The Role of Employee Service Orientation in Turnover in the U.S. Hotel Industry

High turnover in the hotel industry is an ongoing and important issue for the hotel industry. Turnover costs accrue to hotels from a variety of sources. Loss of experienced employees lowers the level of organizational knowledge among the staff thereby increasing the risk of not providing a consistent and high quality customer experience. This may result in decreasing brand image and brand loyalty. Thus, an understanding of the antecedents of turnover, both individual and organizational, in the hotel industry is important to reduce turnover with respect to the organization as well the intent to leave the hospitality industry. This exploratory study investigates an individual antecedent of turnover intention, employee service orientation, to empirically test a model linking service orientation to the traditional constructs commonly studied in relation to turnover intention including the employee job satisfaction, employee commitment to the organization and employee intention to leave the organization or leave the hotel industry. Partial Least Squares analysis was performed on a turnover model using responses from 63 hotel employees located in the United States. Service orientation was shown to ultimately explain up to 30% of the variability in employee's intention to turnover either their position in a hotel or to leave the hotel industry. Service orientation level was also directly related to intent to leave the hospitality industry but not intent to leave the organization. We discuss the implications of these findings for the hotel industry as well as hotel managers.