To unfairly penalize, force, threaten, or deceive subordinates to achieve personal goals, some leaders frequently engage in toxic and dysfunctional conduct. Such leaders' misguided goals of advancing themselves alone frequently come at others' expense, not their work ethics. These behaviors may have a negative impact on their subordinates in terms of feeling frustrated, stressed, and losing passion and enthusiasm, which may affect their job performance levels. As a result, this study emphasizes the critical impact of toxic leadership on job frustration as well as the latter's effect on employee performance in tourism and hotel contexts. This research also examines the mediation effect of job frustration in the nexus between employee performance and toxic leader behaviors (i.e., narcissism, abusive supervision, authoritarianism, self-promotion, and unpredictability). Data was gathered from 237 four-star hotel and 255 B-class tourism agency employees in Greater Cairo. Datasets were tested using ADANCO-PLS v.2.4 to elicit multigroup analysis findings among hotel and tourism agency employee samples. Findings indicated that authoritarianism and self-promotion positively affected job frustration in favor of the hotel employee sample, while job frustration was positively affected by narcissism in favor of the tourism agency employee sample. Further, job frustration partially mediated the nexus between employee performance and narcissism, self-promotion, and authoritarianism in favor of the hotel employee sample. Accordingly, this study provides robust contributions to policymakers in hospitality and tourism, emphasizing interventions aimed at reducing toxic leadership behaviors to enhance employee performance and well-being.