Improving Tourism and Hospitality Worker Well-being Through Social Dialogue

Project Information

FUTOURWORK

Grant agreement ID: 101178573

DOI

10.3030/101178573

EC signature date 4 October 2024

Start date 1 January 2025

End date 30 June 2028

Funded under

• Culture, creativity and inclusive society

Total cost

€ 2 567 217,50

EU contribution

€ 2 481 662,50

Coordinated by

THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER LBG
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FUTOURWORK (Improving Tourism and Hospitality Worker Well-being Through Social Dialogue)

Reporting period: 2025-01-01 to 2026-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

FUTOURWORK addresses labour precarity in Europe’s tourism and hospitality (T+H) sector by promoting inclusive social dialogue and fair digital transformation. Through an interdisciplinary Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) approach, the project aims to empower workers, inform policymaking, and contribute to EU priorities on decent work and social justice.

The T&H sector represents over 10% of EU GDP and employs more than 13 million people, many from marginalised groups such as women, migrants, and young workers. Despite its economic importance, the sector faces persistent challenges, including high staff turnover, precarious employment conditions, and significant labour shortages.

The increasing prevalence of non-standard employment and platform work has introduced new vulnerabilities. Algorithmic management and digital systems are reshaping working conditions, often limiting access to social protection and reducing opportunities for collective representation and social dialogue.

FUTOURWORK responds to these challenges by placing worker well-being, inclusion, and rights at the centre of tourism’s digital transition. The project integrates perspectives from tourism studies, labour law, sociology, economics, digital ethics, and gender studies to develop a comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of labour conditions in the sector.

Key project activities include the development of a Worker Well-being Index to assess employment practices across the EU, the analysis of digitalisation impacts on working conditions, and the comparative study of national legal and institutional frameworks governing social dialogue.

The project also generates qualitative and quantitative evidence through surveys, stakeholder interviews, and legal analysis, with a focus on the experiences of vulnerable workers. In addition, FUTOURWORK aims to develop practical tools and accessible resources to support workers and stakeholders.

The project contributes to a better understanding of emerging labour challenges in the T&H sector and supports the development of more inclusive, fair, and sustainable forms of work in Europe.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the first reporting period, the FUTOURWORK project successfully established its scientific, methodological, and analytical foundations, enabling the systematic investigation of worker well-being, social dialogue, and digital transformation in the tourism and hospitality (T&H) sector.

An achievement has been the development of a conceptual framework (WP1), integrating perspectives from social sciences and humanities to analyse the interrelations between worker well-being, digitalisation, and distributional dynamics. This framework provides the theoretical backbone for all subsequent research activities.

Substantial progress has been made in empirical data preparation. A comprehensive cross-national survey instrument (WP2) has been designed, piloted, and validated across six countries. The survey captures multiple dimensions of employment conditions, precarity, social dialogue, discrimination, and well-being, and constitutes a major scientific output that will enable large-scale comparative analysis in the next phase.

In parallel, significant qualitative data collection has been carried out (WP3), including the development of harmonised research tools and the completion of 50 stakeholder interviews across participating countries. These interviews provide early insights into the impacts of digitalisation, including algorithmic management, on working conditions and worker representation.

Further analytical advancements have been achieved in the mapping and assessment of industrial relations systems and social dialogue mechanisms through an analytical grid (WP4), as well as in the investigation of legal frameworks and distributional costs affecting trade union activities and collective bargaining (WP5). These activities have resulted in analytical tools and initial findings that contribute to understanding structural barriers to worker representation, particularly for non-standard and platform workers.

In addition, preparatory work has been undertaken in WP6 to identify key legal areas and protection mechanisms, laying the groundwork for the development of practical legal resources for workers in later stages of the project.

Within the first 15 months, the project has produced significant scientific outputs, including validated research instruments, qualitative datasets, conceptual and analytical frameworks, and comparative methodologies. These achievements provide an integrated evidence base for the next phase of the project, which will focus on large-scale primary data collection (WP2, WP4), further analysis (WP1, WP5, WP6), and the development of policy-relevant solutions (WP7).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

During the first reporting period, the FUTOURWORK project has begun to move beyond the current state of the art by bringing together areas that are typically studied separately: worker well-being, social dialogue, and digitalisation in the tourism and hospitality (T&H) sector.

Rather than producing final results at this stage, the main progress lies in establishing a coherent and comparable research framework across countries. This includes the development of a shared conceptual approach, a cross-national survey instrument, and a harmonised qualitative methodology. These elements are important because existing research in the sector is often fragmented, country-specific or focused on single dimensions of work.

One of the early contributions of the project is the systematic inclusion of issues such as algorithmic management, non-standard employment, and access to representation within both the survey and qualitative research design. While empirical results are still emerging, this ensures that the next phase of the project will generate data that is currently limited or unavailable in a comparable form across European countries.

In addition, the project has started to map differences in legal frameworks and social dialogue structures across participating countries. This comparative approach is expected to provide a clearer understanding of how institutional contexts shape working conditions and worker representation in the sector.

At this stage, the potential impact of these results lies mainly in the foundation they provide for the next phases of the project. Key needs for the further development of the project include:

- completion of the cross-national data collection and analysis,
- continued collaboration between research, legal, and policy perspectives,
- engagement with stakeholders to ensure relevance and usability of outputs,
- alignment with ongoing EU policy developments related to platform work and social dialogue.

While the project is still at an early stage, it has established the necessary tools, frameworks, and coordination mechanisms to produce more policy-relevant results in the next reporting periods.