Humans-as-Luxury: Redefining Value in an Automated Hospitality Future

On 31 March 2026, at Hospitality Tech360 in London, Simone Puorto, Head of Emerging Trends and Strategic Innovation at Hospitality Net, will take the stage to address a question that appears disarmingly simple, yet has become increasingly unavoidable for the entire industry: what is hospitality?

What is hospitality²?

This question runs through almost every contemporary conversation in hotel technology, shaping the discourse even when it is not explicitly articulated. The industry continues to speak the language of automation, artificial intelligence, self-check-in, AI agents, predictive systems, digital workers, robotic layers, personalization engines, and operational efficiency, yet beneath this vocabulary, something more fundamental is already shifting, largely unexamined and only occasionally acknowledged. The instinct remains to interpret this transformation as a tension between humans and machines, a framing that feels familiar and therefore manageable, while the reality has already moved beyond that simplification. What makes the issue more urgent is that this transition is taking place under simultaneous pressure from both sides of the equation: travel demand is expanding, and the labor pool needed to sustain it is becoming harder to recruit. A recent WTTC reported that Travel & Tourism supported a record 371 million in 2025, while also projecting 91 million new roles by 2035. Yet the same report warns that by 2035, global demand for workers in Travel & Tourism could outpace supply by more than 43 million people, leaving labor availability 16% below required levels. On one side, global travel demand continues to expand, with projections pointing to roughly 43 million additional tourist arrivals each year through 2030. On the other hand, the sector faces a structural labor deficit approaching 43 million workers over the next ten years. These figures do not simply coexist, they converge into a single constraint that reshapes the entire system. Once aligned, the question itself evolves. Hospitality is no longer deciding whether to automate, but it is adjusting to a condition in which automation becomes the only viable response to a widening structural gap. 

Hospitality is no longer deciding whether to automate, but it is adjusting to a condition in which automation becomes the only viable response to a widening structural gap.

The more relevant question, therefore, concerns what form hospitality will take once automation shifts from strategic option to operational necessity. And when an institution such as EHL dedicates an entire summit to the question of human centrality, it becomes clear that the issue has reached a level of urgency that can no longer be deferred.

The issue is no longer whether hospitality will automate. The arithmetic is already doing the persuading. The more relevant question concerns what kind of hospitality will remain once automation becomes less a strategic preference than a structural necessity.

The “Hospitality Oath”

Engaging with this shift requires a change in perspective, one that moves backward before attempting to move forward, turning attention from technology to language. Wittgenstein’s observation that the limits of language define the limits of the world acquires a concrete relevance in this context, as meaning is never fixed but continuously shaped and reshaped through the words used to describe it (Orwell captures the same dynamic in 1984, where the deliberate narrowing of language becomes a mechanism for narrowing thought itself, until the disappearance of a word gradually erases the possibility of the concept it once contained). Hospitality is undergoing a quieter yet equally consequential process. The word “hospitality” continues to circulate, widely used and rarely questioned, while the reality it denotes is being reconfigured in real time. This slow semantic drift risks hollowing out the concept without generating visible resistance, precisely because the language remains unchanged. What is at stake extends beyond the adoption of new technologies and touches the preservation, transformation, and potential erosion of the very idea of hospitality. The question, therefore, remains the same: what is hospitality? The Latin root (hospes) reveals an inherent, almost oxymoronic ambiguity, as it refers to both guest and host, stranger and friend. In French, the term hôtel originally denotes a place of care rather than mere accommodation, which helps explain why semantically distant concepts such as hospital, hospitality, and hostility share a common phonetic root. Within this single word resides a tension between stranger and familiar, distance and belonging, suggesting that hospitality does not function as an additional layer applied to a system, but instead emerges in the relational space that opens when one receives and the other consents to be received. The Greek notion of philoxenia, literally the “love of the stranger,” deepens this perspective by introducing an ethical dimension that extends beyond any functional interpretation of service. In the Odyssey, the belief that every stranger is “sent by Zeus” establishes a form of obligation that cannot be reduced to delegation, calculation, or optimization, as the act of welcoming becomes inseparable from responsibility itself. Each hotel check-in activates a form of implicit accountability, to the point that Puorto has proposed a “Hospitality Oath” (an implicit commitment echoing the structure of the Hippocratic Oath), that reframes hospitality as a practice grounded in ethical intent rather than solely operational execution. The oath connects hospitality and hospital as professions built on the same promise: to care for strangers.

Each hotel check-in activates a form of implicit accountability, to the point that Puorto has proposed a “Hospitality Oath”, an implicit commitment echoing the structure of the Hippocratic Oath, that reframes hospitality as a practice grounded in ethical intent rather than solely operational execution.

