Work Life Balance for Sustainable Tourism Development

The tourism and hospitality industry is very much a ‘people industry’, which requires a stable and talented workforce as a fundamental component. However, there are some aspects of the industry that make it unattractive to potential employees. These aspects include the long and unsocial hours of work, the low pay and often stressful working environment (Deery and Jago, 2015: Karatepe, 2013). These aspects contribute to the industry’s reputation for not providing staff with an acceptable work-life balance. The question then becomes how the tourism and hospitality industry can contribute to a better balance and thus underpin the socio-cultural aspects of sustainability. This study examines the sustainability of the industry across three countries, Australia, the United Kingdom (UK) and New Zealand, by focusing on whether tourism employees in hospitality organisations consider they have a balance between their personal and work lives. Hospitality is chosen as the focus for this study since it plays a fundamentally important role in underpinning the viability of the broader tourism industry. Current practices are confronted by larger societal changes in the labour market, where lifelong careers within the same firm (or industry) are challenged by rapid employee turnover, demands for greater flexibility, new technologies, and alternative work schedules. We discuss how collaboration between industry, employees and wider community may help underpin sustainable tourism development.