Hello, I have the same problem since a while, now.
I have set two hotbar for emotes only. (Currently, hotbar 4 and 5.) I have no macro on either of these two hotbars.

Each time I login and log out, or each time I travel in game (be it for one map to another one, or just going out of the inn room), one of the hotbar (always the same) never save and goes back blank with any of the emotes I set on it.

I thought it was me that didn't save at first, so I saved, but the same problem occured. Then, I went to see if the save for the hotbars were in the correct folder. It was. At last, I went to see if maybe my antivirus was causing problem, but only one of the two hotbar seems to have this problem. So I tried to completely change to hotbars and use different (Hotbar 6 and 7). Still, one of the two hotbar was not saving and the other one stayed with the emote.

I do not have message in chat box to let me know it was unable to save, and I do not have any other saving problem except this one. Is this because we can't have two hotbars with emotes at the same time?