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This qualitative study deals with the career longevity phenomenon in the hospitality sector of Pakistan and aimed at exploring the factors which become the reason for continuing services in this sector for a longer period despite the prevailing perception of the short-term and unsatisfactory hospitality careers.

The study has taken up an interpretive social constructivism approach to carry out the research. The purposive sampling technique is used to solicit expert insights into the dynamics of the hospitality career. A thematic analysis was employed to identify the common themes, extract the meaning from the discussion patterns of the respondents, and outline viewpoints and ideas of the respondents.

The findings of the study are discussed at three levels of career, i.e. entry level, development level, and consolidation level. Long careers in the hospitality sector are a product of dedication and commitment to the job, professionalism, variety, complexity of the job, and healthy relationship with coworkers, supervisors, and guests.

The study links the belief of belonging and socialization attributes to the retention of employees in the hospitality sector jobs. Secondly, the study uses a qualitative approach to provide a diverse perspective of employee–industry loyalty rather than employee–organization loyalty. Thirdly, the study brings forth practical implications for personnel managers in the hospitality sector and proposes that the management should systematically stimulate the socialization of the workers to hold the talent despite providing workers with the opportunity to join another sector. Finally, the study informs about research limitations and directions for future research.

This article examines dynamic volatility spillovers between stock index returns of four main hospitality sub-sectors in US during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. These are tourism and travel, hotel and lodging, recreational services and food and beverages. Volatility spillovers are explicitly used as accurate and informative proxies for risk contagion between sectors during turbulent times.

The authors employ dynamic conditional correlation-generalized autoregression heteroskedasticity (DCC-GARCH) and wavelet coherence analysis (WCA) to analyze the phenomenon. The authors’ timeframe is divided into three main sub-periods, namely the pre-pandemic, the first wave and the second wave periods.

This study’s results reveal immense negative shocks in returns of all four sub-sectors on the Black Monday (8th March 2020). Moreover, high volatility persistence was observed during both waves with an exception of tourism and travel which exhibited lower volatility persistence during the second wave. The authors discovered magnified contagion effects between tourism and travel, hotel and lodgment and recreational services during the first wave of the pandemic with tourism and travel being the main volatility transmitter. Lower magnitudes of spillovers were observed between food and beverages and other sub-sectors with a decoupling effect being evident during the second wave.

This study’s findings contribute to the contagion theory by providing evidence of disproportional volatility spillover among hospitality sub-sectors despite being exposed to similar turbulent economic conditions.

Crucial implications can be drawn from this study’s findings to assist in risk management, asset valuation and portfolio management. The importance of close monitoring, safety measures, international diversification and adequacy of liquid assets during health crises cannot be stresses enough for hospitality firms. Retail investors, speculators and asset managers can take advantage of this study’s findings to design trading strategies and hedge against risk.

A body of knowledge pertaining to effects of crises such as COVID-19 on hospitality stocks has been proliferating. Nonetheless, there is still a relative dearth of empirical literature on volatility spillover between hospitality sub-sectors especially during periods of rising economic uncertainties.

Purpose: This chapter aims to critically explore the nature of mentoring initiatives through the conceptual lenses of social capital and communities of practice offering a distinctive understanding of talent management (TM) innovations in the international hospitality industry.

Methodology/approach: It achieves its aim through identifying and analysing current mentoring initiatives operating in the international hospitality sector, and scrutinises how they provide a sector level approach to TM challenges.

Findings: Industry level mentoring initiatives emerge as TM innovations connecting employees within networks across the international hospitality sectors. Mentoring creates bonds and bridges between senior and junior employees beyond their own workplaces, connecting them to the industry and supporting TM by enhancing the identification of opportunities and the recognition of talent. These initiatives also act as learning communities where contemporary TM dilemmas can be explored by participants from diverse backgrounds and between generations.

Research limitations/implications: The findings rely on the identification and exploration of publically available data, and therefore future primary data collection would yield richer insights into the experiences of stakeholders of these mentoring initiatives as TM innovations.

