Organizing Spheres of Privacy in the Hospitality Industry

Increasingly, resort guests are asked to evaluate their resort experience based on the experience of privacy. This paper analyses how two different resorts organize spheres of privacy in different activities. It was found in the analysis that resort personnel redesign the designed servicescape in order to construct a livable/workable space for the guests. The study showed that the construction of the workable “sphere of privacy” follows similar patterns when an “isolated” privacy in terms of room and pool is requested, when an “intimate” private dinner is requested, and when private “day at the beach” is requested. The concept “organizing a sphere of privacy” is suggested to understand and account for the dual construction of privacy at resorts. The dual construction refers to the workable space accounted for in terms of broader organizational service perspectives like delivering service in an expedient manner, ensuring that all the different services of the resort can both be accessed and executed. The literature shows that guests also adapt, change, and negotiate the designed servicescape. It is argued that in order to account for both the organizations’ change and negotiation of the servicescape, as well as guest manipulation, resistance to and change of the servicescape demands a more fluid concept for these processes.