The business environment where human resources (HR) work, produce and offer tourism experiences changes dramatically due to intense social, economic and technological developments (Stavrinoudis et al., 2022). These developments have a multifaceted impact on the tourism and hospitality ecosystem, particularly concerning how businesses create value, manage labour relations, exercise leadership, foster work motivation and address required skills, among other factors (Kakarougkas et al., 2024). HRM professionals in the hotel and tourism industry face increasing challenges such as high employee turnover, staff shortages and the demand for work-life balance (Magnini et al., 2024). These challenges require innovative initiatives and solutions.
In this context, the rapid development of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools offers alternative solutions to support HRM initiatives in the hospitality industry and address the aforementioned challenges (Ruel, 2021). In the past, many studies have focused on investigating the impact of adopting digital technologies in hotels. Still, the relationship between these technological developments and sustainable competitive advantage remains unclear (Saura et al., 2022), highlighting the need for further study.
In addition, the ageing global population is forcing companies to review the framework within which they manage their HR (Salomão Filho et al., 2023). However, managers of tourism companies often avoid employing older employees due to social stereotypes (Cheung and Woo, 2021), which makes it important to explore and redefine the perceptions of hotel managers towards older employees. Riyanto et al. (2021) emphasise that the assessment and management of employees' emotions is crucial for the organisational development of a business (Sohn and Lee, 2012), while Stoyanova-Bozhkova et al. (2022) argued that the use of emotional intelligence gives hotels a competitive advantage. Therefore, international research converges on the importance of understanding and managing employees' emotions in the tourism and hospitality industry. Another aspect worth investigating is gender-related biases, workplace inequality and the phenomenon of the glass ceiling, which significantly hinders women's hierarchical advancement in the hospitality sector, particularly in leadership positions (e.g. general manager, executive chef, etc.), which remain gender-biased (Dashper, 2020; Stavrinoudis et al., 2021). This results in women facing additional barriers to advancement into leadership positions (Pereira and Wang, 2025), underscoring the importance of investigating the gender bias that emerges in male-dominated hotel management roles.
The tourism and hospitality industry is dominated by family businesses, owned and managed by members of one or more families (Gupta and Valeri, 2022). Family businesses face particular challenges that need to be explored, such as succession planning, diversified HRM practices for intra-family and non-family employees and leadership issues (Camilleri and Valeri, 2021). Although employee attitudes, behaviours and performance play a crucial role in the quality of services provided in the hospitality industry (Hai and Park, 2024), high employee turnover and limited opportunities for career advancement seriously undermine HR retention and overall organisational effectiveness (Demirović Bajrami et al., 2022). As a result, there is an urgent need to adopt integrated HRM strategies to enhance employee engagement and productivity in hotel businesses.
Intra-organisational conflicts present another critical issue for businesses and pose a significant threat (Gupta, 2021), underscoring the importance of developing effective conflict management strategies (Ivanov, 2019). By evaluating the effectiveness of specific conflict management policies and strategies, one can draw valuable conclusions to better understand how employee engagement and trust in the workplace are impacted during or as a result of conflicts. In the hospitality industry, a hotel manager oversees the daily operations and motivates HR to develop (Aftab et al., 2023). Therefore, examining how employees perceive their managers' emotional intelligence, coaching skills and transformational leadership styles (Stoyanova-Bozhkova et al., 2022) is particularly important. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has partially transformed the hotel industry (Kakarougkas and Adamidis, 2024) and affected the work of executives by accelerating the need for: (1) new innovative products and services (Chen et al., 2021) and (2) developing policies to address the phenomenon of Great Resignation (Liu-Lastres et al., 2023). It is therefore of great importance to investigate the consequences of the pandemic and its effects on HR, especially those who hold positions of responsibility.
The complexity of the tourism phenomenon requires HR to possess various hard and soft skills (Moura et al., 2021). In this field, the tourism sector currently faces a significant gap between the skills possessed by HR and the skills required by businesses (Chemli et al., 2024). In light of this challenge, it is vital to map the skills identified as being of particular value in tourism and hospitality over time and to identify future trends and challenges that may impact the skills landscape in the sector. This theme issue aims to highlight the central, contemporary socio-economic and technological developments and how they impact HR and HRM in the tourism and hospitality industry.
Design of the theme issue
Stergiou (2025), through an extensive literature review, explores how generative AI, particularly ChatGPT, can be leveraged to support HRM in the tourism and hospitality industry, concluding that the implementation of clear prompts by HR professionals reinforces AI suggestions. The proposed verification framework can mitigate risks such as misinformation and ethical concerns, ensuring that the outcomes align with best practices.
