Mental Health and Well-being of Hospitality and Tourism Employees: A Systematic Review of 184 Studies

Mental health and psychological well-being among hospitality and tourism employees sit at the intersection of structural industry conditions — irregular hours, emotional labour, seasonal insecurity, and intense customer interaction — and the compounding pressures that crises like COVID-19 surface and intensify. This systematic review synthesises 184 relevant studies published between 1989 and 2023, maps the intellectual landscape of the field, and identifies where research has concentrated, where it has been fragmented, and where it most urgently needs to develop.

How the research was done

The study used a three-method design combining bibliometric analysis, intellectual network mapping, and critical qualitative content analysis. Scopus was searched using 15 keyword terms related to mental health and psychological well-being in hospitality and tourism employee contexts. After independent screening by three researchers, 184 articles were selected, generating 10,951 citations for analysis. Bibliometric analysis examined publication trends, key journals, prolific authors, institutional affiliations, and countries. Co-occurrence, co-authorship, and co-citation network analyses were then conducted using the Bibliometrix package in R. Content analysis systematically explored the thematic patterns across all 184 papers, and critical reflection was applied to identify gaps and derive a future research agenda.

What the research found

Publication volume increased steadily from 2013 and peaked in 2022 at the height of COVID-19-related research activity. The International Journal of Hospitality Management contributed the most articles (67), and the field has been disproportionately shaped by scholars based in China, the United States, and South Korea, with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Eastern Mediterranean University among the most productive affiliations. The co-authorship network was highly fragmented, with most research conducted within academic silos and limited cross-institutional collaboration — a structural pattern that has contributed to an imbalanced focus on certain themes, particularly working conditions and job stress, at the expense of emotional labour, cross-cultural comparison, and the positive dimensions of psychological well-being.

Six research streams were identified through content analysis: descriptive studies of mental health and stress conditions; investigations of antecedents and organisational outcomes; COVID-19 impacts; personal consequences of MHPW issues including substance use; coping strategies and positive enhancers; and cross-regional comparative studies. While 83.7% of papers incorporated some theoretical grounding, engagement was often superficial — citing frameworks without meaningfully integrating their logic into research design or interpretation. Eight critical reflections and future research directions were derived, including calls for holistic conceptualisations that integrate pathological and positive dimensions of MHPW, for the development of industry-specific measurement instruments, for multi-level analytical approaches, for systematic examination of technology's impact on mental health, and for a long-term assessment of how the pandemic has reshaped generational perceptions of hospitality and tourism as career paths.

Insights for the industry

The review confirms what many practitioners already suspect: the mental health challenges facing hospitality and tourism workers are structural rather than incidental, arising from the specific combination of irregular schedules, emotional labour demands, seasonal employment insecurity, and intense customer interaction that define the sector. The coping strategies literature reviewed here points to evidence-based interventions within reach of most operators, including organisational error tolerance, managerial emotional and procedural support during customer incivility incidents, access to short breaks, and flexible work-life provisions — each of which has been associated with measurable improvements in employee well-being.

The review's finding that COVID-19 may have permanently altered how younger cohorts perceive hospitality and tourism as viable long-term careers is a structural warning for the industry's talent pipeline. Addressing it requires more than retention incentives — it requires a visible, sustained commitment to working conditions, mental health infrastructure, and employer brand substance. The finding that technology's impact on MHPW remains almost entirely unexamined in the existing literature is also directly relevant for organisations investing in automation and AI: staff anxiety about displacement, the cognitive demands of hybrid human-machine roles, and the redesign of service work are MHPW implications with operational consequences that are currently invisible in the research record.