Social implications: Mentoring initiatives can exemplify innovative ways of supporting TM and addressing diversity and inequality issues in fragmented and dispersed sectors, such as the international hospitality industry.

Originality/value of paper: The exploration of contemporary mentoring initiatives in the international hospitality industry identifies the value of cross-industry TM innovations stretching beyond stakeholders, such as educators, employers and policy-makers. It identifies mentoring initiatives as mechanisms for creating bonds and bridges between those industry aspirants at various career stages where diversity and inclusion may be a challenge in a fragmented and dispersed sector.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been disastrous and has affected the hospitality industry worldwide, and the people working in the sector were impacted immensely. The purpose of this study is to understand the viewpoints of hospitality workers in Australia on how lockdowns have impacted professional and personal well-being. The case study methodology is adopted for this study. Viewpoints from Australian hospitality workers were collected through semi-structured interviews. With the pandemic taking surprising turns with the rise of new infections and in turn new pandemic waves, the industry is facing a constant lurking fear of lockdowns. Changing variants of COVID-19 creates a profound effect on the psychological and personal well-being of the people employed in the hospitality sector. This chapter would reflect upon the viewpoints of hospitality workers in Australia after two years of the COVID-19 crisis. A ‘real-time’ assessment is required to understand the vulnerability of hospitality industry workers in a developed country.

The purpose of this paper is to explore reactions to the introduction by the UK Government of the National Living Wage (NLW) in the UK hospitality sector and consider implications for the status of employee relations.

In-depth interviews were conducted with senior industry representatives of the hospitality sector in the UK.

Concerns surrounding an increase in the wage bill, in maintaining pay differentials and in shifting employment to youth were confirmed. Managers expressed ambiguity in face of the legislation, offering agreement at a personal level with the rationale underpinning the NLW, but also expressing concern about impacts on their businesses.

This exploratory study offers the basis for further research in understanding the foundation of employee relations in hospitality.

A reconsideration of the nature of the employment relationship is key at a time of growing concerns about the business-society relationship.

Uses reactions to the UK Government’s stipulation of a NLW to explore the basis of employee relations in the hospitality sector. This is timely where work to date in hospitality has largely focussed on symptoms but not causes of poor working conditions.

Introduction: Skills are vital for the survival of an organisation to meet its objectives through producing goods and services. Due to their importance, they are among the sought-after aspects of employment. However, organisations need more skilled employees to bridge the gaps due to disruptions, shifts in consumer demands and needs, and transformations in the global world.

Purpose of the Study: This study aims to identify various skill gap in talent, competencies, and experience emerging in the hospitality sector. It will also present some challenges to the hospitality sector that faces due to the skill gap identified.

Industrial and Academic Justification of the Study: The study examines the needs and challenges from academic and industry perspectives. Hence, it provides significance for academics and industry to apply the findings to address skill gap.

Research Gap: Previous research has focused on different aspects of skills in other countries. This study will look at the issue globally and the recent trends emerging from disruptions and shifts in consumer behaviour.

Results and Findings: Though the study is ongoing, the findings show that specific skill gap exist, particularly in emerging technologies, digitisation, data, robotics, and various job openings from different countries’ perspectives, hospitality, and the tourism industry.

Practical Implications: The findings have implications for the tourism and hospitality industry as a whole, as well as individual organisations. The tourism and hospitality industry should apply these suggestions, such as operational skills, digital skills, and interpersonal skills in various sections of tourism and hospitality organisations

This paper aims to confront the most challenging issues that the hospitality industry faces. This relates to the recruitment and retention of talented future leaders. This is a long-standing issue but one that is increasing in importance as industry changes, combined with external pressures within the labour market (demographic and competitive), act to restructure the recruitment landscape in many countries.

This paper provides a literature-based analysis that addresses two key questions relating to the hospitality industry and talent – does the sector need talent and, controversially, does it deserve talent? The literature has been addressed on the basis of the author’s in-depth knowledge and the use of a wide range of pertinent search terms relating to the core themes of hospitality and talent management.

