A Gendered Lens to Platformisation in Tourism and Hospitality: Developing a Conceptual Framework from a Worker’s Perspective

The rapid platformisation of tourism and hospitality (T&H) is reshaping work, yet for many workers this digital transformation deepens existing vulnerabilities rather than dismantling them. Platforms now colonise recruitment, task allocation, and algorithmic management in a sector already defined by precarity and a workforce disproportionately composed of young people, women, and migrants. While the European Institute for Gender Equality warns that platforms can both advance gender equality and entrench sexism, scholarship has yet to theorise how these contradictions unfold in T&H. We employ a critical review methodology to construct an original conceptual framework integrating platformisation, gender, and wellbeing as mutually constitutive dimensions of T&H labour. The framework recasts digital transformation not as neutral progress but as a contested site of power, where value co-creation for platforms, firms and customers may coincide with value co-destruction for workers. It offers scholars a new lens for theorising tourism work futures, and policymakers a diagnostic tool for ensuring platformisation supports decent work, wellbeing and equity.