‘Getting milk from the chicken’: Hospitality and hospitableness in Bulgaria’s mass tourism resorts

This chapter explores notions and practices of hospitality among tourism workers in the Bulgarian coastal resort of Golden Sands. At its centre is the question whether it is justified to speak of hospitality in the context of service production in a mass tourism resort. Based on ethnographic data and building on Elizabeth Telfer’s notions of the good host and hospitableness, it investigates the provision of commercial hospitality in Golden Sands in the late socialist period and under the conditions of post-socialist mass tourism development. Practices of hospitality were markedly influenced by the transformation of the organization of tourism in the resort. Changes in the organization of labour and the post-socialist tourism boom had a profound effect on workers’ ability to be good hosts and to create moments of hospitableness in their daily interactions with tourists.