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This paper aims to provide answers to the question: “What innovations would enable the tourism and hospitality industry to re-build?”.

At the outset, it redefines the concept of ‘Innovation” in the context of the hospitality and tourism industry. It then focuses on post-pandemic re-building best practices in tourism and hospitality. It captures the essence of the articles in this theme issue collection on innovative actions from around the world and presents concluding remarks.

This article summarises the key findings of this theme issue and it draws generalized conclusions about re-building the tourism and hospitality industry. In conclusion, 14 key learning outcomes are presented. These include topics such as: rethinking tourism and hospitality products and services, sustaining resilience, collaboration between the government, academia and industry, special interest tourism, domestic tourism, crisis management, digital transformation, the health and safety of all stakeholders, operational efficiencies and environmental sustainability.

This research contributes to the emerging research theme of tourism and hospitality post-pandemic re-building.

There are a number of practical implications in terms of industry approaches to the adoption of innovative strategies to re-build tourism and hospitality operations around the world.

Readers who are interested in international best practices of hospitality and tourism should find this concluding article of interest.

The purpose of this paper is to profile the Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes theme issue “The way forward: how is Malaysian hospitality and tourism education working with industry?” with reference to the experiences of the theme editors and writing team.

Structured questions were used to enable the theme editors to reflect on the rationale for the theme issue question, the starting point, the selection of the writing team and material and the editorial process.

Malaysia’s hospitality and tourism industry is facing an acute shortage of skilled employees, accentuated by the fact that jobs in the industry are not broadly appealing to Malaysians.

The hospitality and tourism industry in Malaysia wants to employ graduates with a professional attitude and mindset, and to secure this objective, a greater focus on work-based learning is needed.

The paper draws on discussion and applied research to explore the hospitality and tourism industry–education collaboration in Malaysia and the ways in which employability and retention can be enhanced by a greater emphasis on work-based learning.

There is an essential link between the success of hospitality organizations and the availability of appropriate labor resources, making employee attraction a critical concern for the industry. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the role of work experience, both inside and outside the hospitality industry, in shaping students’ attitudes toward hospitality careers. The study was conducted on the group of 338 undergraduates and graduates enrolled in tourism and hospitality studies in Poznan, Poland. The findings suggest that work experience displays a stronger relationship with preferred than with perceived job and organization attributes. It is also related to perceptions of hospitality career attractiveness both in the long and in the short run as well as to intentions to apply for a job after graduation. The results underline the importance of providing students with quality work experience by the hospitality industry stakeholders as it can influence future career decisions.

Literature shows that the antecedents of eWoM have received limited attention and the present scales used for measuring eWoM in the hospitality and tourism industry are outdated. Therefore, this study aims to construct a new scale for the generation of positive eWoM in the hospitality and tourism industry.

This study developed a novel scale on eWoM based on the four dimensions of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology.

The exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis confirms the factorial structure of the new scale. The exploratory factor analysis shows that “performance expectancy” has the highest impact on the constitution of positive eWoM with 8 items, followed by “social influence” and “facilitation condition” with 5 items each. The factor “effort expectancy” is found to have the lowest impact on the constitution of positive eWoM in the hospitality and tourism industry with 3 items. The confirmatory factor analysis in terms of the construct reliability, average variance extracted and maximum shared variance tests confirmed the model validity of the new scale.

This study ensures measuring eWoM with the latest norms that will assist in prudent policy formulation. These results insights into policymakers from the hospitality and tourism industry for the generation of positive eWoM towards their business which will help them achieve better customer loyalty.

The purpose of this paper is to present a briefing on milestones of Malaysia Centre of Tourism and Hospitality Education (MyCenTHE) regarding its role as a nation-building exercise in developing human capital talent for future sustainable hospitality and tourism in Malaysia. Under a national initiative by the ministry of education, hospitality and tourism educational institutes in the country have set out to better prepare graduates for industry. MyCenTHE aspires to build a hospitality and tourism cluster (threefold) so that Malaysia is able to increase its annual output of hospitality and tourism personnel from 20,000 in 2009 to 50,000 in 2020 and increase the share of graduates with diploma- or degree-level awards from 13% to 50% by 2020. These expectations can only be achieved by creating a sustainable pool of workers for this sector. It was in this context for which “MyCenTHE” was conceived.

The current study is based on documentary analysis of secondary sources, qualitative in nature, and presents a case study of MyCenTHE with its key accomplishments in promoting hospitality and tourism education in Malaysia.

The hospitality and tourism industry in Malaysia is set to create 600,000 new job opportunities and in so doing, will need many more skilled, work-ready graduates in the coming decade. This paper highlights the collective efforts of the private higher education sector together with some selected public institutions (polytechnics) under the umbrella of the ministry of education through the MyCenTHE platform in promoting hospitality and tourism education nationwide via national awareness campaigns, conferences, skill competitions, seminars, forums and corporate social responsibility projects.

This paper is of value in its own context and in particular support from ministry and related authorities, 26 institutions of higher education working together, approaches to hundreds of local schools and thousands of audiences/participants in awareness campaigns.

