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This study aims to examine the role of hospitableness towards refugees, as embraced by local hosts, in engendering positive social outcomes, including fostering favourable attitudes and empathy towards refugees, satisfaction from hosting refugees in private dwellings and advocacy for hosting them.

Rooted in the contact theory and drawing on a hospitality social lens framework, the study uses a mixed-methods approach using a sequential quantitative-qualitative design to understand the interface between hospitableness, attitudes and empathy towards refugees, satisfaction from hosting refugees in private dwellings and advocacy for hosting them. A conceptual model is proposed and tested using 160 valid surveys collected from individuals hosting Ukrainian refugees in Slovakia. SEM-PLS is used to test the proposed model. A total of 25 in-depth interviews with Slovakian individuals hosting refugees in private dwellings were also conducted to explain and further explore the initial quantitative results.

The findings indicate that hospitableness has a positive effect on attitudes towards refugees, fosters a sense of empathy and results in satisfaction from hosting refugees. Interestingly, while hospitableness per se does not directly affect advocacy for hosting refugees, it does so indirectly via favourable attitudes towards refugees and satisfaction from the hosting experience. While qualitative findings largely support and further explain the quantitative results, interesting insights are also obtained.

The study advocates that hospitableness should be addressed through a social lens beyond its traditional commercial boundaries. Several implications for policymakers, NGOs and other stakeholders involved in hosting refugees are proposed. Overall, policies need to be oriented towards harnessing the power of refugee hosting schemes, thus increasing the role of hospitableness in addressing societal challenges such as the refugee crisis.

While not new, private hosting of refugees has recently gained momentum following the outbreak of the Ukrainian refugee crisis. In spite of some valuable research delving into hosting experiences from the refugees’ and hosts’ perspectives, this research stream is notably fragmented and largely exploratory. Specifically, there seems to be no comprehensive understanding of how hospitableness towards refugees, as embraced by hosts, can engender positive social outcomes, including fostering favourable attitudes and empathy towards refugees, satisfaction from hosting refugees and advocacy for hosting refugees in private dwellings. Overall, hospitality research is notably biased towards commercial settings, focusing on instrumental benefits rather than societal outcomes. This study focuses on the societal outcomes of hospitableness as a tool to address the refugee crisis.

Hospitableness lies in the center of hospitality services. With the infusion of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in the hospitality industry, managers are concerned about how AI influences service hospitableness. Previous research has examined the consequences of AI technology based on customers’ assessment while ignoring the key players in service hospitableness – frontline employees (FLEs). This study aims to reveal how AI technology empowers FLEs physically, mentally and emotionally, facilitating hospitableness provision.

As the starting point, the instrument for AI-enabled service attributes was designed based on previous literature, hotel FLE interviews, expert panel and a pilot survey, and then validated using survey data. After that, a paired supervisor-employee sample was recruited in 15 hotels, and 342 valid questionnaires covering the constructs were obtained.

Factor analyses and measurement model evaluation suggest that the four factors, including anthropomorphic, entertainment, functional and information attributes, explain the construct of AI-enabled service attributes well, with high reliability and validity. Additionally, anthropomorphic, functional and information attributes of AI technology have been found to enable FLEs physically, mentally and emotionally, which further lead to increased service hospitableness. The entertainment attributes do not significantly reduce physical and mental fatigue but lead to positive emotions of FLEs significantly. Additionally, psychological job demand moderates the effects of AI-enabled service attributes on physical fatigue.

Practical implications can be made for AI technology application and hospitableness provision, in terms of AI technology analysis, job design and employee workload management.

This research contributes to understanding AI-enabled service attributes and their consequences, extends the conservation of resources theory to AI application context and promotes the research on service hospitableness.

The purpose of this paper is to consider how the talent of hospitableness can be transposed to commercial settings without a wholesale erosion of its altruistic and moral core and how it can be effectively leveraged within the talent management (TM) process.

The authors unpack the concept of hospitableness which entails an unconditional disposition and moral obligation in the host to care for their guest. This paper also exposes its moral dilemmas and the risks it presents to both host and guest – leading to the endorsement of reciprocal altruistic hospitableness which warrants altruistic sentiments and moral obligations in both parties as the necessary condition for a more protective, mutually beneficial and enduring host–guest relationship. Against the backdrop of the tourism and hospitality industry, this paper examines the challenges of transposing hospitableness to commercial settings without a wholesale erosion of its altruistic and moral core. It posits that what is needed is a reframing of TM as a dialogic process through which hospitableness can be effectively leveraged as a unique talent.

In carrying out this exercise, this paper develops a conceptual framework that brings the TM process under the overarching principle of free dialogue – which the authors see as a precondition for preserving the altruistic and moral core of hospitableness even when transposed to commercial settings.

The framework contains concrete guidelines on how to reframe TM as dialogic practice and can be used as a canvas for experimentation in managing the talent of hospitableness and for training purposes.

The paper expands the conceptual dimensions of hospitableness and deepens understanding of its application via the TM process to commercial settings.

The purpose of this paper is to explore current strands in hospitality management education and research, and suggest that future programs should reflect a more social science informed content.

