My role as an ethnographer 23

My first full day on site corresponded with the first workday for the new director of Front Desk services. I spent the entire day following her around as she too was being

introduced to other executives, directors, and staff at HotelCo. In these encounters, I was often introduced as “a researcher who is hanging out with us to understand how we do what we do.” I would immediately explain that I was a researcher who would be around, but certainly not in their way, and I would not be reporting my observations back to management. I further explained that whatever I observed or heard remained anonymous. Over the next few weeks, in order to build rapport with the employees, I made sure I built both a personal and a professional relationship with them. Personally, I showed interest in their lives even beyond HotelCo. I would join them during coffee or cigarette breaks, lunches or after-work drinks. Professionally, I made sure I exposed the rigour involved in the study. For instance, on many occasions during the first week, I joined the managers and employees of the midnight shift (11:00 PM to 7:00 AM) and [admittedly forcing

myself] stayed up all night. I volunteered to skip my personal plans in favour of being helpful during the New Year’s Eve celebration, as it was described as a “crazy time” at HotelCo. In addition, since I was not adequately trained to interact with customers or perform any particular tasks, I made sure to exploit all opportunities in which I could lend a hand or be of general use. As an illustration, one late evening, a female Front Desk manager needed to walk with an apparently angry HotelCo customer to a dark area of the parking lot in order to help resolve a dispute about a scratch-and-dent on the customer’s car. I offered to accompany them so the manager would feel safer. She was very

appreciative.

By the second month, I had become a familiar presence for many of the people at HotelCo. I could navigate around the property without having to follow the director of Front Desk. I became absorbed in the HotelCo rhythm, attending routine meetings, and observing different managers in the Front Desk department. I found several people who became “key informants” and spent many days with these individuals, most often focusing on the issues they were facing at the time. The discussions about the daily challenges of the managers often led to conversations around the computer screens, navigating through HotelCo’s computer system, and going over various reports and documents. I spent the initial months trying to learn as much about the work of the Front Desk managers at HotelCo as I could. My main interests were to understand what aspects of HotelCo services they would be concerned with, what tools they would use in their daily work, and how they would interact with other HotelCo actors.

After three months, I had become familiar enough with the Front Desk activities that I “entered the floor” and shifted my focus from the Front Desk managers to the employees and their interactions with hotel customers. My initial focus here was the work of the doormen and bellhops. The types of interactions with customers these employees had were intermittent, as it depended on the arrival patterns of the customers. Therefore initially I chose “hanging out” with them during the down times, such as mid-mornings or late at night. My conversation with these employees, for the most part, was informal. These employees spent many hours of work standing, and I learned it was important for them not be seen sitting or resting, either by hotel customers or by the management. For

that reason, I invited them to coffee chats during their breaks, at a well-hidden, nearby café. Although the first few times, it was I who invited them for coffee, within a week’s time it was me who was being invited to join them on their break. Soon, the one-on-one informal coffee chats turned into two-on-one meetings when another doorman or bellhop would join in our talks. However, their work/break schedule never allowed these informal meetings to grow to a larger group. Eventually, I joined them on their work turf and observed them in action, during which time I also asked occasional clarification questions about their work. Invariably, I kept the focus on their work and its history, their approach with individual specific customers, and their daily interactions with HotelCo

management.

Through observing the work of the doormen and bellhops, my focus shifted toward other moments of customer interaction, most notably at the reception counter. While I was able to interview the Front Desk agents during their breaks or after hours, observing them in action was challenging for three reasons. First, I discovered that standing behind the agents at their reception counter changed the nature of interactions with the customers. On the one hand, many customers assumed me to be the manager, since I was wearing formal attire that was not the standard uniform of HotelCo agents. On the other hand, the agents themselves felt awkward — as they complained — in helping out the customers. Second, because some customers assumed me to be a HotelCo manager, they were approaching me with questions and concerns to which I was not equipped to respond. As an example, once I was asked about the accuracy of a customer’s bill, and another time I was asked to upgrade the customer to a larger room. As I immediately referred these to the agent whom I was observing, I noticed the customers repeating the questions or concerns to the agent with frustration. Third, in interacting with the customers, HotelCo agents depend on their computer monitors to consult, or register, various pieces of information regarding the customer or the transaction. As an ethnographer, it was

important for me to understand how the agents interacted with the technological tools and what information they relied on. For that reason, to observe the agents in action, I needed to stand fairly close to be able to see, and read, the computer monitor. This further

To overcome these challenges, I took two new approaches. The first was that I began collecting answers to the general and often-repeated questions the customers would ask me. For instance, for the times I was on the floor and not behind a particular reception counter, I carried instructions about accessing Wi-Fi in rooms, maps of local area attractions and restaurants, etc. For the customer-specific questions, I recorded their concerns and offered to investigate on their behalf. I escorted the customers to the lounge chairs in the lobby, and asked them to wait for my return with information. I would then travel to the back area and ask any available agent or manager for answers. The second new approach was asking the agents to introduce me to the customers as a “trainee” when I was an observer behind the reception counters. This allowed me not only to stay close to the agents and observe the interactions with the customers, but also to take notes visibly without the customer being unclear of my presence.

By the end of this period of observation, nearly all my time on site was spent at the Front Desk area with the Front Desk managers and employees. Many of the interactions with the customers, however, were about accommodation at HotelCo. For that reason, I then shifted my focus to the Housekeeping group. Since, by design, Housekeeping attendants work behind the scenes, when and where hotel customers are not present, observing and interviewing them did not produce the above-mentioned challenges. The ethnographic challenge, however, presented itself differently. Since by then I had spent many months at the Front Desk, I had somehow become associated with the Front Desk services from the perspective of employees in other areas,. As a result, initially, the managers, the director, and the Housekeeping attendants interacted with me as if I were snooping on behalf of the Front Desk services department. This was evident in the way the

Housekeeping informants responded to my first interview questions, by opening their

answers with statements like, “We see things differently here at Housekeeping, than you

guys at the front of the house” (emphasis added). While I became curious about the ways

in which the two groups were seeing things differently and made that the focus of my inquiry, I made new efforts in building rapport with the employees at the Housekeeping group.

My ethnography at HotelCo was contained, for the most part, within these two functional groups. I arrived at this decision based on a combination of factors, including practicality of conducting ethnography, empirical focus, and theoretical saturation. From a practical perspective, growing the ethnographic focus to other areas would have likely added many months of on-site data collection. The constraints of the dissertation timeline, however, did not allow for such an expanded engagement with HotelCo. From an empirical standpoint, while provision of accommodation involved other areas and groups (e.g., Sales and Marketing, Facilities, Technology and Engineering, Banquets and Conventions, as well as Food & Beverages) Front Desk and Housekeeping together had the bulk of the interactions with the guests. Most importantly, from an emic perspective, the boundaries of the world of the service providers (as perceived by the agents, room attendants, managers and directors) were drawn around these two departments. Finally, from an etic perspective, in ethnographic studies, the breadth of data depends on theoretical saturation, referring to the point when no new data for themes emerge or when concepts and

categories are clear, well developed, and validated (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).

Although I finished my ethnographic field work at HotelCo in late August 2013, after approximately eight months on site I kept in weekly contact with many of the key informants for many more months.