The paper assesses evidence with respect to both questions, framed as propositions, and concludes that the current talent pipelines, upon which hospitality substantially depends, may not be fit for purpose, and that the wider workplace culture within hospitality is not compatible with the attraction of the best into the industry.

The paper challenges the established practice, both within the hospitality industry, in terms of its workplace environment, and in the way its educational partners (hospitality management schools) prepare young people for the industry. The outcomes of the analysis do not provide much by way of succour to either.

Implicit in this paper is a call to key stakeholders (industry and education) in the search for future leaders of the hospitality industry to address and review both the industry workplace, to make it more attractive and rewarding for young graduates, and the educational model that still dominates hospitality management programmes in preparing them for careers.

Careers in hospitality will remain “Cinderella” options for young graduates until action is taken by stakeholders to reposition the nature of the careers on offer and the focus of the programmes available in preparation for them.

The approach taken is the presentation of widely recognised themes in an original format.

This paper aims to examine transferable skills and viable career transition pathways for hospitality and tourism workers. Future career prospects are discussed, along with the importance of reskilling for low-wage hospitality workers.

A network analysis is conducted to model skill relationships between the hospitality industry and other industries such as health-care and information technology. Multiple data are used in the analysis, including data from the US Department of Labor Occupational Information Network (O*NET), wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and job computerization data (Frey and Osborne, 2017).

Although hospitality workers have lower than average skills scores when compared to workers from other career clusters included in the analysis, they possess essential soft skills that are valuable in other industries. Therefore, improving hospitality workers’ existing soft skills may help them enhance their cross-sector mobility, which may allow them to obtain jobs with a lower likelihood of computerization.

The findings shed light on workforce development theories and practice in the hospitality industry by quantitatively analyzing cross-sector skill correlations. Sharpening transferable soft skills will be essential to enhancing hospitality workers’ career development opportunities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that specifically examines the skill taxonomy for the hospitality industry and identifies its connection with other in-demand career clusters.

To tackle one of the main negative consequences of the sharing economy, namely, the growth of the informal sector, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate for the first time the impacts of the informal sector on the hospitality industry and then to discuss what needs to be done to prevent the further growth of the informal sector in this industry.

To evaluate the impacts of the informal sector on the hospitality industry, data are reported from 30 East European and Central Asian countries collected in 2013 in the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey.

The finding is that 23 per cent of hotels and restaurants in Eastern Europe and Central Asia report competing against unregistered or informal operators, and 13 per cent view these informal competitors as a major or severe obstacle. The larger the business, the greater is the likelihood that the informal sector is considered their biggest obstacle.

To prevent the further growth of the informal sector in the hospitality industry, regulation of the sharing economy will be required. To achieve this, it is shown that state authorities need to adopt both direct control measures that alter the costs of operating in the informal sector and the benefits and ease of operating formally, as well as indirect control measures that reduce the acceptability of operating in the informal sector.

This is the first paper to evaluate the impacts of the informal sector on the hospitality industry and to outline the policy measures required to prevent its further growth with the advent of the sharing economy.

This research evaluates specific circular economy issues in relation to the hospitality sector. This is investigated in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, considering the impact that the experiences of UK hospitality SMEs had on their circular economy activities. Viewed through a resource bricolage lens, for some this was a consequence of the challenges of the pandemic, while others were proactive in pursuing circular economy strategies.

A sequential mixed methods research design is established based on a pragmatic worldview. The first phase analyses secondary data from the Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) to evaluate circular economy aspects on hospitality businesses in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Phase 2 collects and analyses qualitative semi-structured interview data from directors of hospitality SMEs to investigate the experiences of businesses in this research context.

Results point to a desire for hospitality SMEs to engage in circular economy activities, especially as a means of achieving financial efficiency, however this is sometimes constrained by increased costs. Resource bricolage theory underlines potential advantages for SMEs to engage with the local community to support circular economy activities and bring mutual benefits.

This research contributes to the under-researched topic of circular economy issues in hospitality SMEs. The focus on SMEs is significant as small businesses are more resource-constrained than larger businesses. The context of the post-COVID period is also notable due to changing attitudes towards circular economy aspects from the experiences of the pandemic.