The Historical Evolution of Hospitality: From Sacred Obligation to Global Service Industry

Author: Laurnce Garcia

Affiliation: Swiss Academy in London

ORCID iD: 0009-0006-3197-8214

Received 1 March 2024; Revised 15 April 2024; Accepted 1 May 2024; Available online 1 June 2024; Version of Record 1 June 2024.

 Volume 1, December 2024, (10006)

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Abstract

Hospitality is often understood as a contemporary service industry, but its history reveals a wider institutional role: it manages the reception of strangers, the governance of mobility, and the production of trust. The present study provides an integrative historical review of hospitality from sacred and customary obligation into religious, commercial, managerial, platform-based, and sustainability-oriented forms. The research gap is conceptual and not chronological. The relevant contributions have provided valuable accounts of hospitality history, hotel development, tourism disruption, digital platforms and sustainability, but rarely are these debates synthesized into a singular explanation of how hospitality preserves an ethical core while changing institutional form. The study draws on published articles, including recent literature from 2020 to 2024, and argues that hospitality emerges from recurring tensions between ethics and exchange, mobility and infrastructure, standardisation and authenticity, and innovation and responsibility. The results are presented as theoretical propositions for future research. The study contributes to hospitality theory by positing hospitality as an adaptive institution built on trust, rather than a mere commercial sector.

Keywords: history of hospitality, hospitality theory, tourism studies, digital hospitality, sustainable hospitality, sharing economy, service governance

1. Introduction

Hospitality has never been simply about providing lodging, food, and paid service. Hospitality is fundamentally about how societies welcome the stranger, protect the traveller and make temporary presence a socially acceptable relationship. The modern hotel, restaurant, resort and accommodation platform are therefore recent institutional forms of a much older social problem: how to make mobility possible without removing uncertainty altogether. This historical view is important because contemporary hospitality is being redefined again. COVID-19 has highlighted the sector’s reliance on mobility, physical proximity, public trust and regulatory permission (Gössling et al., 2020; Sigala, 2020; Yang et al., 2021). Digital platforms have changed how guests search, compare, evaluate, and trust accommodation providers (Dogru et al., 2020; Hall, 2022; Hati et al., 2021). AI, automation and robotics are changing service design and labour needs (Nam et al., 2021). Sustainability has also become a core condition of legitimacy (Elkhwesky et al., 2022, 2024; Jones & Comfort, 2020; Salem et al., 2023) moving from a peripheral concern.

The research gap is not the lack of historical description. The gap is more acute: hospitality scholarship has not yet found a concise theoretical synthesis that explains how the same host-guest problem has been reconfigured time and again in different historical conditions. Ancient, religious, commercial, managerial, digital, and sustainable hospitality studies are often siloed by era, approach, or specialty. Hence the field is in danger of interpreting current disruptions as entirely novel, rather than new institutional expressions of older tensions between welcome, control, exchange, trust and responsibility.

This paper fills this void through an integrative historical review of hospitality as an adaptive institution. It asks: How has hospitality transformed from a sacred and customary obligation to a global service industry, and what theoretical propositions account for continuity and change across this transformation? The study makes three contributions. First, it redefines hospitality as an institutional mechanism to govern mobility through trust. Second, it links the history of hospitality to current debates on digitalisation, platform accommodation, resilience and sustainability. Third, it translates the historical synthesis into theoretical propositions useful for empirical and conceptual research.

2. Theoretical Background and Research Gap

Hospitality has been defined in a number of overlapping ways: as a moral relation, a social practice, a commercial exchange and a managed service encounter. King (1995) differentiates hospitality from ordinary service by stressing the guest’s temporary vulnerability and the host’s duty to offer a safe and welcoming space. Brotherton (1999) argues that hospitality management is not merely operational efficiency, but is based on a specific relationship between host, guest, setting and exchange. Similarly, O’Gorman (2009) shows that commercial hospitality has a long history but took different forms before the development of the modern hotel industry.

