Operational Labor Shortages and Authentic Hospitality: Evidence from Greek Hotels

Operational labor shortages have emerged as a critical challenge for hospitality organizations, particularly in highly seasonal tourism destinations such as Greece, where service experiences are closely associated with cultural identity and authentic hospitality. While existing hospitality research has primarily examined understaffing through operational and human resource management perspectives, limited attention has been given to its implications for the organizational capacity to sustain authentic hospitality experiences. Drawing on Service-Dominant Logic (SDL), this study conceptualizes authentic hospitality as a co-created organizational outcome shaped through employee interactions, cultural transmission, and service delivery processes. Using survey data collected from 201 hotel employees in Greece, the study examines the relationship between operational labor shortages, organizational pressures, and perceived threats to authentic hospitality delivery within hotel operations. The findings indicate significant positive associations between work stress and service quality decline, as well as between cultural knowledge and perceived threats to authentic hospitality delivery. Multiple regression analysis further demonstrates that reactive hiring, serious understaffing, and payroll cost pressure significantly predict perceived risks to authentic hospitality co-creation, while service quality decline showed a positive but statistically non-significant effect in the final regression model. The study extends hospitality authenticity literature by conceptualizing authenticity not solely as a tourist perception construct, but also as an internally produced organizational outcome dependent on workforce stability, cultural integration, and service co-creation capacity. The findings further highlight the strategic importance of workforce planning, recruitment quality, and cultural onboarding for the long-term sustainability of authentic hospitality experiences in Greek hotels.