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Tourism Management 36 (2013) 57e65

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Tourism Management

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Facial attractiveness and stereotypes of hotel guests: An experimental research�Zana �Civre a,*, Mladen Kne�zevi�c b,1, Petra Zabukovec Baruca a,2, Da�sa Fabjan a,3

aUniversity of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies e Turistica, Obala 11a, 6320 Portoro�z, SloveniabUniversity of Zagreb, Faculty of Law, Study Centre for Social Work, Nazorova 51, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia

h i g h l i g h t s

< Stereotypes affect social interaction between hotel employees and their guests.< In the experiment three most common perceived guests’ characteristics were examined.< Guests are stereotyped by hotel employees according to their facial attractiveness.< Facially more attractive are perceived as more demanding, kind and better consumers.

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 27 March 2012Accepted 3 November 2012

Keywords:Service encounterSocial interactionFacial attractivenessStereotypesExperimental researchHospitality industry

* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ386 41 773 563; faxE-mail addresses: zana.civre@turistica.si (�Z. �Civre

(M. Kne�zevi�c), petra.zabukovec@turistica.si (P. Zabuturistica.si (D. Fabjan).

1 Tel.: þ385 1 489 5815.2 Tel: þ386 41 822 311; fax: þ386 5 617 7020.3 Tel: þ386 5 617 7042; fax: þ386 5 617 7020.

0261-5177/$ e see front matter � 2012 Elsevier Ltd.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2012.11.004

a b s t r a c t

The purpose of this research was to determine social interaction between hospitality employees andtheir guests, and consequently assess how front-line employees categorize and stereotype hotel guestsbased on their facial attractiveness with reference to three main characteristics. Social stereotypesrepresent a means of information transmission in the communication process and can enable a morerapid transfer of information during the service delivery in the hospitality industry. The experimentalresearch was conducted with 113 hospitality employees at seven hospitality organizations on theSlovenian coast. The results showed a correlation between the perception of hotel guests’ facial attrac-tiveness with their assumed characteristics that can lead to stereotyping. Hotel employees often link theguest’s facial attractiveness with three common perceived characteristics e guests’ propensity to spend,guests’ predisposition to being demanding and guests’ ‘kindness’, and tend to stereotype them on thesame basis. These research findings contribute to a better understanding of the complex interactions thatoccur during a service encounter and show how facial attractiveness of guests plays an important role inthe construction of stereotypes by the hospitality employees.

� 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Service encounter can be understood as an interaction in theprocess of communication between two participants e anemployee and a guest, each acting out their specific role (Grandey &Brauburger, 2002). This is why the service encounter plays a crucialrole in service marketing as well as in service differentiation,quality control, delivery systems, and customer satisfaction(Wu, 2007). There are numerous researches about the customer’sperspective and their perception (Bansal & Taylor, 1999) that show

: þ386 5 617 7020.), mladen.knezevic@pravo.hrkovec Baruca), dasa.fabjan@

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the importance of an employee’s attitude toward the guest in thefield of quality. In social cognition, as the prevalent topic ofcontemporary experimental social psychology, many researcherstry to understand sense making of perceivers’ social worlds(Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2001). Relating to social cognition, Bruner(1957) argues, that categorization is an inevitable component ofperception. McGarty (1999) defined categorization as “the processof understanding what something is by knowing what other thingsit is equivalent to, and what other things it is different from”. Crispand Turner (2010) argue that people can also be categorized muchlike objects, events, concepts, attitudes and opinions. In fact, cate-gories can be applied to all aspects of our lives ranging frompurchases of basic items through entertainment venues such as, e.g.cafés or restaurants. This can also be valid with regards to theemployeeeguest relationship in which both are perceivers fromtheir own point of view, as Ule (2005) adds that one role of cate-gorization is to simplify a person’s world perception. This makes itpossible for a person to compose a fast impression of another

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person (Crisp & Turner, 2010; Sanderson, 2010) as impressions arebased on only small pieces of information (Sanderson, 2010).According to social cognition theories, first impressions may beimportant in relation to the initiation and maintenance of socialrelations and have a great effect on a person’s attitude and behaviortoward others (Kuzmanovic et al., 2012). Additionally, firstimpressions are formed on the basis of facial expressions, appear-ances, or particular actions as people tend to infer more about thepersonality, actions and their own expectations after forming theirimpressions. When people develop impressions of others, stereo-types are used as beliefs about personal traits (Biernat & Billings,2001).

