Metaverse in the tourism sector for talent management: a technology in practice lens

In an era of talent shortages in the hospitality and tourism sector, the increasing use of technology adoption, including the metaverse, is critical for providing organizations with a competitive advantage. While metaverse adoption is becoming increasingly important for enabling customer experience in tourism, there is a surprising dearth of research on applications in the learning and development of the workforce engaged in this sector. The paper examines how hospitality and tourism HRM practices leveraging the metaverse can meaningfully increase learning engagement with the distributed workforce. Using a qualitative case study research design, we draw on practice theory and attempt to address the changing structures, practices, norms, and interpretive schemes while using the metaverse for learning and development within organizations. The study finds that the metaverse serves as augmenting technology or assistive technology, and its use with partial or wholly immersive environments enables asynchronous and synchronous learning. The implications of the study are discussed.