Labor conditions in the Spanish hotels and restaurants industry

Abstract

The tourism and hotels and restaurants industries fall within the service sector and employ many people with different skills and capacities. As in other sectors, it is important to monitor employment and working conditions in this sector. However, there has not been any empirical systematic research into employment and wage conditions in the Spanish hotels and restaurants sector, partly because of the complexity and size of the sector. All studies that exist on salary levels in the tourism industry emphasize the fact that the hotels and restaurants sector is among the lowest paid business sectors and it employs a large proportion of women and nonqualified labor. Such characteristics generate lower pay and greater risk of gender discrimination. The aim of this article is to analyze these two negative aspects of labor market conditions in the hotels and restaurants industry in Spain and to discuss regional differences comparing tourism regions and nontourism regions. We show that low-wage incidence in the hotels and restaurants industry disappears with the tourism development of the sector, that is, it is lower in the tourism regions. Nevertheless, gender discrimination does not depend on the tourism or nontourism characterization of regions.