The Gig Economy in Hospitality: Opportunities and Exploitation

Abstract

The rising gig economy has triggered expedited transformation in labor market within any other industry and the hospitality industry has not been an exception as one of the worst hit industries. In this paper, the two poles of the opportunity and exploitation of the gig-based hospitality work will be referred to, where the flexibility, autonomy, and innovation should be discussed in the context of precarity, vulnerability, and unequal power relationships. In line with the trends in the contemporary labor market, the paper will investigate how the hotel, restaurant and tourism services have been transformed into platform-based and freelance agreements to respond to the elasticity of peak and decline demand, and minimize fixed costs. These usually create gateways to workplaces, increased income and possibilities of balancing between personal engagements and work timings to the workers. Such advantages are however offset by the lack of job security, lack of social security, low incomes and lack of career progressions. The study unveils the issue of regulatory gaps and the lack of clarity of the category of employment of which the corporations may dispose the risks and retain the labor in control. On the one hand, consumer demands that are necessitating and warrant precarious practices are maintaining precarious, cost-effective, and at-demand services. The paper will present the argument that the vision of the gig economy should be approached with caution and putting this concept within the context of the continuation of the discussion of the problem of labor rights, digital technologies, and neoliberal reorganization. The paper has come to the conclusion that sustainable policy frameworks and industry principles and collective strategies have to be present to the extent that to make sure that flexibility is not a cost to fairness. Finally, the gig economy in hospitality can be new and threatening: it will become not only innovative but also enabling, however, until it is regulated it will not be allowed to go beyond facilitating numerous systems of exploitation of the workers who have fallen behind as informal workers.