Family holidays with autistic children: An exploratory study of parents’ emotion work due to service delivery failure

There is growing recognition that autistic children face significant emotional challenges during a family holiday. Interviews with parents of autistic children in the UK and Ireland were undertaken to explore parents' perceptions of the role of emotions in service delivery failure. Inductive latent analysis found four types of service delivery gap, each associated with uncertainty about who is responsible for managing emotions: this is termed ‘emotion work’ when undertaken by parents and ‘emotional labour’ when it is performed by staff. The findings suggest that there is a need for a more complete understanding of the use of emotions in recovery after instances of service delivery failure, particularly with regard to distinguishing between the concepts of emotion work and emotional labour. An important implication is that tourism businesses may need to adapt their service provision through staff training and development schemes that recognise the importance of emotions in supporting autistic children.