AI-Driven Labor Transformation and Sustainability in Hospitality and Tourism
A Special Issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050) belonging to the section "Tourism, Culture, and Heritage".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2027 | Viewed by 1176
Editors
Interests: consumer behavior; service innovation; experience design
Interests: human automation interaction in hospitality and tourism; destination marketing and management; food tourism; food experience design and management
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Historically, the hospitality and tourism sectors have been labor-intensive industries, relying heavily on human capital across both frontline service and operational roles. However, the landscape is shifting rapidly as artificial intelligence (AI) fundamentally transforms workflows, service delivery, and core business models. Beyond simple task automation, AI is reshaping job design, redistributing decision-making authority, redefining skill requirements, and reconfiguring the relationship between human employees and intelligent systems across hospitality and tourism organizations. Service robots, chatbots, and other smart technologies are increasingly embedded in daily operations. These transformations define a broader shift in what sustainability means for hospitality and tourism. Sustainability is no longer limited to environmental efficiency; it also encompasses social and economic resilience within service ecosystems. Social sustainability concerns the quality, equity, and inclusiveness of work, including employee well-being, job security, skill development, and the implications of algorithmic management for power dynamics and professional identity. Economic sustainability extends beyond short-term productivity gains to include long-term workforce resilience, stable career pathways, talent pipelines, and organizational adaptability in the face of technological disruption. Yet AI-driven labor transformation may simultaneously advance and undermine these dimensions of sustainability. While AI promises operational efficiency and environmental optimization, it may also introduce new social, ethical, and economic tensions. As such, AI-driven labor transformation is not merely a technological shift but a socio-technical restructuring of hospitality and tourism organizations. This Special Issue brings together research that helps us understand these shifts. Our goal is to explore both the promise and the complexity of AI-driven labor transformation, with particular attention to how it relates to the environmental, social, and economic sustainability implications in hospitality and tourism.
We welcome your contributions aligned with, but are not limited to, the following themes:
- AI-driven labor transformation and sustainable service performance (e.g., service robots, chatbots, automations that enhance efficiency, reduce resource use, and reshape service delivery models);
- Workforce development, job redesign, and human capital sustainability (e.g., upskilling and reskilling, digital literacy, task redistribution, hybrid human and AI roles, skill polarization, long-term workforce planning, and equitable access to technological opportunities);
- Human–AI collaboration and employee outcomes in AI-augmented workplaces (e.g., emotional labor shifts, empowerment, techno-anxiety, job crafting, professional identity, and psychological well-being);
- Guest perceptions and responses to AI-enabled service work and the preservation of human touch (e.g., consumer acceptance, trust, and value perceptions of AI-mediated services; the balance between automation and human interaction; the role of emotional connection, empathy, and personalized service in sustainable hospitality experiences);
- Algorithmic management, governance, and responsibility in AI-enabled workplaces (e.g., decision automation, performance monitoring, transparency, accountability, bias mitigation, explainability, and data privacy);
- Sustainability tensions and trade-offs (e.g., efficiency versus equity, automation versus employment stability, environmental gains versus AI energy consumption, and unintended social or economic inequities);
- Cross-cultural, cross-sector, and multi-level perspectives on AI labor transformation (e.g., comparative analyses across organizations, regions, and institutional environments);
- AI’s environmental footprint in hospitality operations (life-cycle sustainability, energy consumption, and green technology integration).
We particularly encourage submissions that employ rigorous qualitative, quantitative, longitudinal, and mixed-method approaches to capture the evolving and dynamic nature of AI-driven labor transformation in hospitality and tourism. Methods such as ethnographies, in-depth case studies, experiments, and multi-level designs are especially valuable for examining the complex and multi-layered implications of AI-enabled labor restructuring. We also welcome theoretically grounded contributions drawing on perspectives such as socio-technical systems theory, institutional theory, labor process theory, sustainable HRM and ESG frameworks, and paradox theory to advance deeper conceptual understanding of how AI reshapes work, organizations, and sustainability outcomes. We look forward to receiving your manuscripts and engaging with the innovative and meaningful research emerging in this area. By bringing together diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives, this Special Issue aims to stimulate rigorous and impactful scholarly dialog on how AI-driven labor transformation can contribute to, or challenge, the pursuit of a more sustainable future for hospitality and tourism. We look forward to receiving your contributions. Dr. Soona ParkDr. Mohamed E. MohamedDr. Yiran Kevin Liu
Dr. Soona Park
Dr. Mohamed E. Mohamed
Dr. Yiran Kevin Liu
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- AI-driven labor
- human–AI collaboration
- AI-enabled service
- AI labor transformation
- AI-mediated service
- hospitality and tourism
- workforce sustainability
- human capital sustainability
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