What percentage of human employees in hospitality will be replaced by technology by 2030?
14 experts shared their view
Last year, labor costs consumed a third of hotel revenue and technology - AI, robotization and automation - are becoming increasingly appealing to hotel owners and operators.
I believe at this time there are three main impediments to fast adoption of AI, robotization and automation in our industry:
a). reluctance to invest in new technologies by real-estate minded owners and operators,
b). lack of understanding and fear of new technology: "Who will deal with it? I don't have trained staff to deal with it. It makes operations very complex", etc., and
c). the labor unions in major metropolitan areas with highly-unionized hospitality labor force are dead set against any AI, robotization and automation or any technology advancement that can reduce the number of paying members.
In my view, none of the above can stop the rapid advancements in the adoption of AI, robotics and automation in our industry, in the same manner as the Luddite movement in early 19th century England could not stop the First Industrial Revolution.
Now, the question is: What percentage of human employees in hospitality will be replaced by technology (AI, robotization and automation) by 2030?
In my opinion AI and robotics will disrupt the industry's jobs on a few different levels.
The guest transactional experience will be the first to be affected and the first jobs to go will be in customer service, especially call centers, reservations, operators, etc. Agentic AI will do a better job answering detailed guest questions, will be better at upselling, will speak any language, is never in a bad mood and will be significantly less expensive.
Next will be back office operations. We still rely on a lot of semi-manual processes in accounts, human resources and operations. The night audit, consolidation, reporting to head office, procurement, billing, etc. are easy targets for automation.
Finally, as humanoid robots develop and get cheaper (and this won't be long) the rest will be fair game. One of the first opportunities will any job that is dangerous or dirty. Robots will become great housekeepers, gardeners, security guards and maybe even waiters and chefs.
A couple of key considerations impact the outcome and this will come down to a per business environment. These are -
What is your philosophy toward the delivery of hospitality, which is a human to human condition?
What 'level' of product are you offering to the market - do you currently deliver hospitality (service and care) with your existing product?
The above will determine the level of human disruption on a per business basis.
Through the lens of broad industry layers -
Luxury - People will survive in certain roles. Largely customer facing. The customer will essentially pay for a high-touch or 'service lead' experience.
Middle Tier - Even today there is limited service intent and little about these products that really supports anything beyond the room sale. Wholesale removal of people in the front and back of house with guest self-service and pre-payment the model.
Lower Tier - See middle tier above. Think pod-hotel style experience. For me this is not hospitality even today as there is limited service intent. This will be where we see major disruption first.
There will be outliers. Those who believe people are the core element to deliver hospitality - that's the dictionary description after all. The rest - Robots, AI, RPA!
Technologies like AI, robotics, automation, mobility and IoT are called upon to solve a number of issues in hospitality:
- Solve dull, repetitive, dirty or dangerous jobs.
- Solve high turnover of trained employees (20%-30%)
- Solve problems like poor discipline, lack of motivation, etc.
- Lower labor costs
- Increase productivity
Hospitality can no longer ignore technologies like Agentic AI and personal AI Agents able to plan and book travel, AI-powered chatbots and voice AI like Sesame AI able to handle 24/7 hour online reservations, customer service and guest communications. Or robots and cobots - collaborative robots working in teams with human employees.
By 2030, thanks to AI, robotization and automation, hoteliers will operate, on average, with human staffs at least 50% lower than staffing levels of 2019. This decrease will differ among hotel categories: 75% in budget, economy, extended stay; 50% in full-service and upper midscale, and 25% at luxury hotels/resorts.
Who will be affected the most? Call centers/reservation departments, front desk. Wait and kitchen staff and housekeepers? Teams of 1 human+5 cobots.
What human jobs will remain? Guest relationship and CRM specialists, data engineers, Commercial Departments, combining revenue managers, sales and marketing specialists.
2030 is only 5 years away, but the AI revolution is still in its infancy and it's next to impossible to make similar predictions with any degree of precision. In a labour-intensive field such as hospitality, lots of humans will indeed be replaced both on the ground (robotics) and in the office (AI), but the timeline is unclear and it will vary sharply, depending on factors such as geography and property type: extremely cheap and extremely expensive establishments will see this shift happen later, for different reasons, while the middle market will be the one driving a fast adoption.
In fact, AI is already making an impact and replacing those jobs with little to no human value added, as is the case with low-complexity and repetitive tasks such as call center agents and housekeeping dispatchers, and it's proving to be an essential asset in roles such as revenue management. As for robotics, I believe it will take a lot longer because of the major upfront investments required, the likely issues with trade unions and the possible uncanny valley effect for customer-facing robots.
