Reclaiming hospitality education: A critical reflection.

Abstract

This paper presents a critical reflection on the current state and future of hospitality education, grounded in the philosophical orientation of Biesta and Säfström’s Manifesto for Education. It argues that hospitality education is currently under existential pressure from managerialist logics, academic elitism, and the erosion of its vocational roots. Rather than merely diagnosing the symptoms, this paper speaks for hospitality education. It reconceptualizes the field as an educational space invested in the formation of professional identity and freedom, not only employability. Drawing on a century of educational practice and contemporary pressures within and beyond the Global North, it offers ten propositions as a roadmap to realign hospitality education with its educational interest: the cultivation of the student as a hospitable subject. Through this critical reflection, a reframing of hospitality education that resists instrumentalism and reclaims its unique identity is advocated.