More recently these debates have been carried into new institutional settings. Hospitality research has moved from a largely pragmatic research area to a stronger theory-driven research area, but still is connected with tourism, marketing, management, technology and service research (Köseoglu et al., 2021). The COVID-19 scholarship highlights the structural vulnerability of hospitality due to reliance on movement, confidence, labour and public health conditions (Hao et al., 2020; Jiang & Wen, 2020; Kaushal & Srivastava, 2021; Sigala, 2020). Platform and sharing-economy scholarship has shown that the language of hosting can be scaled via data, ratings and professionalized property management (Dogru et al., 2020; Dolnicar & Zare, 2020; Hall, 2022; Hati et al., 2021; Zhang & Fu, 2020).

Digitalization and AI add another layer. The guest experience now starts before arrival via search results, online reviews, recommender systems, mobile applications, automated messages, contactless interfaces and more and more AI-supported service processes. Studies on AI and robotics in hotels indicate operational opportunities and unresolved issues about skills, labour, trust, and acceptance (Nam et al., 2021; Nikopoulou et al., 2023). Sustainability scholarship offers a normative dimension: responsible hospitality demands environmental and social accountability along with comfort and revenue (Elkhwesky et al., 2022, 2024; Jones & Comfort, 2020; Salem et al., 2023).

This fragmentation leads to the research gap. Current scholarship provides important insights into particular problems, but rarely contextualizes those problems within the longer historical arc of hospitality. This study thus treats history not as a background narrative, but as theory-building material. We want to clarify what changes with time, what remains and why hospitality continues to be a distinctive social and economic institution.

3. Methodology

The study makes use of an integrative historical review. This design is appropriate, because the purpose is not to estimate an effect size or to test a causal model, but to synthesize historically dispersed scholarship into a theoretical explanation. Integrative reviews are useful when a topic cuts across multiple literatures and the goal of the research is not comprehensive bibliometric mapping but conceptual integration.

The review was performed following a bounded and transparent source strategy. We conducted searches across key academic discovery channels relevant to hospitality, tourism, management and service research, including publisher platforms and indexing services. Search terms included both historical and contemporary concepts such as: hospitality history, commercial hospitality, hospitality theory, hotel evolution, tourism disruption, COVID-19 hospitality, sharing economy accommodation, Airbnb hospitality, digital hospitality, artificial intelligence hospitality, robotics hospitality and sustainable hospitality.

The analysis was made in four steps. First, sources were classified by historical period and institutional form. Secondly, the dominant host-guest logic, mechanism of trust and main form of governance were coded for each period. Third, periods were compared against recurring tensions. Fourth, the synthesis was converted into theoretical propositions. This procedure makes no attempt to cover the history comprehensively. Its power is analytical: it identifies recurrent patterns of institution-building, and draws on recent scholarship to link historical development to contemporary challenges.

Table 1. Review design and quality safeguards

Element	Decision	Purpose
Design	Integrative historical review	To synthesize dispersed historical and contemporary scholarship into a theoretical argument.
Source rule	DOI-indexed references only	To reduce unverifiable citation risk and support journal submission quality.
Recency rule	Recent update focused on 2020-2024 sources	To reflect current debates on COVID-19, digitalization, AI, platforms, and sustainability.
Analytical coding	Institutional form, trust mechanism, governance logic, and key tension	To move beyond description and generate theoretical propositions.
Boundary	Conceptual synthesis, not systematic review or archival study	To avoid overstating coverage and to make the study's methodological limits explicit.

Note. The review is deliberately bounded. It is designed for conceptual synthesis and theory development rather than exhaustive systematic mapping.

4. Historical Synthesis

4.1 Hospitality in the sacred and customary sense

Hospitality in ancient and early societies was predominantly a moral and social duty. Travellers needed food, rest, protection and information; hosts gained honour, religious merit, reciprocal security or political advantage. The guest was not just a consumer. The guest was an outsider, and therefore a source of both obligation and risk. Thus hospitality was a social technology for reducing uncertainty about movement.

4.2 Hospitality: religion, trade and pilgrimage

As trade, pilgrimage, diplomacy and urban life expanded, hospitality became more institutionalized. Religious houses, caravanserais, inns, taverns and guesthouses offered lodging, meals, security, storage and information. These institutions did not replace the ethical meaning of hospitality, but translated it into more stable arrangements. Its main change was institutionalization, since hospitality moved from being an obligation of the household to semi-public and commercial infrastructure.