Just 20% over 2025 staffing figures. All from back office, so call centres, basic sales functions, basic marketing like SEO and review responses, some Finance from Accounts Receivable and Payable. Mostly via RPA. Negligible reduction in guest facing staff over today. Negligible reduction from operating staff like housekeeping bar vacuuming bots. Humans will remain cheaper and more flexible than androids. Boston Dynamics type -dogs are €1m each and aren't getting cheaper and are very limited, are are high maintenance.
Predictive AI is already present in Revenue Management.
Three and four star hotel sites already use Self Service Kiosks so that's easy, known tech. Not robots and not AI.
No humanoid robots bar some PR stunts for baristas and cocktail mixing.
Amazon warehouses have many bots for shifting pallets, but still use humans on minimum wage to pick and pack. Cheaper than equivalent bots with human like dexterity (which don't yet exist and are a long way off).
The commercials will decide it. Humans are cheaper than complex bots and will get cheaper unfortunately. The hard manual stuff in hospitality needs hunan type dexterity. Humanoid Bots can't and won't compete.
The hospitality sector is inherently people-centric, where human connection is key to delivering exceptional guest experiences. While projections suggest that 25–30% of tasks could be automated by 2030, this should not be misconstrued as a wholesale replacement of human employees. Instead, technology acts as a force multiplier, augmenting human capabilities by streamlining repetitive tasks such as check-ins, room deliveries, and back-office operations.
Automation"s primary role is to free employees to focus on areas where humans excel—creating memorable, personalised experiences. For instance, AI-driven predictive analytics can anticipate guest needs, enabling staff to deliver tailored services proactively. Similarly, robotics can optimise operational efficiency, reducing burnout from mundane tasks and improving staff satisfaction.
Adoption challenges, such as investment hesitancy, operational complexity, and union resistance, are real but not insurmountable. The economic imperative—labour costs consuming a third of hotel revenues—makes automation inevitable. Forward-thinking brands already demonstrate how technology can enhance efficiency while elevating service quality.
The future of hospitality lies in human-tech symbiosis, where machines handle logistics, and humans deliver authentic experiences. By embracing this balance, the industry can not only improve operational efficiency but also redefine what it means to delight and surprise guests in an increasingly tech-driven world.
A study by McKinsey Global Institute projects that up to 800 million jobs could be displaced by automation by 2030. However, there will be a small subset of jobs created due to the management and oversight of AI. There have also been studies that show an impact of up to 25% of all hospitality jobs will be displaced by automation. Back of house jobs will be dramatically impacted due to the repetitive nature of those positions. Accounting, revenue management, sales and marketing will be the first to go, and some front of house positions such as concierge and front desk will feel the heat.
All in all, we don't fully understand the ecomnomical and social scope of the impact of AI within the hospitality industry, but rest assured, if owners of hotels see a way to reduce costs thru automation, they will lean into adopting this type of technology ASAP.
First, what we say today will seem quaint tomorrow. I have seen robots, including humanoid robots, do intricate and powerful work - and they are becoming better by the day.
What percentage? First, repetitive tasks: seventy-five percent of cleaning and maintenance work is repetitive and a candidate for robots. Add AI serviced through apps and user smart devices, and concierge services, some front desk and many auxiliary services such as parking control will succumb to AI.
Add back-office functions which are repetitive, including AP and AR functions, already threatened by AI with existing AIs reading, processing and reviewing documents. Marketing, group and travel management and other outward-facing operations are slowly being assumed by AI.
So, to take a guess today? Fifty percent of all labor beneath senior management level could be candidates for robotics and AI during the next few years. To retain and restore our middle class worldwide, we will need specialized training systems and find ways to use these new systems as value enhancers, co-bots, and tools to increase our revenues, decrease our costs, and better serve our guests. That's management's challenge for this next decade.
Given the different approaches to "hospitality" and the cost of labour, the impact of AI on the hospitality sector varies significantly across regions in the next five years. The percentage is higher in markets like China and Japan, which are way ahead in technology and AI adoption. AI adoption is already underway in these markets, and in the future, AI will potentially replace around 70% of their labour. Where there are high labour costs, such as in Europe and the USA, this percentage would be around 50%, automating departments such as front and back office and general operations. In India, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia, where hospitality is deeply tied to culture and tradition, where hospitality is deeply tied to culture and tradition, the percentage would be much lower, around 30%. This, too, would be more concentrated on back-office operations, leaving human employees to serve the 'warmth of the human touch' in the front end. So, the answer remains: AI adoption in hospitality has no definite 'universal' percentage—it depends on how each market perceives technology, balances cost with culture and integrates innovation into the existing service experience.