To understand a world of complex stimuli people regularlydevelop and use categorical representations (e.g. stereotypes) whendealing with other people (Fiske, 1998; Macrae & Bodenhausen,2000). Deaux and Lewis (1984) argue that stereotyping is an arrayof inferences about physical characteristics. Physical appearance is,along with perceived similarity, complementarity and reciprocityone of the four key determinants of interpersonal attraction (Crisp &Turner, 2010). Additionally, the physical appearance is the basisof physical attractiveness and the face is the main determinant(Patzer, 2006). Many physical attractiveness researchers study facialattractiveness (Berscheid & Reis, 1998); and the general consensusis that people do assign others a place in social categories by usingphysical facial features (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000). Facialcharacteristics play an important role in determining attractivenessand subsequently attributing behavior and personality character-istics (Deaux & Lewis, 1984).

Several studies have shown that facial attractiveness can influ-ence our social interactions and behavior (Adams, Ambady,Nakayama, & Shimojo, 2011) to the point of being one of theleading socialization factors from early childhood onward.Numerous studies have confirmed this, following the well-knownperson perception study of the “beautiful is good” stereotype byDion et al. from 1972. This thesis was re-confirmed by Langlois,Ritter, Casey, and Sawin (1995), the leading authors and one ofthe pioneers of studying the impact of facial attractiveness on socialinteractions, determining that babies with more attractive facesreceive more attention than babies with less attractive faces.Johnson (2005) discovered that newborns recognize a face andprefer it over objects or feature assemblies, despite the immaturecortex and afferent pathways. This process results in our primarysocialization and is rooted in an individual’s nature, which can alsobe applied to the employeeeguest relationship in the hospitalityindustry. In addition, McKercher (2008) establishes that stereo-types in tourism appear frequently and are more or less permanent.Accordingly, we recognized the need for researching employees’perception of their guests.

2. Literature overview

2.1. Social interaction in service encounters

The service encounter is the main service provided by a hospi-tality organization (Pizam & Ellis, 1999) and it is based on socialinteraction. Turner (1988) defined social interaction as a situationwherein the behaviors of one person are consciously recognizedand influence the behaviors of another person. Even more, socialinteraction is an elementary process which can initialize socialbehavior; it can be less or more complex from, for example, theexchange of looks to very complex verbal or non-verbal commu-nication between two or more people (Ule, 2005). The key dis-tinguishing characteristic of hospitality is also the employeeeguestrelationship from which several dimensions emerge (Stringer,1981). The reality is that the encounter between the front-line

employee and the guest can vary from a very positive to a verynegative experience. To develop an understanding of theemployee’s behavior in the service encounter it is therefore vital tounderstand the encounter itself and all perceptions and decisionsmade arising from that encounter as regards employees. At themoment of a guest’s appearance employees in service encountersautomatically link the guest with specific categories and tend to actin ways congruent with behaviors associated with these categoriese as Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996) and Dijksterhuis and vanKnippenberg (1998) claim, specific social categories can instigateautomatic behavior by first activating a stereotypic trait that in turnspontaneously activates a behavioral representation. According tocognitive information regarding processing models categorization,Lord and Maher (1992) delineated automatic response modelswhere perceivers look for patterns that correspond with theirknowledge or experience instead of controlled and analytical pro-cessing of data. Since the time employees get to process informa-tion exhibited by the appearances of guests at first sight isextremely short, the characteristics of the information processingcomply with those of cybernetic (or dynamic) information-processing models. This is applicable to general behavior and alsosocial perceptions (Hastie & Park, 1986). Such models suggest thatsocial perceptions are periodically reformed by updating previousperceptions with current information regarding behavior. Duringsuch updating, general impressions remain in the long-termmemory, while specific behavioral information can be lost. Thecontrol theory models of behavior also reflect cyberneticinformation-processing (Carver & Scheier, 1982; Powers, 1973). Inthose models fast feedback alters learning, behavior and the natureof cognitive processes themselves (Lord & Maher, 1992) and thosemodels are congruent with real-world situations as the evaluationsof others are constantly revised in work settings (Hastie & Park,1986). Willis and Todorov (2006) found in their study thatpersonal attributes that are important for specific decisions areinferred from facial appearance and influence these decisions. Fromboth the standard-intuition and the rational-actor points of view,trait inferences from facial appearance should not influenceimportant deliberate decisions. However, to the extent that theseinferences occur rapidly and effortlessly, their effects on decisionsmay be subtle and not subjectively recognized.

Because the guests are able to perceive the attitude of theemployee during the first interaction the employees must notstereotype their guests while managing expectations. The key tosatisfying guests is to pay attention to the social interactionbetween guests and front-line employees, who should provideguests with unbiased service. Reflecting this view, the focus is onthe social interaction in the context of service encounters throughtwo key features: (1) employee’s perception in social encountersand (2) personal characteristics associated with stereotyping.

2.1.1. Employees’ perception in service encounterSocial perception is built on a social exchange during which

communication on a non-verbal level is an integral component(Rus, 2000). Social interaction, which is also based on non-verbalinformation, is established with the guest entering the field of anemployees’ perception, where the main position is that of theemployee.

