Revista de investigación turística y hotelería

The Influence of Emotional Intelligence and Entrepreneurial Behaviour of Frontline Hotel Employees in Complaint Handling Performance

Puji Rahayuningtyas and Michael Yadisaputra

This study discusses both emotional intelligence (EI) and entrepreneurial behaviour (EB) of Frontline Hotel Employees as keys ability of necessary to express positive complaint handling performance. EI demonstrated that EI itself as psychological resource is a critical factor for hospitality employees’ coping styles. Employees’ emotional intelligence while facing customer’s complaint is vital since it is related to entrepreneurial behaviour as personal competence or entrepreneurial personal trait. More specifically, this study was aimed to identify the frontline hotel employees’ entrepreneurial behaviour in their emotional intelligence and to analyse correlation between emotional intelligence and complaint handling. The result shows that greater the employees’ EI produce a better complaint handling performance and own an entrepreneurial behaviour inside. The importance of this research is EI and EB is needed to measure to the frontline employees in the hotel. This measurement will be used to know how they do their emotions in handling customer complaints. The survey was administered in a five star hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia. Frontline employees of hotels participated in the survey and a total of a hundred and twenty four electronic questionnaires were used for data analysis. Method of data analysis used in this study is structural equation model (SEM) with PLS.