Behind the Smile, Second Edition: The Working Lives of Caribbean Tourism

2. Work and Encounters in Tourism

2. Work and Encounters in Tourism The workers’ narratives that comprise the bulk of this book relate to important issues in our understanding of tourism. This chapter strives to frame and provide context, beyond the mostly macrolevel issues dealt with in Chapter 1, for the stories that follow.1 Tourism Work and Encounters with Guests What makes the work of tourism distinctive from most jobs, and particularly interesting, is the frequent interaction its workers have with guests. Workers, who are mostly from modest educational and social backgrounds, intermingle with guests from distant lands and cultures who have widely different lifestyles and levels of income. What also makes the interaction unique, as Malcolm Crick (1989) notes, is that during the interaction one is at leisure while the other is at work. One has economic assets but little knowledge of the local culture, while the other has cultural capital but little money. One is usually white and the other usually black. One is from the First World and the other from the developing or Third World. The encounters between host and guest are mostly transitory, nonrepetitive, and asymmetrical (Cohen 1984). Most visitors are interested in achieving immediate gratification rather than in developing a relationship. They need not consider how their present 1. Sources that were particularly important in writing this chapter were review articles by Erik Cohen (1984), Malcolm Crick (1989), and Amanda Stronza (2001). actions will affect their relationship in the future, because there isn’t likely to be one. Hence the relationship is prone to exploitation and mistrust. One exception is the hotel guest, especially repeat clientele , who intends to return. That most tourists are white and most Barbadians are black in- fluences many interactions between tourists and locals. Racism or expectations of it based on the country’s colonial history sometimes complicates interactions. Workers in positions of authority, such as hotel manager Martin Barrow in Chapter 4, find that some guests have a difficult time accepting managers and supervisors who are black. Sometimes it becomes comical, as in an incident described by one of my students, Karin Wirthlin, in which an unhappy guest went to the front desk to lodge a complaint. The hotel manager, a black man, just happened to be at the desk when the visitor approached , loudly demanding to see the manager. The manager said, “Yes, that’s me.” The visitor refused to believe that a black man could be the manager of a luxury hotel. When the manager repeated that he was indeed the manager, the visitor left in a huff. Other tourists may simply make statements or ask questions that reveal how salient race is to them. For example, I once saw an American tourist walk directly up to two hotel barmen and ask, “How do you guys feel about waiting on white people? Does it bother you?” Some scholars (Phillips 1999; Mowforth and Munt 1998) argue that merely having to serve white vacationers, many of whom believe themselves and their cultures to be superior, puts black hosts in an inferior position and that many acquiesce to a view of whites as dominant. The history of the Caribbean has been one in which its people were taught the superiority of things white and the inferiority of things black. It is not surprising then that many workers do not see the difference between merely providing service (doing one’s job) and espousing a subservient mentality. As one manager explained, “Too many of my people equate service with servitude.” Hence, a focus of the training within the tourism industry has been teaching employees to be friendly and courteous and to look beyond race. As one government leader warned his fellow Barbadians , “I urge you to reflect on the damage which even a ten to fifteen percent decline in tourism expenditure will do to the Barbados economy and to further reflect on . . . the impact of such [racial] confrontation on tourism activity. National pride, yes. Racism[,] no” (Gmelch and Gmelch 1997). While urging its employees to be color blind, the tourism industry in Barbados itself has its own record of racism. Hotel manage26 Work and Encounters in Tourism ment still remains disproportionately white. Service provided to local black Barbadians in hotels and restaurants is often slow or indifferent . Many resorts discourage locals from using their beaches. Hotels that have converted to all-inclusive plans no longer allow people who are not guests...