Rather than asking how many percent of workers will be replaced, we should ask how many roles in hospitality can be elevated through AI technology. The current discourse is overly focused on efficiency and cost reduction through AI, robotization, and automation. While these are valid objectives, they risk overshadowing what truly defines our industry: meaningful human interaction. Hospitality is not a factory line. Hospitality is an experience-driven sector where emotional intelligence, empathy, and cultural sensitivity are core assets—traits not easily replicated by machines. And if they were, we must ask whether that"s even a desirable future: one where guests live in efficiency-oriented, AI-fed bubbles, disconnected from the richness of real human engagement.
Instead of replacing staff, we should use technology to remove repetitive, low-value tasks and empower employees to do what they do best—connect with guests. This shift from substitution to augmentation preserves the people-centric DNA of hospitality while building a more engaged, future-ready workforce.
To move forward, we must include workers in the design of tech solutions, invest in their digital skills, and reimagine roles around human-tech collaboration. Only then can innovation serve both operational goals and social progress.
I would say that the share of people replaced by technology in 2030 will be very low. Hospitality companies are already understaffed. Many of them work with fewer employees than needed to run the operations. The number of hospitality properties is going to increase, creating additional demand for hospitality employees and increasing competition among companies. At the same time, the labour supply in hospitality is decreasing. Therefore, in the next 5 years, technology will more likely be used to decrease the need for human labour by automating tasks, processes and job positions for which hospitality companies struggle to find employees. This will decrease the labour shortage in hospitality by decreasing the labour demand. It is true that some job positions that consist of automatable tasks (e.g. sales, social media marketing, etc.) and enjoy sufficient labour supply might be partially automated, but the major push for automation in hospitality will be the automation of task, processes and jobs for which there are no candidates. Hence, the substitution effect on employees (replacement of people for technologies) might be low, but the substitution effect on unoccupied job positions might be high due to the lack of appropriate job applicants.
While the hospitality industry is undergoing a significant evolution with AI and automation, it doesn't mean a mass replacement of human workers. We anticipate the outcome of this latest revolution will result in an increase in the overall number of jobs. The focus should be on integrating Generative and Predictive AI in ways that create quantifiable value in revenue generation and cost reduction, both outcomes that real-estate investors will support and invest in.
AI will impact jobs in three fundamental ways:
- AI Replacement: Some roles will be fully or partially automated, particularly in areas like check-in, basic concierge services, and maintenance ticketing, leading to job reductions.
- AI-Human Collaboration: AI co-pilots will assist human staff, enhancing their capabilities without replacing them. This is crucial for roles requiring empathy, creativity, and complex problem-solving.
- New Job Creation: New roles will emerge, likely outnumbering those lost. These will be related to AI implementation, maintenance, and human-AI collaboration.
The next five years aren’t about choosing between humans and machines, it’s about building teams that leverage both. AI can automate the background noise - the repetitive, data-heavy, and transactional processes - while humans own the guest experience, driven by insight, not instinct alone.
I grew up believing work ennobles man. Then I worked in hospitality and saw it reduce people to spreadsheet jockeys, buried in tasks that tech should have automated years ago. Death by Excel, basically.
With labor costs consuming a third of hotel revenues, AI and automation aren't a novelty—they're survival. But not all jobs are equally replaceable. High-dexterity roles like housekeeping remain too expensive to automate at scale. The ROI simply isn't there—yet.
What is getting automated are the pattern-based tasks: call centers, guest messaging, revenue management, etc. By 2030, I expect 20–30% of roles to be absorbed by tech—but mostly in the background (sorry, no dinosaur robots checking you in!)
The real shift? Humans are becoming scarce, and scarcity drives value. In an automated world, human service becomes a luxury. So I think the future of hospitality isn't fully human or fully robotic—it's hybrid.
And in that blend, the human touch will be the premium (and expensive) feature.
Technology is advancing so quickly and so impressively that there’s little wonder why there’s so much anxiety around how it will impact our jobs.
We anticipate that 20% to 30% of tasks traditionally handled by humans – particularly repetitive administrative, maintenance and back-office processes – will be taken over by technology. These are often the least fulfilling tasks for people to perform.
But hospitality will always be a people-first industry. Guests seek empathy, personalisation and human connection – qualities that technology can support, but not replace.
Historically, the real estate sector has been slow to embrace new technologies, creating a ripple effect that delayed broader adoption in hospitality. But the continued hybridisation of the real estate, hospitality and technology sectors is accelerating the speed at which AI and automation is being embedded in our built environment.
Ultimately, automation should be applied where it makes sense. And with hospitality’s persistent staffing challenges, thoughtful use of technology offers an opportunity to ease pressure, enhance roles, and make the industry more sustainable for the long term.
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