Heider (1958) argues, that in social perception, social behavior ispredicted by categorization. To simplify the stimulus world, peopletend to categorize (Lennon & Davis, 2001) as categorization helps toexplain and improve people’s perception (Wyer, 1988), is a timesaver and shortens the cognitive processing (Fiske & Taylor, 1991).Here stereotypes are deployed rapidly and give a lot of informationabout unknown persons (Gilbert & Hixon, 1991). Once a category isactivated, all members are ascribed the same stereotypical traits

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(Wyer, 1988); Wegener, Clark, and Petty (2006) argue that the lessinformation available the greater the impact of stereotypes. In fact,most human behavior studies based on first impressions, in effect,define categorizing strangers according to their appearance byusing researcher-selected characteristics (category exemplars), thatoften represent personality traits (Cahoon & Edmonds, 1987;Cantor & Mischel, 1977; Lennon, 1986). The attributed character-istics are researcher-implied and may or may not be the actualimpressions of the respondents (Lennon & Davis, 2001). A criticalhuman skill is the ability to form impressions of others, as Asch(1946) summarizes: “This remarkable capacity we possess tounderstand something of the character of another person, to forma conception of him as a human being with particular character-istics forming a distinct individuality is a precondition of social life.”

Many situations and personal variables have been found to havean effect on the formation of a first impression. Factors such asphysical attractiveness (Cash, Gillen, & Burns, 1977) have beenshown to impact the first impressions of an average observer. Basedon face structures, people form both global impressions andspecific trait impressions as well (Hassin & Trope, 2000). Hill,Lewicky, Czyzewska, and Schuller (1990) note that, even afteronly a brief exposure to a face, first impressions strongly influencethe next social interactions, affecting hiring decisions, dating, andfriendships. Doorne and Ateljevic (2005) suggested that employeesalways use conscious communication as well as unconscious signsand cues. During brief encounters employees are involved in analmost non-conscious processing of social information which isaffected by physical attractiveness as one of the most importantfactors on a non-verbal level (Peracchio & Luna, 2006).

In this context, several studies have indicated that a serviceworker’s physical appearance has had a significant and positiveimpact in cases of evaluation of the service worker (Gabbott &Hogg, 2000; Koernig & Page, 2002). This proves that the posi-tively perceived physical appearance of a “stimulus person” posi-tively affects the perceiver’s judgment of the stimulus person(Söderlund & Julander, 2009). Researchers have mostly studied theperception of tourists by examining different aspects of theperspective of a tourist (Wong Chak Keung, 2000), but there is lackof studies that investigate the front-line employees’ perception ofguests based on their physical appearance.

2.1.2. Personal characteristics associated with stereotypingSocial stereotypes are a special case of interpersonal perception;

they are usually simple, overgeneralized and widely accepted(Karlins, Coffman, &Walters, 1969). Stereotypes tend to be negativeattributions but they may also be positive and may help to guidebrief encounters by injecting a degree of predictability into inter-actions with each person attempting to meet the expected needs ofthe other. Nonetheless, many social stereotypes describe highlyvisible and distinctive personal characteristics and are an idealtesting ground for the consideration of the cognitive and behavioralconsequences of personal perception (Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid,1977). Gjerald and Øgaard (2010) suggest that the hospitalitybusiness’ success is affected by employees’ assumptions. Thestructure and content of basic assumptions about guests thereforeneed to be investigated in connection with the influence of theperception of guests in the hospitality industry.

In addition, Willis and Todorov (2006) point out the possibilitythat inferences about socially significant attributes are also rapidlyobtained from facial appearance. Physical appearance cues havea great influence on assessments in relation to a variety of char-acteristics (Berscheid & Walster, 1974), particularly characteristicsrelated to sociability and social competence (Eagly, Ashmore,Makhijani, & Longo, 1991). Brewer (1988) states that many recentempirical evidence shows the connection between social

stereotypes and group memberships (e.g. age, gender, ethnicity,clothing) based on people’s physical appearance. Thereforeperceivers often categorize them on the visual trait basis. Gjeraldand Øgaard (2010) explored the hospitality employees’ assump-tions about guests, co-workers and competitors. In their qualitativestudy using a group of hospitality employees they identified traitssuch as “demanding”, “attractive” and “profitable” among guests.