3-Hotel-Problem

It is precisely this depth that makes the current transition harder to ignore. About a decade ago, Puorto introduced a framework to make sense of this direction, dividing the hotels of the future into three categories: anthropocentric, technocentric, and hybrid. Anthropocentric hotels place human presence at the center, where attention, care, and relational depth define the experience. Technocentric hotels organize themselves around efficiency, relying on automation to deliver consistency and scale with minimal human intervention. Hybrid hotels sit in between, distributing roles between humans and machines to balance performance with presence. That distinction did not just describe different models, but anticipated how hospitality would gradually reorganize itself. Today, its relevance has only increased, even as reality has begun to outpace the framework itself. Hospitality is now entering a phase in which demand continues to grow while human availability contracts, and this imbalance begins to redefine value. Scarcity has always shaped luxury because what cannot be easily scaled acquires meaning, what resists standardization gains weight, and what remains rare becomes desirable. This is why the labor question matters so much. If the sector is indeed heading toward a 43 million-worker shortfall by 2035, then human presence ceases to be a default operational layer and becomes a scarce, premium asset. 

Hospitality is now entering a phase in which demand continues to grow while human availability contracts, and this imbalance begins to redefine value. [...] This is why the labor question matters so much. If the sector is indeed heading toward a 43 million-worker shortfall by 2035, then human presence ceases to be a default operational layer and becomes a scarce, premium asset.

Humans-as-Luxury and the “Reverse Uncanny Valley”

This shift becomes visible in how hospitality reorganizes itself. Highly automated environments prioritize efficiency and consistency, reducing human interaction to what is strictly necessary. In parallel, other environments preserve human presence as a deliberate layer, placing it where it creates meaning rather than simply filling a function. Within this context, luxury takes on a different role, maintaining human elements even when, paradoxically, they introduce friction into otherwise seamless systems.  Human presence, however, is not sufficient on its own. When a human behaves like a robot, executing tasks without awareness or attention, the human contribution becomes indistinguishable from what a machine can already perform more efficiently. In those moments, the presence of a human does not enhance the experience; it diminishes it. Puorto defines this condition as the “Reverse Uncanny Valley Effect”, a situation in which humans appear less convincing than the system they are meant to humanize. The point, therefore, is not simply to keep humans in the loop, because humans in the wrong posture are just badly designed software with a pulse.

Human presence [...] is not sufficient on its own. When a human behaves like a robot, executing tasks without awareness or attention, the human contribution becomes indistinguishable from what a machine can already perform more efficiently.

Machines increasingly occupy the domains of speed, accuracy, consistency, and availability. The human operates in a different space, where perception, timing, recognition, and relational awareness become decisive. The ability to encounter the other as singular, rather than as a case to process, becomes the true point of differentiation. This is precisely what defines the anthropocentric hotel, where human presence is treated as a premium feature, preserved even in tasks where AI or robotics might perform more efficiently from a purely operational standpoint.

Conclusion: the “Lacanian Guest”

There is a deeper layer underlying this dynamic: Lacan suggests that between 6 and 18 months of age, each of us encounters a quiet but decisive realization that the world does not revolve around us. That moment introduces a subtle fracture that stays with us forever. Hospitality, at its highest expression (and within a human-as-luxury perspective), briefly suspends that condition by creating an environment in which the guest is placed at the center of a carefully designed experience. At their “H-a-L best”, hotels become transient architectures of significance, spaces that do not merely accommodate but actively reframe perception. Within that frame, a quiet message takes form for the guest: at least for this moment, you ARE the center of the universe.

At their “Humans-as-Luxury best”, hotels become transient architectures of significance, spaces that do not merely accommodate but actively reframe perception. Within that frame, a quiet message takes form for the guest: at least for this moment, you ARE the center of the universe.

Technology can support and refine this process, and it can scale certain elements of it, yet the experience of being recognized by another human consciousness operates on a different level, one that remains harder to reproduce. In systems built around precision, imperfection begins to take on a different role. Machines move toward consistency and the reduction of variance, while human imperfection, historically treated as inefficiency, starts to signal presence, a trace that something alive is involved. McKinsey estimates that between 400 million and 800 million individuals could be displaced by automation by 2030. As automation advances, the human becomes more visible precisely because it is less perfect, less standardized, and less infinitely reproducible. There is a broader cultural analogy, pointing to the resurgence of formats such as vinyl and VHS as a “revival of imperfection.” Surely enough, the future of hospitality will continue to rely on hybrid infrastructures, because scale requires automation and labor shortages make some level of substitution increasingly unavoidable. In that sense, the industry is not moving toward hybridity because it has found a neat ideological compromise, but because demographic pressure, workforce leakage, and rising service demand are making any other path harder to sustain. The trend around the global workforce outlook leaves little room for fantasy on this point. The more relevant question concerns how human presence is positioned within that structure, where it is allowed to appear, and how it is perceived when it does. As efficiency becomes widespread, the rarest layer may no longer be technological, but the experience of being clearly and unmistakably received by another human being. If language continues to define what can be perceived and understood, then preserving the meaning of hospitality may ultimately depend on preserving the conditions that still allow that experience to take place.

Because when everything works, what matters is who’s there.

When everything works, what matters is who’s there.

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Media Contact

Simone Puorto

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