Platformized Hospitality Ecosystems: Reconfiguring Service Innovation, Customer Engagement, and Organizational Architecture Through SaaS-Driven Digital Infrastructures
Keywords:
Hospitality platforms, Software-as-a-Service, service innovationAbstract
The hospitality industry is undergoing one of the most profound structural transformations in its history, driven by the convergence of cloud computing, software-as-a-service (SaaS), artificial intelligence, data analytics, and digitally mediated service ecosystems. Traditional hospitality models, historically grounded in human-centered concierge services, standardized property management systems, and vertically integrated operational structures, are increasingly giving way to platform-based, software-mediated, and data-driven forms of value creation. This transition does not merely represent a technological upgrade but signifies a paradigmatic shift in how hospitality organizations conceptualize service, customer engagement, innovation, and competitive advantage. Recent scholarship has emphasized that SaaS platforms in hospitality are not neutral tools but institutional architectures that restructure power, agency, and value within hospitality ecosystems (Goel, 2025). This insight positions SaaS not as a peripheral support system but as the infrastructural backbone of contemporary hospitality.
This study develops a theoretically grounded and empirically informed conceptualization of how SaaS-driven architectures reconfigure hospitality as a socio-technical service system. Drawing upon service-dominant logic, service innovation theory, business process as a service (BPaaS), and digital platform theory, the paper situates hospitality within broader transformations of the service economy. By synthesizing prior research on customer engagement, IT infrastructure flexibility, collaborative innovation, big data, and cloud-based business processes, this study constructs a multi-layered analytical framework that explains how SaaS platforms reshape operational routines, customer journeys, and inter-organizational collaboration.
The methodological approach is qualitative and theory-integrative, employing comparative conceptual analysis and literature-based interpretive synthesis. Rather than generating new numerical datasets, the study re-examines how existing hospitality, information systems, and service innovation literature collectively reveals emergent patterns of digital transformation. The results demonstrate that SaaS-enabled hospitality ecosystems increasingly function as modular, adaptive, and data-intensive networks in which value is co-created through continuous interactions among guests, employees, digital interfaces, and algorithmic systems.
The discussion advances a critical perspective, arguing that while SaaS platforms expand innovation capacity, personalization, and operational scalability, they also generate new risks related to data governance, technological dependency, labor displacement, and algorithmic opacity. By integrating legal, organizational, and service-theoretical perspectives, this article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of digital hospitality and provides a conceptual foundation for future empirical research and managerial practice.
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