4.3 Hotels, industrial mobility and professional management

Hotels marked the rise of a specialized commercial service. Demand for predictable accommodation was increased by industrial mobility, railways, steamships, urbanization, exhibitions and business travel. Hospitality providers had to create standards for cleanliness, accounting, staffing, service routines, pricing, and reputation management. Professional management did not remove the old ethic of welcome, it made that ethic operational through procedures and standards. This is why service quality and trust became managerial problems as well as moral expectations.

4.4 Standardisation and expansion of global brands and tourism

The twentieth century established hospitality as a global service industry. Hotel chains, resorts, air travel, mass tourism and business mobility made hospitality scalable. Standardisation reduced uncertainty for guests, especially in places they had never been before. Standardisation also created a constant tension: global brands offered consistency, but guests wanted local identity, cultural difference and personal attention. This tension remains a central theme of modern hospitality.

4.5 Platforms, AI and data-mediated hospitality

Digitalization changed where trust was. The old hospitality was based on host reputation, visible standards, guidebooks, travel agents, and brand promise. Today hospitality is also subject to search rankings, online reviews, platform rules, algorithmic visibility, automated communication and data-based personalization. The sharing economy revived the language of home and hosting, but commercialized it through platform governance (Dogru et al., 2020; Hall, 2022; Hati et al., 2021; Zhang & Fu, 2020). This shift is amplified by AI and robotics that change who or what delivers elements of the service encounter (Nam et al., 2021).

4.6 Sustainability, Public Health and Legitimacy

Responsibility has also been made visible in the contemporary period. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that the hospitality industry relies on public trust, health protocols, crisis management, and institutional resilience (Gössling et al., 2020; Hao et al., 2020; Jiang & Wen, 2020; Kaushal & Srivastava, 2021; Sigala, 2020; Yang et al., 2021). In sustainability research, environmental and social responsibility have become the determinants of legitimacy of hotels, destinations and hospitality platforms (Elkhwesky et al., 2022, 2024; Jones & Comfort, 2020; Salem et al., 2023). Hospitality, therefore, is not simply a private service encounter but is also part of wider systems of mobility, community impact, labour, public health and environmental responsibility.

Table 2. Analytical periodization of hospitality evolution

Period	Dominant form	Trust mechanism	Governance logic	Key tension
Ancient and customary	Household and community hosting	Honour, religion, reciprocity	Custom and moral duty	Generosity versus risk
Religious and trade networks	Monasteries, caravanserais, inns	Sanctity, reputation, route security	Religious and commercial norms	Care versus payment
Industrial and hotel era	Hotels and professional establishments	Standards, hygiene, management	Commercial organization	Personal welcome versus standardisation
Global tourism era	Chains, resorts, branded systems	Brand promise and service consistency	Corporate and destination governance	Consistency versus authenticity
Digital and platform era	Platforms, reviews, AI-supported service	Ratings, data, algorithms, automation	Platform and data governance	Convenience versus responsibility
Sustainability and resilience era	Responsible and crisis-aware hospitality	Health, sustainability, social legitimacy	Public, environmental, and stakeholder governance	Comfort versus ecological and social accountability

Note. The table is a conceptual synthesis developed from literature reviewed in this study.

5. Findings: Theoretical Propositions

The review supports five theoretical propositions. They are not statistical findings. They are propositions derived from the historical synthesis and offered for future empirical testing and conceptual refinement.

Table 3. Theoretical propositions emerging from the review

Proposition	Statement	Implication for research
P1. Ethical persistence	Hospitality changes institutional form, but it remains anchored in the ethical problem of receiving and protecting strangers.	Research should examine how care, dignity, safety, and respect survive or weaken under commercial and digital conditions.
P2. Mobility dependence	Major transformations in hospitality occur when mobility systems change.	Hospitality should be studied together with transport, tourism flows, migration, crisis restrictions, and digital mobility practices.
P3. Trust mediation	Each historical period develops a dominant mechanism for producing guest trust.	Future studies can compare trust cues across inns, brands, platforms, reviews, AI interfaces, and sustainability labels.
P4. Standardisation-authenticity tension	Hospitality scales through standardisation but differentiates through authenticity, locality, and personal meaning.	Research should test how guests balance predictability with local identity and personalised experience.
P5. Legitimacy expansion	Contemporary hospitality legitimacy depends increasingly on sustainability, public health, labour, data, and community impact.	Hospitality governance should be studied beyond guest satisfaction and revenue indicators.

