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Seasonal Employees: The Link between Sense of Community and Retention

Journal of Travel Research

Published online on

Abstract

High year-to-year retention of seasonal employees can be a source of competitive advantage for tourism organizations. Past studies of seasonal employee retention have examined the issue from the perspective of job satisfaction. However, many tourism jobs have similar responsibilities from organization to organization suggesting another construct might also affect employee retention. The purpose of this study was to examine retention through the lens of employee sense of community (SOC) toward the tourism organization. Significant differences were found in SOC levels between those who returned to work at resorts and those who did not. Moreover, a logistic regression model showed SOC to be a good predictor of retention. Like in previous studies, factors that impact retention appear to be different for first year employees than experienced ones. However, the results suggest that somewhat different approaches for improving retention should be taken than the recommendations from past studies of seasonal employee retention.