© 2020 IJRAR March 2020, Volume 7, Issue 1 www.ijrar.org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138) IJRAR2001929 International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IJRAR) www.ijrar.org 504 Understanding The Determinants of Employee Engagement: A Study of Hotels in India 1 Partho Pratim Seal, 2 Apurva Sarupria, 3 SenthilKumaran Piramanayagam 1 Research Scholar Pacific University & Assistant Professor, 2 Assistant Professor, Pacific University, 3 Professor, MAHE 1 WGSHA, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Manipal, India Abstract : Employee engagement have a major role in all industries. Hospitality, a customer service driven industry the employees are the major stakeholder who could create a difference between a happy and a dissatisfied customer. The study is to identify the key determinants of employee engagement in hotels in the country. A study was conducted to analyze the relationship of the factors which lead to the engagement of the employees. A convenience sampling method was used to collect data from the hotel employees. A total of 950 questionnaires were distributed and 762 valid responses were collected. Regression was used to find the relationship of the determinants. The factors were identified which predicted the employee engagement in which organizational policies, technology, and leadership have a major impact. The organisations should put in more efforts specially on those factors which have a higher impact on the employee engagement. Understanding the determinants will help the management and the employees to have a healthy work environment and lead to higher engagement level of the employees in the hotel industry. Key terms: Employee engagement, Determinants, Hotel, India I. INTRODUCTION The role of employee engagement is critical in nature so as to retain the valued employees in the organisation. The effective utilization of the manpower leads to smooth operation of the organization. Though there is no fixed definition of employee engagement but there is a consensus that employee engagement brings in commitment and engagement and allows employees to enjoy, value themselves and believe on what they do. The engaged employees also motivates their colleagues to obtain the organisational goals, bring in pride for their work and demonstrate high level of performance and productivity. Hospitality industry is considered as a high turnover industry, engaging and retaining the enployees successfully is a challenging task for the organisation. The engagement of employees drives performance and retention for organisation. Luxury segment hotels do believe that providing additional services and investing in decoration and interiors of hotels enhances guest satisfaction, but also emphasize that investing on employees also lead to better organizational results. The engagement helps the employees to reach to their full potential so that they create proper communication channels, improve organisation productivity, and retain talented staff. As the hospitality industry is been plagued with attrition and turnover of the employees, the industry has to come up with strategies which focus and feel concern of the industry. The hotels prefer to measure employee engagement so that they can emphasis on the employee needs and their concerns. Researchers have stated that engagement level of employees do have an impact on the productivity, profitability, customer satisfaction and on the employee turnover [1].The research consultancy Gallup have reported that engagement and earnings per share are directly proportional to each other [2]. Considering it employee engagement in hotel is of an important concern and do requires attention from all the levels of management and from each department of a hotel. The study is about various determinants of employee engagement in hotel industry.