Heritage hotels: An exploration of staff experiences in these unique hospitality environments

Heritage hotels play a significant role in the hotel sector, preserving cultural heritage and delivering authentic and unique guest experiences and economic value to destinations. As such, they are an important but under-researched hotel operation. They range in size and star rating and can be boutique and/or upscale luxury hotels, independently owned and operated or managed by one of the large international hotel chains. There are three types of heritage hotels: original, simulated, and converted. The first are hotels whose purpose has remained unchanged since their inception and, despite modernization, retain their originality. The second are simulated heritage hotels, which are associated with symbolic heritage elements. The third are historic structures (castles, cathedrals, palaces, etc.) that have been repurposed and converted into hotels, imbuing them with new symbolic and economic meanings. This research note investigates the third type of heritage hotels. These are buildings rich in history, a sense of place and hold cultural meanings for their localities and communities. The note employs an exploratory, qualitative research strategy and reports data from semi-structured in-depth interviews with 16 customer-facing employees and managers in three independently owned and operated United Kingdom (UK) rural boutique heritage hotels. This qualitative approach provided an opportunity to attain depth in revealing the participants’ service experiences and encounters. The research note advances extant scholarship, which has examined employee interactions in small heritage accommodations as emotional and individualised guest experiences. It suggests that historic sites repurposed as heritage hotels have distinctive qualities, setting them apart from other hotels as hospitality environments. As such, their staff regard themselves as stewards and storytellers of local culture as much as receptionists, servers, etc. It concludes by advancing possibilities for further research on this conceptualization of heritage hotel employees.