Title: Maids and housekeepers at luxury hotels: life stories in hotels of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Authors: Juana Alejandrina Norrild; Maximiliano E. Korstanje

Addresses: Department of Communication, University of La Plata, Avenue 7, No. 776, La Plata, B1900, Argentina ' Department of Economics, University of Palermo, Buenos Aires, 1414, Argentina ORCID: 0000-0002-5149-1669

Abstract: The tourism industry evinces a high turnover of staff which needs further hard training and organisation. Broadly speaking, the service quality seems to be directly proportional to excessive working hours, which are accompanied by less-paid wages and hard working conditions. This paper interrogates furtherly on the (real) motivations of maid and housekeepers who are professionally educated to serve high purchasing power tourists. The research focuses on the needs, socio-economic background of maid and housekeepers as well as the pro and cons of their daily tasks. Based on the life story and story-telling and as the main method of study, we conduct exploratory research -sampled by 8 in-depth interviews-. The research takes place -following the snowball technique- in luxury hotels geographically situated in Buenos Aires city in the second semester of 2019. The current investigation aims at discussing the interconnection of individual contexts with the labour relations in the industry of tourism and hospitality.

Keywords: housekeepers; women; feminism; luxury hotels; Buenos Aires city; labour exploitation; tourist experience; ethnography; story life.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTA.2021.116091

International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, 2021 Vol.8 No.2, pp.129 - 147

Received: 11 Dec 2020
Accepted: 26 Jan 2021
Published online: 09 Jul 2021 *