The first characteristic is related to previous experiences thatinfluence the formation of assumptions about guests’ demanding-ness. For the employee it is important what kind of requirementsand expectations the guests have and whether they are going to bedemanding in further communications. Sharpley and Forster(2003) discovered that in the opinion of employees the visitors ofbetter hospitality venues (e.g. three, four and five star hotels) arebecoming more demanding over time and that their expectationsare thus higher. If the employees believe that guests’ demands areunreasonable, they will be less motivated in dealing with them.This could represent a potential risk due to the unmet expectationsand dissatisfaction of guests, as Dmitrovic et al. (2009) state thatsatisfied tourists may positively affect service providers’ revenuesand profits. Ledgerwood, Crotts, and Everett (1998) have discoveredthat a result of too often serving demanding guests can be the burn-out of front-line hotel employees (e.g. emotional exhaustion,depersonalization, and a diminished sense of personal accom-plishment). On the other hand, Brey and Lehto (2008) point out thatguests who are increasingly demanding about quality and theamount of available hotel amenities drive the changes in hospitalityvenue service quality. In interviews with hotel management theydiscovered that families are more demanding and do expectconstant changes. Additionally, Sharpley and Forster (2003) foundthat most front-line employees prefer working with a repeat guest.At the same time, because of direct human interaction (Wong ChakKeung, 2000), most guests expect to be treated better if they arefamiliar with the hotel employees since a repeat guest demandsrecognition and reciprocity.

The second characteristic is the kindness of guests. In thecourse of interaction this characteristic also has an influence oninterpersonal communication. Hospitality is defined as “kindness inwelcoming strangers or guests” (Hanks, 1989) and “friendly andgenerous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, orstrangers” (Oxford English Dictionaries, 2012). However, whendealing with a kind guest it is easier for the employee to resolvepotential complications that may occur because of misunderstand-ings that may be a consequence of overly high expectations. Thesearch for positive interpersonal interactions is natural and a normaland expected reaction from employees.

Bargh et al. (1996) conducted an experiment where participantsmore often interrupted the process when they were activated withtraits, associated with rudeness. Participants, activated with thetraits associated with politeness, less often interrupted the processof the experiment. Thismay indicate that the kindness of guests canalso unconsciously lead to better treatment by the front-lineemployees.

The third characteristic is the characterization of guests’propensity to spend. People develop more negative stereotypestoward groups with lower socioeconomic status than toward thosewith a higher status (Gilmore & Harris, 2008). This can also beapplicable in the sense of spending money. Money is closely tied tosocial status and guests are often stereotyped as being rich or poor.Lerner and Moore (1974) and Harrison and Saeed (1977) havedetermined that taller people are judged as more attractive matesand further studies indicated a positive relationship between theindividual’s height and their personal income (Frieze, Olson, &Good, 1990; Melamed, 1994). Ayres (2001) has researched 200 cardealers’ perceptions of their customers as consumers. He discovered

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that black men and all women were charged more than white menregardless of their same age, level of education, standard of livingand their average attractiveness. This seems clearly to be a conse-quence of stereotyping consumers based on their physicalappearances.

Based on continuing efforts by hotels to increase consumptionper guest it is important to analyze the profiles of guests and theirspending patterns. Many companies stratify their customers intodifferent layers based on their spending habits. For instance,different groups of guests with different demographic character-istics and cultural backgrounds may display different characteris-tics in terms of their expenses and consumption in the hotel. That iswhy the hospitality industry often uses such systems as the TravelSupport System that is based on stereotyping as a method forclassifying guests into categories and then making predictionsbased on stereotypes associated with particular categories.

In order to categorize tourists several authors have conductedstudies which resulted in tourist profiles about their spendinghabits based on stereotypes. Gawinecki, Kruszyk, and Paprzycki(2005) researched the profiles according to age, working status,income, clothing, whether tourists like novelty, foreign cuisine,whether they go to restaurants that do not accept credit cards, etc.Kim, Prideaux, and Kim (2002) emphasized that Korean casinoemployees expect activities like giving a tip based on the culture ofthe guest and not the visiting country, so they studied thecustomers’ habits and found that the Japanese, the Koreans, theChinese and minority customers leave a tip after finishing thegame. They also found that Koreans and the Chinese customersleave a tip for the waitresses, while Western and minoritycustomers do not. Based on stereotypes constructed upon theirexperience and memory (Biernat & Billings, 2001) employees haveexpectations about the likely attributes of their customers.

2.2. Facial attractiveness

People have been associating beauty with positive qualitiessince the cultural ascension of the Ancient Greeks (Eagly, 1987;Langlois et al., 2000). Dion, Berscheid, and Walster (1972) were thefirst to investigate the “beautiful is good” stereotype. Their findingsindicated that there still exist stereotypes based on facial attrac-tiveness since physically attractive peoplewere perceived as peoplewith desirable personalities and with a greater level of personalsuccess in their lives in general. Overall, beauty itself has an impacton the evaluation of individuals in every manner (Eagly et al., 1991;Langlois et al., 2000).

