The study aims to investigate Hungarian hotel functional managers’ emotional intelligence and its relation to individual performance within hotel organizations. The relevance of the research comes from the fact that tourism is a key component of the service economy. Hospitality is a 24 h, 7-days a week labour-intensive sector that makes interpersonal relationships challenging for employees (Cudjoe et al., 2023; Ross, 1995; Abdullah et al., 2022) and the working conditions are not ideal (Raub et al., 2006). Constant high work pressures result in high incident levels of burnout, and in high employee turnover (Singh & Woods, 2008; Bakker & Demerouti, 2017). As a result, the hospitality industry is characterised by labour shortages and an ongoing demand for skilled employees (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2021; Hayes & Ninemeier, 2006). The previously described phenomena are also present in the Hungarian hospitality industry. With responsibilities towards guests and subordinates, as well as towards owner(s), hotel middle/functional managers are key figures who try to undertake and balance several roles in order to satisfy this triple mandate. Previous study indicated that he emotional intelligent crutial to cope in work and private life (Kővári et al., 2021; Salem et al., 2023). The question that inspired the research is ‘What makes managers endure and overcome all these demands to perform well even in turbulent circumstances?. This research therefore presents a comparative analysis case where the aim was to explore the relationship between Hungarian hotel function managers’ trait emotional intelligence and their task and contextual performance.