Understanding and Combating Sexual Harassment in the Tourism Workplace

The tourism workplace is a uniquely social environment. Hotels, travel agencies, restaurants, airlines, and tour operations bring employees into close contact with guests, colleagues, and supervisors at all hours. While this dynamism is part of the industry’s appeal, it also creates conditions where sexual harassment can take root if organizations are not vigilant. Understanding what counts as harassment, why the tourism sector is particularly vulnerable, and how a workplace can prevent and respond to it is essential for every manager, HR professional, and employee in the field.

What sexual harassment actually means 🔗

Sexual harassment is not limited to overt acts. It is a wide spectrum of unwelcome behaviour of a sexual nature that affects an employee’s dignity, safety, or working conditions. The legal foundation in India comes from the landmark Vishaka and Others v. State of Rajasthan judgment of 1997, in which the Supreme Court framed the first formal definition. The judgment was triggered by the gang-rape of social worker Bhanwari Devi while she was performing her official duties, and it pushed the court to recognise that women had no specific legal protection against workplace harassment at the time.

The Vishaka Guidelines were later replaced by the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, popularly called the POSH Act. Section 2(n) of this law lists five categories of unwelcome behaviour that amount to sexual harassment: physical contact and advances, a demand or request for sexual favours, sexually coloured remarks, showing pornography, and any other unwelcome physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct of a sexual nature.

Behaviours that often go unnamed 🔗

In everyday tourism workplaces, harassment frequently appears in subtler forms. Eve-teasing, lewd jokes whispered in the back office, a colleague who “accidentally” brushes against a colleague in a narrow service corridor, repeated comments about a uniform, persistent personal questions from a guest, suggestive messages on WhatsApp after a shift, or a supervisor who hints that a promotion depends on after-work meetings – all of these fall within the legal definition. The Supreme Court has clarified that harassment need not involve physical contact and that creating a hostile work environment through lewd jokes, verbal abuse, or comments is equally serious.

Why tourism workplaces face heightened risk 🔗

Sexual harassment is a problem in every sector, but research consistently shows that the tourism and hospitality industry is among the most affected. A peer-reviewed framework on prevention notes that the nature of customer interactions, characterised by proximity and personalised service, can create an environment where inappropriate behaviour is ignored, while transient and part-time work creates power imbalances that make employees more vulnerable. The same study highlights that hospitality and food services account for a disproportionately large share of workplace harassment charges.

Several structural features of tourism create this vulnerability:

Power asymmetries with guests 🔗

The “customer is always right” service ethos can be weaponised. A front-desk associate, a flight attendant, or a tour guide may feel pressured to laugh off inappropriate comments because complaining seems to threaten ratings, tips, or repeat business. Harvard Business Review research on the restaurant industry found that this culture, combined with reliance on tips and the expectation that women use their appearance as part of the service experience, makes employees especially susceptible.

Aesthetic labour and gendered roles 🔗

Many tourism roles have historically been gendered. Front-office, spa, cabin crew, and guest-relations positions are often filled by women, while management remains male-dominated. A systematic review published in the journal Tourism Management Perspectives reports that women are usually the primary targets of harassment in hospitality and tourism workplaces, with the imbalance reinforced by traditional gender norms within the industry.

Long, irregular hours and isolation 🔗

Night shifts, room service calls, room inspections, and on-property accommodation can place employees in isolated situations with guests or colleagues. A study published in Scientific Reports on hospitality workers found that more than 80 percent of women surveyed had experienced workplace sexual harassment, with hotel employment showing the strongest association with such experiences.

Why so many incidents go unreported 🔗

Awareness alone does not produce reporting. Employees in tourism often weigh the cost of speaking up against the realities of their employment. Casual contracts, dependence on guest reviews, fear of being labelled as “difficult,” and concern about retaliation by supervisors are common deterrents. The Supreme Court itself has expressed concern about implementation gaps; in a recent judgment, it observed serious lapses in compliance with the POSH Act, including the fact that only 16 of 30 national sports federations had constituted Internal Complaints Committees as required.

Underreporting is also driven by confusion. Many workers cannot tell whether what they are experiencing legally counts as harassment, and managers sometimes treat early warning signs as personality clashes or guest “quirks” rather than misconduct.