Schacht, Werheid, and Sommer (2008) argue that facial attrac-tiveness expresses important socially effective information and isan essential social signal (O’Doherty, Winston, Perrett, Burt, &Dolan, 2003). Langlois et al. (2000) have summarized: »Theeffects of facial attractiveness are robust and pandemic [.]attractiveness is a significant advantage for both children andadults in almost every domain of judgment, treatment andbehavior.« Some authors (e.g. Elmer & Houran, 2008) state thatphysical attractiveness has a huge impact on our everyday attitudesand behaviors and the impact is not fully acknowledged by thegeneral public and marketers.

There is a great impact of facial appearance on social outcomes.It is generally known that people with more attractive faceshave several advantages over people with less attractive faces(Zebrowitz, 1990). For example, Aharon et al. (2001) have shown intheir study that people pay more attention to attractive faces ratherthan to unattractive faces. Langlois and Roggman (1990) discoveredthat infants at the age of only 12months more often approachmoreattractive female strangers than less attractive ones and havea more positive approach toward them (Langlois, Ritter, Roggman,

& Vaughn, 1991). Their further studies showed that people paymore attention to attractive babies than to less attractive ones andthat they pay more attention to attractive adults, even adults theyare familiar with (Langlois et al., 1995). People with a “baby-face”are less likely to be negatively assessed than individuals withmature faces (Zebrowitz & McDonald, 1991).

Another aspect of facial attractiveness was examined in severalstudies regarding the hiring of applicants. Attractive people havea better chance to get hired (Dipboye, Arvey, & Terpstra, 1977)because they are perceived as smarter and more extroverted withbetter social skills (Dion et al., 1972; Miller, 1970).

In the hospitality and leisure industries the impact of physicalattractiveness is also apparent during interpersonal interactionsbetween employees and guests (Elmer & Houran, 2008). It can leadto the likelihood that categorizing based on facial attractivenessmay frequently influence people’s unconscious perception. There isa lot of literature about the connection between facial attractive-ness and social interactions (Olson & Marshuetz, 2005) but little isknown about it in the sense of the employees’ perception ofa guest.

The purpose of our study was to determine how hotel front-lineemployees categorize and consequently stereotype hotel guestsbased on their facial attractiveness. We restricted the study to threecharacteristics: guests’ propensity to spend, guests’ demandingnessand guests kindness.

Our general hypothesis was as follows: there is a connectionbetween facial attractiveness of guests and most common stereo-types on hotel guests.

In addition to the general hypothesis, we formulated threespecial hypothesis:

H1. There is a positive correlation between the stereotype of hotelguests’ propensity to spend and their facial attractiveness;

H2. There is a positive correlation between the stereotype of hotelguests’ demandingness and their facial attractiveness;

H3. There is a positive correlation between the stereotype of hotelguests’ kindness and their facial attractiveness.

3. Methodology

The study was organized as an experimental study. It wasconducted in 3 phases, starting in February 2011 and lasting untildata analysis in September 2011. To find out what the mostcommon stereotypes about hotel guests among professionals inSlovenian coast hotels are, a preliminary qualitative study wascarried out. In-depth interviews were conducted in 6 differenthospitality organizations. Altogether 11 members of the front-linehotel employees were interviewed. Interviewers asked the front-line employees what characteristics they usually notice when theguest enters their field of perception for the fist time. The inter-views resulted in a list of 56 descriptions of hotel guests’ charac-teristics that served as a base for the stereotype construction. Weapplied an open coding technique (Flick, 1999). In the first stepsegmentation was done from raw material to short statements. Inthe second phase statements were categorized into areas ofphenomenon, namely stereotypes of guests. In the third phase, themost common categories were extracted. In the fourth step welabeled the most frequently found categories. Finally, axial codingwas conducted through which we determined the three mostpromising categories for further research that fit into our theoret-ical framework on stereotyping guests in the tourist industry. Aftera careful semantic analysis a list of the three most common char-acteristics was made: guests’ propensity to spend, guests’ demand-ingness and guests’ kindness.

Table 1Type of work and average age of employees.

Type of work No % Average age St. dev.

Reception 27 24.55 35.52 10.96Restaurant 36 32.73 31.78 10.88Housekeeping 24 21.82 40.33 8.91Management 23 20.91 43.33 8.28Total 110 100.00 37.18 10.86

Source: Authors.

