Technological Advancements and its Impact on the Hotel Industry Workforce: Andrea Kecić's senior project published at ISCONTOUR conference

June 5, 2020

RIT Croatia's hospitality program graduate Andrea Kecić recently had her senior project thesis on the topic "Technological Advancements and its Impact on the Hotel Industry Workforce" accepted for publication by the International Student Conference in Tourism Studies (ISCONTOUR), organized by the Management Center Innsbruck (MCI) and IMC University of Applied Sciences in Krems, Austria.

Her research, under the mentorship Dr. Besim Agušaj, explored the impact of various technologies on the future of employment opportunities in the hotel industry. "Through examining the history of automation, existing HR challenges in current technological implementation and the skill demand in such a new environment, our goal was to verify whether or not hotel industry jobs are vulnerable to automation," Andrea explained.

"All HTM senior year students are required to complete a senior project and they get to choose their mentor as well as the topic of their interest. When I asked her what is the topic that she would like to examine - she replied that we are constantly "bombarded" by reports on how human capital in hospitality industry will be replaced by technology (automation, robots, AI and technological solutions in general) in the near future, and therefore she would like to explore if this is really the case. I agreed although knowing that this contemporary topic could be a challenging one since future trends are very difficult to survey. Andrea dived into her research and totally immersed herself in articles and publications. Mentoring her was a great experience. She definitely rose to the occasion and did an exceptional job. The work that she did had the potential to be further developed and ultimately even published. That is how we decided to submit the paper to ISCONTOUR. This particular conference offers students and graduates a unique platform to present their research and to establish a mutual knowledge transfer and networking opportunities for attendees from academia, industry, government and other organizations. I am extremely proud of Andrea. She truly represents the spirit of who we are as an institution of higher education: professional and enthusiastic in pursue of excellence!", said Dr. Besim Agušaj.

Andrea, who graduated from RIT Croatia in 2019, is currently a trainee in Hilton Supply Management regional office, which conducts procurement for properties in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

"I would like to say a big THANK YOU to Dr. Besim Agušaj for this opportunity and collaboration, and most importantly for his patience! Let's do it again some time!" concluded Andrea.