This paper aims to review some of the academic literature on the circular economy, natural capital and resilience by tourism and hospitality scholars and to examine how a number of companies and industry bodies within the tourism and hospitality industry have used these concepts in their business operations and development plans.

The paper outlines the importance of sustainability to the tourism and hospitality industry and provides definitions of the concepts of the circular economy, natural capital and resilience. The paper reviews some of the academic literature on these concepts, explores how a number of companies and industry bodies within the tourism and hospitality industry have used them in their business and planning operations and identifies a number of future directions for academic research and managerial contributions.

The concepts illuminate a range of sustainability challenges and opportunities, and some companies use these concepts in their sustainability strategies and development planning. The current depth of theoretical understanding does not lend itself to management strategies, but one fruitful avenue is to explore how information systems can be better deployed to support these concepts and sustainability management in general.

The paper provides an accessible exploratory review of how academics and companies are focussing on the concepts of the circular economy, natural capital and resilience in the tourism and hospitality industry. As such, it will be of interest to academics, students and practitioners interested in the hospitality industry.

This study aims to explore the viability of the curricula offered by a university specialising in hospitality and tourism education in Kuching, Sarawak. The study also aims to explore the relevance and application of the hospitality and tourism education curricula to the needs of the Sarawak hospitality and tourism industry.

Grounded in human capital theory, the article highlights the importance of education in facilitating competently skilled human capital. Using a qualitative research approach, the outcomes indicate that the curricula offered by the hospitality and tourism education sector does meet the basic industry needs in Sarawak.

The outcomes suggest that the education sector should adopt a work-based learning model as this is shown to be an effective approach to enhancing practical relevance and competency.

There is insufficient empirical evidence on the exact set of skills and knowledge needed by an individual to be competently skilled in response to the needs of the hospitality and tourism industry in Sarawak.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine the extent to which hotel investments create jobs and, second, to compare whether investment in a particular hotel segment generates more or less jobs in the overall economy and in the tourism, leisure and hospitality industries.

The panel autoregressive distributed lag regression model was used to examine the effect of total hotel investments and hotel investments in economy-scale, midscale, luxury-scale and independent hotels on total employment and employment in the tourism, leisure and hospitality industries in the USA.

Hotel investments increase employment in both the overall economy and the tourism, leisure and hospitality industries. Midscale hotels make the highest contribution to employment in the overall economy. Economy-scale hotels make the highest contribution to employment in the overall tourism, leisure and hospitality industries.

The results support the postulations of growth pole theory. As hotel investment increases, not only does the hotel industry see gains in employment but also does related economic sectors see an increase. Midscale hotels have the greatest positive impact on local labor markets, which is consistent with the assertions of middle-out economics.

Community leaders should encourage the type of investment that benefits the broader area as much as possible by incentivizing the type of growth that is related to employment growth.

This study investigates the relations between hotel investment and employment from a theoretical and empirical perspective by providing objective claims inferred from statistical inferences.

This paper aims to explore the challenges encountered by the hospitality and tourism industry in managing the labour challenges it faces presently and will face in the coming years. Although there are several issues at play, there are actions that industry members can take both internally and by advocating externally for change.

This paper draws on insights from three industry members and two academics to explore key areas in which action can be taken to address labour demand challenges in the hospitality and tourism workforce. The identified action items combine these various types of expertise to provide a holistic frame of action.

The Canadian hospitality and tourism industry is facing an ever-increasing labour demand shortage. Industry members can confront this on multiple fronts, from front-line employee satisfaction to more regional and national advocacy efforts. A combination of activities is recommended.

Hospitality and tourism industry members can take numerous actions from this analysis, including developing stronger organization cultures that align with employee needs, exerting effort in balancing wage gap issues and maintaining pressure on government partners to provide support for establishing hospitality and tourism, so that it is viewed as a valuable career path.

This paper increases knowledge in the hospitality and tourism field by combining the current human resource management theory with observations from industry experts on the needs that exist now and are predicted in the coming years.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between social entrepreneurship and sustainable tourism and to examine the Canadian context in this regard.

The methodology entails a case study approach that includes a thorough review of the related literature and of any existing Canadian sources of hospitality and tourism social entrepreneurship/intrapreneurship projects to determine the state of the Canadian industry with respect to sustainability.

Findings show that there are limited showcased hospitality and tourism social entrepreneurship projects in Canada. Two main assumptions related to the Canadian context can be drawn from this search: (1) There is a lack of hospitality and tourism social entrepreneurship projects and/or, (2) hospitality and tourism social entrepreneurship projects and/or businesses are not recognized and/or there is a lack of awareness of them.

This study assessed the situation in Canada and although it was comprehensive under conditions of limited data availability, it cannot speak to social entrepreneurship in sustainable hospitality and tourism globally, which is a future research opportunity.

The design of a national incentive program would encourage industry sustainability through tax breaks. This voluntary system would require that firms provide standardized annual reports with their tax filings so that reliable industry data could be collected for analysis and understanding of the sustainability of the industry. Participating firms would be distinguished on a public list.

This research has theorized on the connection of social entrepreneurship to sustainable hospitality and tourism such that social entrepreneurship drives sustainable industry growth. This is also the first study of its kind to explore social entrepreneurship’s potential contribution to the sustainability of this industry.