Given the growing demand for aged residential care facilities in Western industrialised economies, the adequate staffing of these facilities is a growing concern. Increasingly migrant care workers are being employed to fill the local labour shortfall. In this paper we present findings of a qualitative study exploring how managers of aged residential care facilities work to ensure consistent delivery of quality care through their migrant care workers. The issues raised by the 16 managers cluster around three themes: communication and language barriers; racism by residents, families and managers; and underemployment of tertiary qualified migrant care workers. In addition to issues of quality care delivery, concerns around migrant employee well-being are seen to be difficult to avoid.

Context is an important but largely ignored dimension of quality service encounters. This paper contributes to the hospitality service industries literature by examining how the front-of-house and back-of-house boundary work (Nippert-Eng 1996, 2003) engaged by Room Attendants working within the hotel guest room space impact on the hospitality impression management performed. Qualitative data from fieldwork engaging with hotel employees located within the tourist resort of Queenstown New Zealand are used to explore the multiple fronts on which the front-of-house and back-of-house boundaries are simultaneously negotiated. The results suggest that Room Attendants negotiate the front-of-house and back-of-house boundary through objects – such as the guest room and articles belonging to the guest – and aspects of self– such as impression management, safety, socialising and self-responsibility for room checking. The results support the importance of considering context when seeking to understand the complexities associated with the (re)production of a reliably positive service encounter.