From warm smiles to smart systems: integrating human and algorithmic dimensions in hospitality education

Hospitality is undergoing a fundamental transformation as service encounters become increasingly mediated by digital platforms, algorithmic systems and data-driven infrastructure. While prior research has examined technological adoption in tourism, limited attention has been paid to how these shifts reconfigure the conceptual foundations of hospitality itself. This article addresses this gap by reconceptualising hospitality as a system-mediated phenomenon and introducing the A3 framework – algorithmic, affective and augmented – as an integrative lens for analysing contemporary service environments. The framework advances the view that hospitality emerges through the interaction of algorithmic coordination, mediated affective experience and the augmentation of human capabilities through technology. In doing so, it moves beyond binary distinctions between human and technological services, positioning hospitality as a digitally entangled configuration of actors, systems and data. The analysis further identifies a growing misalignment between conventional hospitality education and the realities of platform-driven service contexts, arguing for a shift toward system literacy, critical technological awareness and hybrid competencies. By integrating conceptual development with illustrative evidence, the article contributes to ongoing debates on digital transformation, offering a theoretically grounded and pedagogically relevant framework for understanding the future of hospitality and hospitality education.