�Z. �Civre et al. / Tourism Management 36 (2013) 57e65 61

3.1. Instrument

For the instrument construction a set of 60 photographs fromthe Istockphoto database (2011) was used. In order to ensure thereliability of the research results the instrument had to reflect thecultural context within which the research was conducted. Thus itwas not possible to use photos from previous research; a newinstrument had to be created via a relatively complex process. Itwas a set of ordinary people of average facial appearance. Since themajority of hotel guests in this area are Caucasian, there were nophotos of people of other races. In order to design the final versionof the instruments 275 students of the University of Primorska,Slovenia, were invited to participate as judges. They representedthe average population of the University of Primorska in age andgender. Students who participated in the process of finalizinginstruments and the sample of participants in our later study werevery close in terms of education level. In the Slovenian educationalsystem, completed high school is a necessary condition for studyingat the university level. In our sample almost 80% (exactly 78.88%)were employees who completed high school education or evena higher level. Students were told that they were participating ina scientific experiment. Students were asked to rate every photo-graph according to a 7-point scale, from 1 (very unattractive) to 7(very attractive). Photographs were projected on the wall and eachphotograph was shown to the students for 300 ms, as someresearchers state that attractiveness can be perceived in 200 msviewing time (Rayner, 1983) or even 100 ms (Locher, Unger,Sociedade, & Wahl, 1993). We wanted to achieve a so-calledcapacity-free process, often conceptualized as processing inde-pendence. That process operates independently of other ongoingprocesses, such as accuracy (Jung, Ruthruffa, Tyburb, Gaspelina, &Millera, 2012). This was very important with front-line hotelemployees as they are accustomed to operate in a complex,multiple stimulus environments. Between exposures there wasa 3 s break for the students to write down their evaluations intoa testing protocol. The results enabled us to define an instrument inwhich there were no significant differences between elements,photographs rated extremely attractive or extremely unattractivewere eliminated in the first step. After this we stratified theremaining photos in 3 age groups and 2 gender groups. Thephotographs arranged by age were grouped into strata of young,middle aged and seniors. Since data were distributed within therange for normal distribution, further elimination was made bycalculating Crombach’s Alpha coefficient for internal structureaccording to the age and gender stratification. In the next phasePearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated for the rest of thephotographs and those that correlated with others at less than 0.30were excluded. A final selection was made upon calculation ofCronbach’s Alpha coefficients that exceeded 0.90. This result wasa good guarantee of an internally consistent instrument consistingof 29 photographs (see Appendix 1). There were 15 photographs ofmale faces and 14 photographs of female faces. There was onephoto fewer in the group of young females, as an additional onewould have compromised the internal consistency. A third of thepersons in the photographs were younger, a second third weremiddle-aged and a third were seniors. The age structure of thepeople in the photographs was even.

The testing protocol was adjusted to 5-point scale instead of7-point as it appeared to be a much more appropriate scale due tothe short time gap between the showing of each photograph.During different sets of photographs, the projection of bipolaradjectives at the ends of the 5-point scale was shown on the screenrepresenting one of threemost commonly used stereotypes of hotelguests. The first pair of adjectives was a bad or good consumer, thesecond was demanding or not demanding guest, and the third was

unkind and kind guest, and, finally, front-line employees had todecide between an unattractive or an attractive face (see Appendix2). The same 29 photographs were randomly rotated for everyseries of adjectives. In each series’ projection each photograph wasvisible for 300mswith a 2 s break in order to enable the participantto rate every photograph and check it in the protocol. The instru-ment was applied in groups.

3.2. Participants

The participants were 113 professionals from hotels in Portoro�z,one of the Slovenia’s most popular touristic areas, who all agreed toparticipate voluntary. There were 45 male and 67 female partici-pants, which generally reflects the gender structure in Slovenianhotels. There are no data about gender for one participant and typeof work for three of them.

The average age is 37.18 years. There are just slight differences inage between groups of employees in our sample; these are statis-tically significant between the management and restaurant groupsand between the housekeeping and restaurant groups (Table 1).

The distribution of participants according to the type of work isalmost evenwith a moderate predominance of employees from therestaurant. Restaurant and reception employees have a secondaryschool education, housekeeping employees are mostly educated ata professional school level and the management staff at college anduniversity level (Table 2).

4. Results and interpretation

The main proposition of the study was that there is correlationbetween facial appearance of hotel guests and common stereotypesof guests. Pearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated forcommon stereotypes according to the facial appearance in generaland separately for men and women.

4.1. Guests’ propensity to spend

In relation to the stereotype of guests’ propensity to spend theoverall Person’s correlation coefficient was 0.520, which shows thecorrespondence of the two variables when all employees wererating all guests. Employees rated the correlation for male guest at0.492 and 0.347 for female guests. All the coefficients were statis-tically significant.

With the male ratings the correlation coefficient for facialappearances and stereotypes for all guests was 0.538, separately0.335 for women guests, and 0.470 for men guests. With the femaleratings, the overall correlation coefficient was 0.506, for womenguests 0.355 and for male guests 0.523 (Table 3).

