Adler and Adler's genuine skill as storytellers... really elevates this book to an engaging and compelling read, bringing to life this fascinating milieu. Too often research in the hospitality sector has tended to rely on the managerial voice alone and this book clearly avoids such a trap. Indeed, it takes its place alongside several other crucial works emanating from the United States, where ethnographic study has allowed us a real insight into the working lives of those employed in the hospitality sector.
British Journal of Industrial Relations
For seven years, ethnographers Patricia and Peter Adler made twice-yearly sojourns to a group of resort hotels located in one of Hawaii's popular tourist destinations, intent on mixing business with pleasure. The product of their effort is Paradise Laborers, an insightful and delightfully readable account of the occupational cultures, worker lifestyles, and career patterns featured in these resorts.... Throughout the book, the authors maintain that resort hotels are distinctly postmodern workplaces whose unconventional nature shapes workers' experiences and identities.... Paradise Laborers is a well-written and wonderfully grounded study rich in descriptive detail. The authors' close, long-standing relationships with informants lend the book a degree of intimacy that is often lacking in ethnographic accounts of work and occupations, while its quasi-longitudinal approach allows the reader to follow the experiences of specific informants over time. Although this book will be most useful to readers with an interest in translent labor, service work, and occupational dynamics in the travel and tourism industry, those with a general interest in work and occupations will also find it to be an engaging read.
Administrative Science Quarterly
Paradise Laborers... makes a fine contribution to organizations, occupations, and work studies in this first ethnographic study of work culture among resort employees in Hawaii, where tourism is the leading industry.
Work in Progress
The Adlers, highly published... sociologists, examine the work and lifestyle experiences of staff at five luxury resort hotels along a Hawaiian beach. They interviewed staff from four employee categories: new immigrants and locals, labeled trapped workers; and managers and self-supporting 'seekers' driven by leisure interests, labeled transient workers.... The Adlers... view resorts as postmodern global communities that focus on commercialization.... Recommended. Resort industry practitioners; students and researchers of labor, sociology, and ethnography.
Choice
The book is a result of a participant/ethnographic study and the research experience unfolds before the reader making the book an appealing read.... The authors were involved in participant observation in five luxury resorts, with over 500 resort workers and they interviewed 90 workers in-depth. The data provides a rich tapestry to draw inferences from and reveals much about workers' experiences and understanding about their working lives behind the glamorous façade of palm trees and golden beaches.
The Journal of Industrial Relations