The paper reviews current research in hospitality management education and in the study of hospitality and hospitableness. It is, therefore, essentially a literature review, but founded on a variety of research insights gained by the author.

Some have argued that the hospitality management education is currently dominated by the tyranny of relevance. Yet, the study of hospitableness in wider social settings has much to offer to both students and their future employers. This paper suggests there is need to allow for more flexibility in the curriculum so as to be less concerned with immediate relevance of content and more concerned with developing graduates who are critical and analytical thinkers.

It is not founded on primary research per se, but reflects upon a number of formal studies about the nature of the field, the preferred learning styles of students and nature of hospitableness.

The paper suggests changes to the current curriculum that may, or may not, result in name changes to programs studying hospitality and preparing the sector’s future management personnel.

Aims to discover a truer meaning of genuine hospitality, addressing the issue of whether or not a better understanding can help to steer the hospitality industry in the right direction in the future.

Examines “hospitableness” and the extent to which this is a human characteristic that is innate and/or can be nurtured and developed. Presents a literature review and offers recommendations

It is suggested that the most practical way for achieving this goal is to investigate the history and origins of hospitality. Only once an understanding of hospitality's origins and its place in human nature is achieved can one expect to discover what hospitality means today, and more importantly what it will mean to those entering the industry in the future..

Makes recommendations as to how measures of hospitableness might be used in the staff recruitment process and considers personality characteristics and linkages with service delivery.

This paper aims to propose a new model of memorable Airbnb experiences that was tested by examining the effects of the novelty of the experience, experience co-creation, hospitableness and facility service quality on memorable Airbnb experiences. This study also examined the impact of such experiences on hedonic well-being.

Using an online survey questionnaire on Amazon Mechanical Turk, we gathered data from 214 international tourists who stayed in an Airbnb rental property during the three months preceding the time of data collection (November 2020–January 2021).

This study confirmed that novelty of the experience, experience co-creation, hospitableness and facility service quality are key variables in the formation of tourists’ memorable Airbnb experiences and that the latter further influences tourists’ hedonic well-being.

Airbnb guests should not be viewed as passive agents but as active producers of their own consumption experiences. Airbnb hosts should, thus, be highly involved when their guests want to co-create their experiences by actively interacting with them. For example, hosts should make recommendations for dining and sightseeing.

This study contributed to the existing literature on memorable tourism experiences and Airbnb by furthering the understanding of the antecedents of memorable Airbnb experiences and of the mediating effect of memorable Airbnb experience on hedonic well-being.

With the ever-increasing adoption of technology and automation radically changing the nature of service delivery, the purpose of this paper is to explore the role of human touch, introducing hospitable service as an enhancement for value creation in service organizations.

Drawing on management, social sciences and hospitality literatures, a four-configuration model is presented to illustrate dimensions which arise from the confluence of different degrees of relationship orientation – shared mental models held by the host organization (self- or other-oriented), and guests’ service preferences (transactional or relational).

A theoretically grounded model of configurations resulting from variations on three key dimensions is offered. These are: employee organization relationships – social exchange processes governing the interactions between employees and their employers; HRM systems – internally consistent combinations of HR practices; and tech-touch trade-off – prioritization of technology vs employees to deliver services.

Embedding hospitable service as a construct to support the leveraging of human touch in service organizations opens up new research opportunities including avenues to further conceptualize the nature and dimensions of hospitable service. Future research that supports further understanding about the role of human touch and value creation in service organizations is proposed.

Through the value-enhancing capability of human in the service encounter, firms can be enabled to accurately position themselves in one of the four relational configurations on offer and then identify opportunities for managers to leverage human touch to combat the diminishing role of the human touch in a technology-ubiquitous service context.

This is among the first papers to explore the influence of technology on the degree of human touch in the interface between hospitality employee and customer, and to develop a configuration model through which researchers and practitioners can operate during this declining era of human to human service interactions.

This paper explores how hospitality frontline employees understand, interpret and practice “hospitality” in a hotel industry context.

Framed by interpretivist and phenomenological approaches a dual-stage semi-structured interview study design was conducted. A sample was drawn from hotel employees in Australia.

Findings support the proposition that the hospitality workforce tends to favor service management and service processes as the guiding paradigm. The essence of what it means to be hospitable, and the host-guest model, appears to be largely absent in practice.

This paper contributes to a scarcity of literature exploring the understanding of hospitality, and how this understanding can translate into hospitable behavior, from the employee perspective. Our main implication is that service management terminology colonizes hospitality within a commercial context, while the essence of hospitality and the “hospitality” lexicon is concomitantly diminishing. The authors advocate for developing an inter-paradigmatic view of hospitality management.

While the study revealed that the majority of frontline hotel employees struggle with grasping and verbalizing their understandings and perceptions of the hospitality construct, although some acknowledged the importance of hospitality as being an integral component to service delivery. We identified consistent organizational practices and intrinsic employee traits that either enabled or obstructed hospitable behavior in hotel settings.

The study reveals tensions between the hospitality and service paradigms in hospitality literature and practice. We uncover hotel management practices that may help to conserve and foster the essence of hospitality in hospitality organizations.