study explains contemporary gender theories and gives examples of relevant hospitality and tourism management studies. A four point critical agenda for researching gender is proposed and justified.

The study highlights how the focus on “female leadership” as different from the male norm and the use of traditional theoretical framings reinforce stereotypes about the primacy of women’s domestic commitments to their detriment.

A limitation of this academy focussed study is that it has not recommended specific initiatives to combat specific issues of gender discrimination in hospitality and tourism employment. A further limitation is that the primary focus was on critical management theory to explain heteronormative based gender discrimination. It did not discuss queer theory.

In addition, a new research agenda, steps are proposed to change the masculine culture. Hospitality and tourism universities and research institutions should review men’s/women’s/gender diverse representation at leadership levels. Critical gender research approaches may also be fostered by sectorial conference streams and journal special issues and university graduate research students should be taught to design such studies.

The use of contemporary approaches in gender studies will enable researchers to propose more targeted equality and diversity management actions for industry. They will also assist educators to better design curricula that protect and promote the interests of women studying a hospitality, tourism or events degree and those who identify as gender diverse.

The paper challenges the masculine status quo in hospitality and tourism management gender studies, arguing that adherence to traditional orthodoxies has stifled the development of critical paradigms and methodologies. Its key contribution is to reveal the advantages that critical gender theorising can bring to further the aim of gender equality by showing practical applications.

The purpose of this paper is to explore why workers remain in long hospitality careers and to challenge the frequent portrayal of careers in the sector as temporary and unsatisfactory.

The study took an interpretative social constructionist approach. Methods used were memory-work, semi-structured interviews and intersectional analysis.

A key finding in this study is that career longevity in hospitality is not solely dependent on career progression. Strong social connection, a professional self-identity and complex interesting work contribute to long careers.

The study contributes detailed empirical knowledge about hospitality career paths in New Zealand. Conclusions should be generalised outside the specific context with caution.

The findings that hospitality jobs can be complex and satisfying at all hierarchical ranks hold practical implications for Human Resource Managers in the service sector. To increase career longevity, hospitality employers should improve induction and socialisation processes and recognise their employees’ professional identity.

This paper significantly extends the notion of belonging and social connection in service work. “Social connection” is distinctly different from social and networking career competencies. Strong social connection is created by a fusion of complex social relationships with managers, co-workers and guests, ultimately creating the sense of a respected professional identity and satisfying career.

The contemporary concept of a successful hospitality career is associated with an upwards career trajectory; however, this paper suggests that at the lower hierarchical levels of service work, many individuals enjoy complex satisfying careers with no desire for further advancement.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the immediate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the hospitality workforce in situ between mid-April and June 2020.

This is a viewpoint paper that brings together a variety of sources and intelligence relating the impacts on hospitality work of the COVID-19 pandemic at three levels: macro (global, policy, government), meso (organisational) and micro (employee). It questions whether the situations faced by hospitality workers as a result of the pandemic are seed-change different from the precarious lives they normally lead or just a (loud) amplification of the “normal”.

In light of the fluid environment relating to COVID-19, conclusions are tentative and question whether hospitality stakeholders, particularly consumers, governments and the industry itself, will emerge from the pandemic with changed attitudes to hospitality work and hospitality workers.

This raises questions about hospitality work for key stakeholders to address in the future, some of which are systemic in terms of how precarious labour forces, critical to the global economy are to be considered by policy makers, organisations in a re-emerging competitive market for talent and for those who chose (or not) to work in hospitality.

This paper contributes to ongoing debates about precarious work and the extent to which such practices are institutionalised and adopts an “amplification model” that may have value in futures-orientated analysis about hospitality and tourism.

This paper is wholly original and a reflection on the COVID-19 crisis. It provides a point of wider reference with regard to responses to crises and their impact on employment in hospitality, highlighting how ongoing change, fluidity and uncertainty serve to magnify and exacerbate the precarious nature of work in the industry.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the social categories of gender, age and class influence networking practices and career progression in the 4–5-star hotel sector in Australia and New Zealand. It argues that in this type of workplace the practice of networking is so normalized that it is assumed an inclusive, gender-neutral activity.