The legal framework every tourism employer must know 🔗

The POSH Act applies to every workplace in India with ten or more employees, covering hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, tour operators, transport providers, and adventure tourism companies – public or private, organised or unorganised. The law also defines a workplace broadly. The definition extends to organisations, hospitals, sports facilities, educational institutions, and any place visited by an employee in the course of employment, including transportation. For the tourism industry, this is significant: a tour bus, a hotel shuttle, a heritage site visited by a guide, or a cruise vessel all fall within the workplace.

The Internal Committee 🔗

The Act mandates the formation of an Internal Committee (IC) at every workplace with ten or more employees. The Delhi government’s Department of Women and Child Development outlines its essential composition: the committee must have a majority of women members, must be chaired by a senior woman employee, and must include at least one external member from a women’s rights organisation or someone familiar with sexual harassment issues.

The committee receives written complaints, conducts confidential inquiries, and is required to complete the inquiry within 90 days of receiving a complaint. The committee has the powers of a civil court for the purpose of gathering evidence. For workplaces with fewer than ten employees, complaints are filed before a Local Committee at the district level.

Penalties for non-compliance 🔗

Employers who fail to constitute an IC, fail to act on recommendations, or otherwise breach the Act face monetary penalties of up to ₹50,000, with repeat violations attracting higher fines and potential cancellation of business licences. Criminal liability also exists separately under Section 354A of the Indian Penal Code, which makes specific harassing acts punishable with imprisonment.

Building a tourism workplace that prevents harassment 🔗

Compliance with the POSH Act is the floor, not the ceiling. A genuinely safe tourism workplace requires policies and culture working together.

A clear, visible policy 🔗

Every tourism organisation should publish an anti-sexual-harassment policy that uses plain language, defines prohibited conduct with examples relevant to hotel, restaurant, and travel settings, and explains the complaint process step by step. The policy should be displayed in staff areas, included in the employee handbook, and translated into the languages spoken by frontline staff.

Training that reflects the real workplace 🔗

Generic e-learning modules rarely move the needle. Training in tourism settings should use industry-specific scenarios: a guest making suggestive comments at check-in, a chef joking about a junior cook’s body in the kitchen, a senior manager texting a trainee outside work hours. A holistic prevention framework recommends combining training with bystander intervention skills, victim support mechanisms, perpetrator accountability, and customer education – so that staff know how to support each other and management knows how to respond.

A complaints mechanism employees actually trust 🔗

A trusted process is one where the complainant knows who will hear the case, how confidentiality will be protected, what timelines apply, and what interim relief is possible. The POSH Act allows interim relief such as paid leave or transfer of the complainant or respondent during the inquiry. Tourism employers should also ensure that contract staff, interns, and housekeeping personnel hired through agencies know they too are protected.

Customer education and zero-tolerance signals 🔗

Guests are not above the law. Hotels and tour operators can include conduct expectations in booking confirmations, reinforce them through visible signage, and empower frontline staff to escalate guest misconduct without fear of losing the booking. A guest who harasses a staff member is a liability, not an asset.

What managers can do tomorrow morning 🔗

Cultural change starts with everyday managerial choices. Acknowledge that harassment is possible in your property. Audit whether your IC actually exists, meets, and is known to staff. Ask frontline employees, especially women, anonymously and without managerial pressure, whether they feel safe. Treat early signals – a complaint about a “creepy” regular guest, repeated turnover in a particular department – as data worth investigating.

Tourism is fundamentally an industry of human interaction. Its long-term success depends on workplaces where every employee, regardless of gender or role, can perform their job without fear. The legal scaffolding exists. The remaining work is institutional commitment.

What do you think? If you were designing the harassment-prevention programme for a 200-room hotel, which one practice would you make non-negotiable from day one – and why? And how would you ensure that contract workers, who form a large share of the tourism workforce, feel as protected as full-time employees?

References

1. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/protection-of-women-from-sexual-harassment-act-2013
2. https://wcd.delhi.gov.in/wcd/sexual-harassment-women-workplaceprevention-prohibition-and-redressal-act-2013sh-act-2013
3. https://gender.study/gender-sensitization/legal-protections-sexual-harassment-india/
4. https://hospitalityinsights.ehl.edu/sexual-harassment-prevention-hospitality
5. https://hbr.org/2018/01/sexual-harassment-is-pervasive-in-the-restaurant-industry-heres-what-needs-to-change
6. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211973624000680
7. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-06315-z