The purpose of this essay is to highlight the effect of emotional labor on hospitality workers and whether the requirements for emotional labor are ethical by relationship to employees. The first part of the essay will focus on why emotional labor is necessary in the industry and the need for employees to manage their emotions effectively. We will then examine the limitations and negative effects of emotional labor and how this might relate to unethical job demands placed on employees. Hochschild (1983) was the first to define emotional labor as an occupation that involves the induction or suppression of feelings in order to maintain an outward appearance that produces in others the feeling of being cared for in a friendly and welcoming place. on. Suggesting that employees must be able to control external emotional factors and present them to customers in order to create a good overall professional opinion. There has been much debate about whether emotional labor has any benefits for employees having to represent and manage themselves emotionally. But research has suggested that those who can manage themselves effectively reap benefits in their personal satisfaction and stress management. Kruml and Geddes (2000) and Hochschild (1983) studied and found that there are two processes in which people manage their emotions, namely: surface acting and deep acting. This coincides with Goffman (1959) who found that impression management, similar to emotional acting, focused on employees having to bury their real emotions and give an outward appearance of projected emotion to reflect the expectations of the customer and company standards. Surface action is defined as: ; "An employee who attempts to change his or her appearance or outward behavior...... middle of paper ......cation Quarterly, 14(1), pp. 8– 49. Lieberman, K. & B. Nissen (2008). “Ethics of hospitality and tourism”. Washington DC: Amer Hotel and Motel Association Pugh, SD, (2001). “Service with a smile: emotional contagion in the service encounter”. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 63, pp. 490 – 509Rafaeli, A. & Sutton, RI, (1987). “The expression of emotion in the context of work”. Academy of Management Review, 12, pp. 23-37Sharpe. EK (2005). “Going Beyond Expectations:” The Emotional Labor of Adventure Guides. Journal of Leisure Research. 37(1), pp. 29-50.Stanislavski, KS, (1974). “My life in art”. New York Verbeke, W. (1997). “Individual differences in salespeople’s emotional contagion: Its effect on performance and burnout.” Psychology and marketing. 14 (6), pp. 617-636. Williams, A. (2009). Understanding the hospitality industry. London: Butterworth-Heinemann