This paper draws on 18 semi-structured interviews. Inductive analysis was used uncover themes, sub-themes and emergent patterns. An intersectionally sensitive approach was followed.

The significance of networking processes for career progression in the 4–5-star hotel sectors was a recurring theme. Networking reflects historically embedded gendering practices that heighten existing class-based structural privilege for groups of men.

The focus is on hotel employees in Australia and New Zealand with the findings are not implicitly generalizable.

Networks are important for women as their “merit” may not be immediately visible. Well-structured mentoring schemes need to be adopted as part of the affirmative action required to tilt the “skewed playing field”.

Studies that indicate how the gendering of networking practices reinforce career privilege and penalty in specific organizations have been lacking, as have studies favouring an intersectional approach. This study seeks to redress these omissions.

Are peaches, Caesar salad and chocolate masculine or feminine food? Literature suggests that there is a clear association between certain types of food, portion sizes and gendered identities. This research paper and short film aims to explore the theory in practice of food consumption for young consumers, particularly impression management required to create/maintain an attractive identity to the opposite sex.

The authors adopt an interpretive approach to an in‐depth analysis of the food practices of an all male and an all female household. They use a theory in practice methodology to explore their food consumption.

It is found that despite enlightenment in many areas, gendered identities are still strongly associated with food consumption. The experiment in which each household consumed a meal associated with the opposite gender offers insight into the association between food consumption and gendered identity. The social implications of the research demonstrate that masculine identity is supported and negotiated through what he is eating, whereas feminine identity is being constructed by what she is not eating. It is concerning that an attractive feminine identity is premised on omission rather than consumption and traps many females into a negative and potentially harmful relationship with food consumption.

The use of videography allows insight into the negotiation of an underpinning cultural attitude where women eat less to be what consumer culture has defined as an attractive feminine identity which means being slimmer and smaller than males.

This paper aims to propose a “Four-F (finding facts, fostering alternates, fulfilling implementation and feasibility testing)” action plan to global food service businesses (FSB) such as restaurants (dine-in/take away) to build resilience during times of global crises. The 2019 Coronavirus disease and FSBs apply as working examples elaborating the proposed Four-F action plan with several managerial implications for the internal and external stakeholders of FSBs.

The method involves reviewing and coding 108 articles using the PRISMA approach, then applying findings to develop the Four-F action plan integrating multiple theoretical concepts (such as stakeholder, crisis management and dynamic capabilities).

There are two key findings. First, though all four crisis phases should be considered by decision-makers as part of their contingency planning process, the pre and post-crisis stages need higher attention. Second, the Four-F action plan provides specific recommendations to FSBs stakeholders (consumers, suppliers and government) for each crisis phase (pre-crisis, crisis emergence, crisis occurrence and post-crisis).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that has incorporated multiple theoretical frameworks (stakeholder theory, crisis management and dynamic capabilities) within the FSBs context and provided the Four-F action plan for decision-makers to understand and manage crisis phases.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to ask whether it is the notion of choice (a pro‐life work/life balance decision) that influences woman's desire to strive for promotion within a hotel organisation or is the choice made for female managers by a system of organisational processes.

This research within an international hotel group in Australia and New Zealand explored what barriers prevent women from reaching the top echelons in hotel management. A qualitative approach used semi‐structured interviews to study the intersection of gender, age and time in life with career progression and their combined impact on the glass ceiling phenomenon.

The interviews revealed that the perception of glass ceiling barriers faced by women differed depending on where they were in their career cycle. They were revealed as the “long hours” culture, the old boy's network, hiring practices and geographical mobility. These significantly influenced women's work‐life balance, and personal‐life choices.

Interviews were carried out in three locations across a variety of job positions; therefore, this study has a reasonable degree of validity. Findings could be applied to other large hotel enterprises in Australia and New Zealand.

The findings from this study offer implications for management practice.

The hospitality industry faces a worldwide shortage of skilled staff. This paper seeks to answer why the hotel sector is struggling to retain talented female employees who wish to take advantage of the managerial career paths offered.