It was a great pleasure to contribute to the BU Tourism & Hospitality Conference and Careers Fair 2026.
This event is a great example of bringing together educators, industry representatives and students, and professionals to discuss the future of hospitality work.
The acceleration of technological change in hospitality and how it is transforming the sector was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a theme that underpinned many discussions throughout the day, and was seen as one of the factors driving change and reshaping hospitality’s future.
From industry leaders, managers to educators and young professionals, it was good to see honest conversations about where the hospitality industry is and where it needs to be as a community to keep ‘hospitality’ within hospitality.
The panel I was on, together with Robert Richardson (Chief Executive of the Institute of Hospitality, the world’s largest professional body of almost 16,000 hospitality professionals worldwide), Dr Maria Gebbels (University of Greenwich), Dr Xuan (Lorna) Wang (University of Surrey), was chaired by Prof. Adele Ladkin. We discussed the future of hospitality work, improving working conditions in the sector, making hospitality workplaces more inclusive, and the need for closer collaboration between universities and the industry.