Abstract

Tourism workplaces are often critiqued for exploitative practices, gendered and racialised division of labour, poor working conditions, high labour turnover, and high prevalence of harassment and bullying. Yet, research in the area often focuses on managerial and tourist perspectives, overlooking the experiences of workers themselves, with notable exceptions. Frequently, there is a failure to connect workers’ individual outcomes with the wider societal, environment and/or organisational practices, and the worker perspective rarely explicitly features in conference themes. Additionally, research into sustainable tourism seldom focuses on addressing working conditions despite ‘decent work’, ‘inequalities’, ‘wellbeing’ and ’poverty’ all being part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Acknowledging the need for worker experiences to be more prominent on the tourism research agenda and the need for more international collaborations to broaden perspectives and provide a wider evidence base, this workshop aims to bring together conference attendees to discuss a range of critical issues around tourism work. The workshop intends to map attendees’ research interests, identify areas where research collaborations could be built, and to set the foundation for a new network of academics open to collaborating on research projects around tourism workplaces, worker perspectives and employment relations.