Employment in tourism: The jaws of the snake in the hotel industry

Abstract

For many years, the capacity of technologies to automate jobs was more visible in industrial settings. However, the latest advances have generated systems (through self-service technologies, online and mobile applications, and robots) that are capable of replacing human tasks in service environments. The question is whether these trends are already taking place in the tourism industry. Using data from hotels in Spain, France, Germany, and Europe as a whole, this research demonstrates that in the past 10 years, there has been a decrease in the intensity of the human labor required. This trend is occurring especially in high-end hotels, and it points to a reduction in human labor in the hotel industry.