There were no significant differences found when analyzing agedifferences. Correlation coefficients between facial appearance andguests’ propensity to spend stereotype were statistically significantfor all three age groups, and ranged from 0.24 up to 0.44. Thesignificance was <0.05 in all three strata.

Table 2Level of education of employees.

Level ofeducation

Reception Restaurant Housekeeping Management Total

N %

Elementaryschool

0 0 3 0 3 2.7

Professionalschool

1 12 8 0 21 18.6

High school 16 19 12 7 56 49.6College 5 4 1 6 17 15University 5 1 0 10 16 14.2Total 27 36 24 23 113 100

Source: Authors.

Table 4Correlations between facial appearance of hotel guests and their demandingness.

Guests’ demandingness Male guest Female guest Total

Male employee 0.563** 0.548** 0.653**Female employee 0.240 0.030 0.162Total 0.383** 0.225* 0.380**

*Correlation is significant at the level 0.05 (2-tailed).**Correlation is significant at the level 0.01 (2-tailed). Source: Authors.

Table 5Correlations between facial appearance of hotel guests and their kindness.

Guests’ kindness Male guest Female guest Total

Male employee 0.496** 0.398** 0.524**Female employee 0.646** 0.500** 0.666**Total 0.579** 0.465** 0.606**

*Correlation is significant at the level 0.05 (2-tailed).**Correlation is significant at the level 0.01 (2-tailed). Source: Authors.

�Z. �Civre et al. / Tourism Management 36 (2013) 57e6562

The results confirmed our first hypothesis that there is a positivecorrelation between the perceived facial attractiveness of hotelguests and the stereotype regarding their propensity to spend.

4.2. Guests’ demandingness

The overall Person’s coefficient showing the correlationbetween the guest’s facial attractiveness and their demandingnesswas 0.380; furthermore, when all employees were rating, thecoefficient was 0.383 for male guests and only 0.225 for femaleguests. All coefficients were statistically significant.

When only male employees were rating, the coefficient for allguests regardless of their gender was 0.653, however for maleguests the coefficient was 0.563, and 0.548 for female guests. Whenonly the female employees were rating, the overall coefficient was0.162, the coefficient for men guests was 0.240 and the coefficientfor women guests was 0.030 (all three coefficients were statisticallyinsignificant) (Table 4).

Based on these results our second special hypothesis wasconfirmed. Also, when analyzing age differences correlation coef-ficients between guests’ demandingness and their facial appear-ance ranged for all three age groups from 0.21 up to 0.32, withp < 0.05.

4.3. Guests’ kindness

When evaluating the correspondence between guest’s facialappearance and employee’s perception of a guests’ kindness, thePearson’s correlation coefficient for all employees rating all guestswas 0.606, 0.579 for male guests and 0.465 for female guests. Allcoefficients were significant.

When all guests were rated regardless of their gender by onlyfemale employees, the correlation coefficient reached the highestvalue of 0.666. On the other hand, when only male employees wererating, the coefficient was 0.524 (Table 5).

Analyzing separate correlations for female and male guests, themale employees ratings resulted in coefficient values of 0.496 formale guests and 0.398 for female guests. Female ratings resulted ina much higher correlation. The coefficient had a value of 0.646 formale guests, while the coefficient for female guests was 0.500. Allthe coefficients were significant. When analyzing age differences,

Table 3Correlations between facial appearance of hotel guests and their propensity tospend.

Guests’ propensity to spend Male guest Female guest Total

Male employee 0.470** 0.335** 0.538**Female employee 0.523** 0.355** 0.506**Total 0.492** 0.347** 0.520**

*Correlation is significant at the level 0.05 (2-tailed).**Correlation is significant at the level 0.01 (2-tailed). Source: Authors.

correlation coefficients between the stereotype of guests’ kindnessand their facial appearance ranged for all three age groups from0.35 up to 0.45, with p < 0.05. Thus we can conclude that also ourthird special hypothesis was confirmed.

5. Discussion

To understand the interaction between front-line employeesand their guests during service encounters one has to consider howand why employees and guests engage in certain types of behaviorwith each other. It has already been proven that attributions basedon stereotypes can influence the future behavior of people (Snyderet al., 1977). According to their roles in the process of interpersonalcommunication, stereotypes can help employees in the hospitalityindustry in fulfilling their professional functions. Even thougheveryone would expect or like that employees have an unbiasedattitude toward guests, this study proved that this kind of stereo-typing is almost impossible to avoid. The findings of this study areimportant for the management of hotel businesses that focus onimplementation of an impeccable service in accordance withestablished standards, regardless of the impact of the guest’sappearance. Stereotypes should represent a challenge for effectivespreading of the useful information within the hotel’s professionalstructure. Therefore a systematic training of hotel’s staff should betaken into consideration to help employees to identify the positiveand negative effects of stereotypes on their services and in this wayprevent misunderstandings resulting from negative stereotypesthat might derive from the physical appearance of guests. Theresearch conducted by Bizjak, Ben�ci�c, and Grabar (2008) in thehospitality industry of the Slovenian capital city showed that theemployees are willing to take part in such training programs to gainnew knowledge hereby improve their service, regardless of theformality of the level of education. Hotel management shouldconsider these findings in creating guidelines for the propertreatment of guests to improve the service delivery.

