The hospitality industry is therefore torn between aggressive private actors keen on using the technology to create the best tourist experience on one hand, and on the other, behaviors, generally emanating from public entities and classical private chains that are reluctant and sometimes even conservative (with few exceptions here and there) in their approach to the disruptions in the industry. Value chains like urban transportation, booking, low-cost airlines, individual accommodations, tech-based hotel management startups, and digital marketing and sales have already experienced deep and radical forms of disruption yet, the industry, as a whole, is facing resistance especially from segments like crossborder regulations, investment, infrastructure, entertainment, classical hotel chains, and safety and ecological considerations. Parts of the hospitality industry value chain will either embrace disruption or have it thrust upon them with even more cataclysmic impact than they imagine. My take on the subject, as a speaker in the forum, is that all industries have been experiencing disruption for quite some time, but some are taking more time to incorporate it than others.
It brought together experts from different fields to discuss the disruption in the wake of COVID-19 and its aftermath, climate-change-induced economic and ecological upheavals, the Great Resignation and its impact on the morale of the workforce, and the radical shift towards a new economic model that takes into consideration new habits, new inventions, and new values- and how all of these tectonic shifts will impact and change the way hospitality operates in the present and in the future. On June 14, 2022, as part of the Mediterranean Tourism Forum organized in Malta by the Mediterranean Tourism Foundation, the panel on disruption in the hospitality industry was one of the landmarks of the event.