Articles on hospitality and tourism research worth reading: what the studies found and why it matters. Also bridging research and industry with straightforward insights for industry professionals.
What pushes hospitality staff towards hollow, performed emotion rather than the genuine kind? In a study of 529 front-line employees, the culprit is not difficult customers but the erosion of leisure by the job — an effect that runs through the need for recovery, and one a supportive supervisor can switch off entirely.
There is no single right way for a hotel to go green: the same practice can drive guest behaviour or barely register, depending on the property. Across four experiments, visible front-of-house practices worked best in luxury hotels through sensory pleasure, while hidden back-of-house practices worked best in economy hotels through a sense of purpose.
A sustainable wine tourism product does not begin at the cellar door but upstream, in how grapes are grown and food is sourced. Drawing on interviews with 140 winery leaders across eight nations, this study maps fifteen dimensions of sustainability — and surfaces a paradox, where wine tourism can undermine the very sustainability it markets.
Most behaviour change campaigns work by providing information, yet fewer than 60% succeed — because they assume behaviour is preceded by thinking. This conceptual paper argues that effectiveness depends on where a behaviour sits on a continuum from considered to scripted to habitual, and that habits and scripts must be disrupted before information can reach them.
Two pre-registered survey experiments with Australian and UK tourists test five theory-informed water-saving messages in a farm tourism context, finding that none outperform a simple neutral appeal. The study extends the standard pre-testing protocol for behaviour change interventions by adding scrutiny of neutral control conditions and cross-cultural validation — two steps that materially change which interventions look promising before costly field deployment. Humour emerges as the one approach with a genuine supplementary advantage. Cultural differences between Australian and UK participants serve as a practical caution for international properties.
Most AI in hospitality responds to instructions. Agentic AI pursues goals autonomously, reasons across contexts, and coordinates actions across service systems with minimal human oversight. A conceptual paper proposes five functional agent roles — service, planning, monitoring, engagement, and meta-agents — and identifies six interconnected risk domains from algorithmic bias to legal ambiguity. Industry cases from Air Canada, Marriott, McDonald's, and Carnival Cruise Line anchor the governance argument in documented real-world evidence.
A systematic review of 184 studies on hospitality and tourism employee mental health and psychological well-being maps the field's intellectual structure through bibliometric, network, and content analysis. Six research streams are identified — from descriptive studies of workplace stress through to COVID-19 impacts and cross-regional comparisons — alongside eight critical reflections and a future research agenda. The review confirms that the sector's mental health challenges are structural, that the existing literature over-concentrates on stress and neglects positive dimensions and technology impacts, and that significant gaps remain in measurement, theory, and cross-cultural evidence.
Can watching a destination live stream actually get someone on a plane — or does it satisfy curiosity so completely that the trip never happens? This study examines how TLS shapes tourist decision-making, integrating the TPB with affordance theory to move past the theoretical fragmentation that has produced contradictory findings about whether TLS motivates, substitutes for, or suppresses physical travel.
Traditional tourism advertising research has long relied on self-report measures, which struggle to capture the implicit processes—attention, emotional arousal, and cognitive load—that unfold automatically and often outside conscious awareness. Could neuroscientific methods such as eye-tracking and EEG help bridge this gap?
Smart hotels are reshaping what guests expect from a stay—blending AI, IoT, robotics, and self-service technologies with traditional hospitality. But which combinations of factors actually drive a high-quality customer experience (CEQ) in this hybrid environment, and which combinations end up dragging it down?
A study of 672 US diners shows that avatars with the right qualities (competence, warmth, trustworthiness, credibility) can effectively nudge restaurant customers toward healthier food choices, while also boosting satisfaction, loyalty, and word-of-mouth.
A study of 559 older adults finds that virtual travel guided by GenAI avatars satisfies psychological needs and lifts well-being, which then drives travel confidence and real-world travel intention.
A study with 724 hotel employees shows that avatar-led green training strengthens organizational citizenship behavior for the environment by working through workplace spirituality, with biospheric values as a key moderator.
A video-analysis study of guest-robot interactions in hotels finds that entertainment-focused robots generate longer engagement and group-based interactions, while information-focused robots produce only brief task-oriented exchanges.
Two studies of US tourists show that blockchain-visualized sustainability information in tourism souvenirs increases willingness to pay, both directly and through authenticity perception and warm glow.
Three experimental studies show that supermodel-looking avatars in restaurants drive healthier food choices and customer satisfaction through aspirational appeal and social comparison, with humour and persuasion style as moderators.
For families with children on the autism spectrum, hotel design is not about compliance — it is about survival logistics. A laddering study with 16 Italian families traces the connections from specific hotel attributes such as sensory modulation and trained staff through consequences such as avoided crises and parental relief to the terminal values actually driving their choices: serenity, relaxation, and the ability to rest. Trained and empathetic staff, not physical modifications, emerge as the highest-priority attribute. The study reframes ASD-friendly hospitality as a coherent design challenge with real commercial potential.
A study of 4,603 hotel job postings from Indeed across five major Asian cities finds that three-quarters communicate at least one employer value proposition — but one in four miss the opportunity entirely. Chain hotels lean on functional and psychological attributes such as training, culture, and inclusive values, while independent hotels rely more heavily on economic appeals. Bangkok leads EVP communication frequency; Singapore trails. The study provides a city-level benchmarking framework and identifies what hotel employers are saying, not saying, and could be saying better.