6. Conclusion

This study investigated whether and in what ways front-lineemployees stereotype their guests based on the facial attractive-ness, taking into consideration three main characteristics. All ourhypotheses were confirmed, showing that several importantstereotypes are strongly connected to facial appearance, which inturn plays an important role in the stereotype constructions of the

�Z. �Civre et al. / Tourism Management 36 (2013) 57e65 63

front-line employees. The strongest correlation resulted whenanalyzing guests’ kindness, where up to 40% of variance could beexplained by the facial appearance of guests. Both gender groups ofemployees perceive guest’s kindness in accordance with their facialappearance to a very high degree. Compared tomale employees theresults showed that female employees tend to rate the kindness ofall guests much more according to their facial appearance. Whenlinking guests’ demandingness and their facial appearance, theresults indicated that male employees perceive guests as muchmore demanding the higher they rate guests’ facial attractiveness,which however is not the case for female employees. The researchresults also showed that female employees tend to connect malefacial attractiveness and consuming habits much more than maleemployees. We believe that the difference has a cultural cause. Inour culture a man is more often perceived as “the one who pays thebills” but there are other possible explanations that are beyond thescope of this research.

One of the limitations of the study relates to the fact thatphotographs were used instead of real people faces. Additionally,stereotypes are not formed in a simple way, or almost linearly as inour study: they are the result of a very complex process influencedby many factors. This reveals to be another limitation of our study.As McGarty, Vincent, and Spears (2002) state, most of thementioned factors are of social, cultural or cognitive nature. Somefactors represent biological, physiological, educational, andpersonal reasons, certainly cultural reasons, or reasons connectedto a specific tourism activity e probably also the social position ofemployees in the social structure of the company, and so on. Thus,the results of this study cannot be understood as a direct correla-tion between facial attractiveness of guests and stereotypes held bythe employees on this basis. This relation is only a small part of thecomplex process of creating operational stereotypes. The correla-tion, however, cannot be neglected since it amounts to about 30% ofthe variance and very much represents a common explanation. Thecommon variance indicates a trend to create complex structures inwhich the stereotype of the guest’s attractiveness is only oneelement that is the subject of this research. A number of otherformations of which some elements are outlined above should bethe subject of further research in this area.

Moreover, the study showed that hospitality employeesperceive characteristics of guests such as guests’ propensity tospend, demandingness and kindness in correlationwith their facialattractiveness. From this we can deduce that the mere presentationof a guest cannot be associated only with stereotyped personalitytraits but also with constructs such as satisfaction, evaluations,expectations, and other social behavior. A better understanding ofthe process and formation of stereotypes would clearly follow fromfuture research examining the effects of facial attractiveness onsuch alternative variables.

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank �Cedomil Vojni�c and ZoranLapov from Hoteli Bernardin company and Nina Golob from ThalasoKrka Strunjan company for their kind approval to conduct theexperiment with the hotels’ staff. We would like to express ourthanks to Bo�stjan Bizjak for many helpful comments on this paper.We also owe our gratitude to all colleagues and students for theirparticipation in defining the final version of the study instrument.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data related to this article can be found online athttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2012.11.004.

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�Zana �Civre is a teaching assistant for marketing andhuman resources at the Faculty of Tourism Studies e

Turistica at the University of Primorska. Currently she isa doctoral student at the University of Ljubljana at theFaculty of Economics, Department of Marketing. Herresearch primarily focuses on the field of consumerbehavior in tourism.

Mladen Kne�zevi�c is a full professor. He graduated in socialwork at the University of Zagreb, Croatia, and sociology atthe University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. His presentresearch interest is in the field of experimental researchesin tourism.

Petra Zabukovec Baruca is a senior lecturer at the Facultyof Tourism Studies e Turistica, University of Primorska.Her professional career in the company Hoteli Bernardingave her experience in public relations, marketingcommunications, management quality and corporatecommunications. Her main research interests includequality in hospitality industry, communications, mediaand marketing.

Da�sa Fabjan is a senior lecturer for statistics and meth-odology at the Faculty of Tourism Studies e Turistica atthe University of Primorska. Her educational backgroundis in the field of transport technology. Her areas ofresearch include methodology with statistics, transportand tourism.

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