Leisure and work outcomes of hotel employees in Accra

Abstract

Leisure participation has attracted research attention across diverse segments of the population. A neglected segment, however, is hotel employees who have attracted little attention despite the unique nature of their job and its contribution to the growth and sustenance of the tourism industry. This study sought to assess the leisure participation of hotel employees in Accra. The study adopted the positivist approach and a questionnaire was used to gather data from 330 hotel employees who were selected using the convenience sampling technique. The findings revealed that the leisure activity of the employees was largely sedentary with the main activities as watching Television and reading books. Furthermore, the main leisure motivation of the hotel employees was stimulus avoidance while the least was social motivation. In addition, the employees encountered four forms of leisure constraints. The foremost relates to hotel work characteristics such as long hours of work and working overtime while the least was structural constraints. These constraints were negotiated with both behavioural and cognitive strategies. The employees were satisfied with their leisure experiences and these experiences positively influenced the job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion of employees. Nonetheless, the type of leisure activity undertaken was not related to emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction which signify a disconnection between leisure activity choice and work outcome. The study recommends that the management of hotels should adopt strategies such as designing suitable and reasonable working hours and permitting free time to compensate for working extra hours to facilitate smooth co-existence between work and leisure.