Note. The propositions are derived from the integrative historical review and are designed to support future empirical and conceptual research.

6. Discussion

This study contributes to hospitality theory by re-conceptualizing hospitality as an adaptive institution, not a narrow industry label. This matters because the same basic relation—receiving, protecting, serving, and regulating the stranger—appears in households, religious institutions, inns, hotels, global brands, platforms. The contribution is not to argue that all periods are the same. The point is to find an enduring institutional problem behind change: hospitality makes strangerhood manageable under changing historical conditions.Moreover, the study contributes to tourism studies by linking hospitality to mobility regimes. Research on post-COVID-19 tourism has studied disruption, recovery, resilience and transformation (Gössling et al., 2020; Sigala, 2020; Utkarsh & Sigala, 2021; Yang et al., 2021). This study adds historical depth by demonstrating that hospitality has always changed when movement changed. Pilgrimage, trade, rail travel, air travel, mass tourism, digital nomadism and platform accommodation all require different hosting systems, but all rely on infrastructure that makes temporary presence socially and economically manageable.

The study contributes to service governance debates by showing that hospitality is governed beyond the market exchange. In premodern times hospitality was a matter of custom, religion, honour and local repute. Corporate standards, professional management and service quality frameworks are the result of modern hotels. Today, regulation, the rules of digital platforms, data systems, public health measures and sustainability expectations increasingly define the legitimacy of the hospitality sector. This perspective clarifies why platform accommodation, AI-supported service, and sustainable hospitality cannot be measured only by efficiency or guest satisfaction (Dogru et al., 2020; Elkhwesky et al., 2024; Hall, 2022; Nam et al., 2021).

The study continues to explain the role of technology. Digital systems do not eliminate hospitality; they relocate aspects of the hospitality relationship into data-mediated environments. Hospitality is now experienced by the guest before arrival, through booking platforms, reviews, automated messages, personalised offers and algorithmic recommendations. AI and robotics may boost efficiency but their adoption will depend on whether they maintain the essence of hospitality – trust, safety, responsiveness and respectful reception. Therefore, hospitality technology needs to be viewed as a socio-technical governance issue and not just as an operational tool.Finally, the study extends the scholarship on sustainability and resilience by explicitly connecting responsibility to a more traditional moral dimension of hospitality. Sometimes sustainability is presented as a new managerial agenda. But hospitality has been historically connected to responsibilities towards vulnerable travellers, host communities and shared spaces. The modern difference is that responsibility is now articulated through environmental measurement, social accountability, crisis readiness, and stakeholder governance. This historical framing makes sustainability more central and less peripheral to the future legitimacy of hospitality.

7. Limitations and Future Research

This is an integrative historical review and not an archival study, ethnography or systematic review with exhaustive database screening. It is a work of conceptual synthesis, and as such it favors sources that shed light on the argument rather than attempting to cover all historical periods, regions, languages or traditions. Needless to say, the use of broad historical stages simplifies important differences among ancient, Islamic, Chinese, Indian, European, African, Indigenous, and contemporary hospitality systems.

Future research may extend the propositions in four directions. First, empirical studies can investigate whether guests evaluate digital hospitality based on the same trust cues as branded hotels or based on different algorithmic cues. Second, comparative historical studies can investigate how various societies institutionalized hospitality during times of expanding mobility. Third, sustainability research can test if guests and managers understand environmental responsibility as part of hospitality itself or as an external compliance requirement. Fourth, research in AI and robotics can explore when automation enhances service reliability and when it diminishes the perceived human importance of welcome.

8. Conclusion

Where hospitality was once a sacred and customary duty, it is now a global, digital and sustainability-sensitive service industry. Its forms have changed: households, religious institutions, inns, hotels, brands and platforms each shape the host-guest relation in different ways. Yet the central problem remains: how to receive strangers safely, respectfully and reliably under changing conditions of mobility.

The study’s main contribution is to clarify hospitality as an adaptive institution organized around trust. Historical continuity and present change are not mutually exclusive. Contemporary hospitality continues to draw on the older ethical promise of welcome, but that promise is now mediated through professional standards, brands, platforms, algorithms, public health expectations, and sustainability responsibilities. Therefore, future research should not examine hospitality as an industry only but as a social institution that governs mobility, trust and responsibility.

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