This year’s World Tourism Day theme, "Digital Agenda and AI to Redesign Tourism," prompts the industry to reflect on how new technology can improve customer experience, efficiency and operations.
AI-driven technology is increasingly embedded in tourism and hospitality workplaces, from agents used for customer service to shift-scheduling software.
But as the industry races to adopt AI, are workers being given a say in how these tools change their jobs? And what’s the cost of them not being heard?
Our research at Futourwork, an EU-funded project examining worker voice and well-being at this time of digital transformation, aims to understand this gap and a way forward that benefits workers and businesses alike.
How new technology puts pressure on workers
Across tourism and hospitality, work is increasingly assigned, monitored and judged by algorithms.
Think software timing housekeepers on every task, platforms pushing tour guides down the rankings for no-shows and cancellations and shift-scheduling software that misses what staff know, like which local events lead to more punters at the bar.
Our interviews with workers and industry stakeholders suggest many workers feel they have little understanding of, or control over, the systems now shaping their working lives.
This applies across employee roles and platform work. Let’s take tip-based walking tour guides as an example: Where once promoting their tours meant flyering hostels and leaving leaflets at tourist information centers, today they largely depend on algorithm-based platforms for visibility and bookings.
One guide in Sweden shared how opaque these platforms are.
“Algorithmically, they place you in different positions. It’s not only the rating—it’s how many people you can host, how often you’ve cancelled, how many no-shows. I understand it’s how much money you give them; in exchange they give you more positioning, when it’s supposed to be ratings-based.”
While they describe “gatekeeping” around exactly how the algorithm positions their business, one thing is clear: Delivering a high-quality service alone is not enough.
Communication with these platforms can also be complicated. Even as an account holder of four years on one particular platform, this guide had never been asked about his experience as a user.
“When it’s a multinational company with 400 plus workers, you don’t really know who you’re talking to.”
The rise of technostress
Across our interviews, we’ve heard reports that these increasingly digitalized workplaces are heightening anxiety and creating more challenging conditions.
Whether it’s an increasing sense of insecurity from rating and evaluating systems, a loss of control as customers place orders through QR codes or a blurring of boundaries between work and private life from tools that require "constant availability"—it’s clear that new technology is impacting worker well-being.
This is echoed in wider research on "technostress" too, such as a 2026 study of hotel workers linking digital tools managing work to emotional exhaustion and reduced performance.
The effects of this technostress become an even greater cause for concern when you consider that the tourism and hospitality workforce is already under strain from insecure contracts, demanding conditions and long hours.
We should also remember that this is a workforce built heavily on those with the least security to begin with—women, migrants and young people. The effects of this increasing digitalization hit these groups hardest.
The more burnt out and precarious the workforce, the less resilient the industry it depends on. That’s why protecting worker well-being as digital transformation progresses must be a strategic priority.
Bringing workers into the conversation
The answer to these problems isn’t less innovation but bringing workers into how these tools are designed and deployed.
This is where stronger social dialogue structures—the ways workers, employers and governments negotiate—can support the industry as a whole.
At its simplest, social dialogue looks like workers and their representatives at the table with employers, deciding together how technology is rolled out in individual workplaces and across the sector. In doing so, they can bring the conversation back to work processes, working conditions and the actual impacts of technology on the well-being of workers and their skillsets.
While laws like the EU Platform Work Directive and AI Act are beginning to put safeguards on how technology is used at work, these stronger social dialogue structures are needed to make sure workers and their representatives can hold employers to account.
But change can start now with individual employers discussing new technology with workers to ensure it supports their judgement, autonomy and dignity. This is an opportunity to collaborate with the people who use these tools every day and, as our research shows, best understand their flaws and impacts. Their input is vital for improving how these systems work and building resilient workplaces.
Ultimately, the innovation and technology-driven strategies this World Tourism Day calls for will be all the stronger with workers’ voices at their heart.