Her room was not welcoming. It contained two beds and a fan, in roughly 10 square meters of space for two people. At least it had a small window and a private bathroom, whereas other staff accommodation units had shared toilets, were located in the basement, and did not even offer that limited view. Konstantina Tsoukala Stathaki spent three summer seasons working at this island hotel. She worked at the reception desk seven days a week for six consecutive months, without a single day off.
Inside the role
“You lose your sense of reality under these conditions. You enter a kind of mild vertigo and count the days until it’s over. There is no personal space,” she says. “You live inside the hotel, and your entire daily life unfolds there. Even when you’re off shift, you feel as if you are still inside the ‘role.’ You can’t go to the pool for a drink because it’s only for guests. You stay in the staff room, you eat in the staff area. You feel trapped.”
The 34-year-old has spent a decade working in tourism in various roles. She has worked in bars, hotel reception, Airbnb management, and reservations departments, and in a few weeks her book “I Sezon” (The Season) will be published by Antipodes Publications. In its pages, she not only recounts her own experiences but also attempts to map the microcosm of tourism workers: their shared realities, demands, insecurity, and pressures, beyond the statistical footprint of tourism on the country’s GDP.