Maškarin Ribarić et al. (2025), through embedded mixed methods, assess the perceptions of hotel managers towards older employees, focusing on the main characteristics of these employees that affect their performance at work, in the tourism and hospitality industry, which is dominated by younger HR. Through this assessment, the emphasis on assessing personal and interpersonal (soft) skills becomes clear.
Konstantinidis et al. (2025) focus on the multidimensional importance of understanding and managing employees' emotions in the tourism and hospitality industry. The authors experimented on 20 employees of urban hotels, using EEG equipment to collect time-series data on six emotional states: engagement, excitement, attention, interest, relaxation and anxiety. The data analysis provided information on the employees' emotional states, leading to specific management and motivational suggestions.
Cao and Paraskevas (2025), through semi-structured interviews with 17 female senior managers occupying male-dominated positions in international hotel chains, explore how socially constructed gender role expectations encourage and perpetuate prejudices against women. The interviews revealed persistent gender biases at various levels: social, organisational, interpersonal and individual.
Chalis and Kinias (2025) highlight the need to investigate the role of HRM in family businesses in tourism and hospitality. They conducted a systematic literature review in the thematic areas of family business and human resources in hospitality and tourism, highlighting the theoretical and practical dimensions of HRM in family businesses and identifying opportunities for future research.
Loukopoulos et al. (2025), using structural equation modelling in data collected from 198 hotel employees, examine the relationship between perceived organisational credibility, triple bottom line sustainable HRM, organisational commitment and job performance in the tourism and hospitality industry. Their research demonstrated that triple bottom line sustainable HRM practices partially mediate the relationship between perceived organisational credibility, organisational commitment and job performance.
Oikonomou et al. (2025) focus on investigating the impact of technological developments in combination with HR in the hotel industry. Through quantitative research that drew data from 241 Greek 3- to 5-star hotels, they demonstrated that new technologies, combined with human expertise, can enhance a hotel's value chain, improving performance and operational efficiency.
Varelas and Kannelopoulou (2025) highlight the importance of conflicts in the modern environment of tourism businesses and underline the need to understand and analyse, on the one hand, various conflict management techniques, such as concession, compromise, coercion, problem-solving and avoidance and, on the other, to evaluate their impact on employee trust. Through the quantitative analysis of data collected from 210 respondents, the critical role of conflict resolution in building a trusting and productive work environment, which is essential for the long-term success of tourism organisations, was highlighted.
Vasilagkos et al. (2025) explore the multidimensional relationship between emotional intelligence competencies, coaching, and transformational leadership in hotel organisations, emphasising the supervisor-subordinate relationship. Data were analysed using factor analysis involving 350 managers from 4- and 5-star hotel organisations in Greece and Cyprus. This analysis demonstrated that hotel managers who understand the role of emotional intelligence can more effectively assess the emotional needs of their team members, provide coaching and develop transformational leadership.
Koutoulas and Chytiri (2025) focus on the challenge related to how the work of hotel managers has been affected by employees' resignation that followed the COVID-19 pandemic. Through non-probability sampling, combined with the snowball technique, quantitative data were collected in two consecutive field surveys from 125 to 128 members of various local hotel manager associations and the corresponding national federation. The survey identified the main changes in hotel working conditions in Greece due to the pandemic, highlighting the differences from the pre-pandemic era.
Kakarougkas and Stavrinoudis (2025), on one hand, focus on the need to identify the core skills that HR in tourism and hospitality needs to possess over time and, on the other hand, highlight new trends and future challenges in this field. Through bibliometric analysis, specific skills were identified that hold established value or possess emerging or limited importance in the tourism industry. The findings of the bibliometric analysis can be a helpful source and starting point for future research in the field of HR skills in tourism and hospitality.
Summary
This theme issue of worldwide hospitality and tourism themes aims to shed light on the key contemporary administrative, socio-economic and technological developments shaping HRM within the tourism and hospitality ecosystem. A crucial question is sought to be answered: What are the future trends in HRM in tourism and hospitality? The answer to this question will provide valuable insights into the evolving roles, skills and strategies required for effective HRM in an ever-changing global environment in tourism and hospitality. This thematic issue aspires to be a source of valuable knowledge for practitioners, academia and stakeholders, as well as to address some of the challenges and find a way towards the future of tourism and hospitality.
