Examining the Relationship Between Hotel Employees’ Emotional Labour and Burnout in Kano, North West Nigeria

This study examines the relationship between emotional labour demands and burnout among hotel employees in Kano, North West Nigeria, contributing to the scarce literature on hospitality worker well-being in the Nigerian context. Emotional labour, defined as the effort required to manage one's emotional expressions in alignment with organisational display rules, imposes significant psychological costs on hospitality workers who are continuously required to project positive affect irrespective of their authentic emotional states. A quantitative cross-sectional research design is adopted with questionnaires administered to 240 frontline hotel employees across 15 hotels in Kano metropolis. The Maslach Burnout Inventory and an established emotional labour scale measuring surface acting, deep acting, and genuine expression are employed. Structural equation modelling is applied to test mediation and moderation effects. Findings reveal that surface acting, the suppression of genuine emotions in favour of performed positivity, is positively and significantly associated with all three burnout dimensions of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and reduced personal accomplishment. Deep acting demonstrates a protective effect on the personal accomplishment dimension of burnout. Supervisor support is found to moderate the relationship between emotional labour and exhaustion, with high supervisor support buffering burnout effects by 38 percent. The study recommends employee well-being programmes, structured supervisor sensitivity training, and rotation of high emotional labour roles as practical interventions for hotel management. Keywords: emotional labour, burnout, hotel employees, well-being, Kano