The future of hospitality in the age of AI

I didn’t enter hospitality the traditional way. I arrived sideways, from law. From a world of documents, structure and certainty into one that looked, from the outside, joyful, chaotic and alive. Energy, bustle, creativity, smiles and delicious food landing on tables and changing the mood of a room. I adored it from afar.

From the inside, I can safely say, I love it even more. The graft, sore legs, late nights, unexpected challenges each day and everything that comes with it.

Which is why I’m strangely calm about AI.

There’s a lot of hand-wringing about it, and a lot of breathless optimism too. As ever, the truth sits somewhere in the middle. AI is neither the saviour nor the villain of hospitality. It’s a pressure multiplier and this industry is already under a great deal of pressure.

In the UK we’re operating in a moment of growing protectionism. Borders tightening. Visas being denied overnight. Immigrants being targeted, ostracised and, in some cases, outright banned. Hospitality has always depended on movement of people, ideas and cultures and sadly that flow is slowing.

You see it most clearly in kitchens and dining rooms. The Italians, who once quietly ran the junior rungs of London hospitality, have largely disappeared. Eastern Europeans, who chose to stay on through a harder climate and tougher economy, are now in huge demand, stretched thin. Asian visas, in many cases, simply stopped.

All of this has created enormous strain. Staff costs are staggering. Hiring is painful. Fewer people want the physical grind, the unsociable hours, the repetition. Many want to work from home. Hospitality, by definition, cannot.

Similar challenges persist in the industry across the the world. I know enough restaurateur friends in India, who are holding on to talented chefs and managers with dear life.

AI has arrived at exactly this moment and it’s already reshaping the industry. Back of house (BOH) admin is the first casualty. Cost control, forecasting, finance, marketing roles that once required teams now sit quietly inside software. Robots will take over menial BOH tasks once the hardware catches up, and it will; sooner than we think. It will be a matter of months at the rate things are moving.

Front of house, though, is where my predictions get more nuanced.

In all but the highest levels of dining, many tasks will disappear or be heavily streamlined. Computerised ordering will become standard and highly personalised. Runners may be replaced. Service lines simplified. Efficiency will be engineered in, whether we like it or not.

But hospitality doesn’t live in these tasks, it lives in the humans that frame your restaurant journey. AI will never replace that smile at the door, the warmth of being recognised, remembered, cared for. The quiet intelligence of reading a table, knowing when to step in and when to step back. The chef who creates from a personal journey, not a dataset. The waiter who makes you feel like and old friend guiding you on a journey of discovery.

Much like theatre has come to be more valued in a world of Netflix and streaming, these personal experiences won’t disappear, they’ll become more coveted. In a world of AI and robots, people will come to crave them specifically because they are human, occasionally imperfect and impossible to automate.

Restaurants were created to restore people. To slow the pace, to offer refuge and in a frantic world where the rats are replaced by robots and the race only accelerates, that need for restoration will deepen.

My fear isn’t that AI replaces hospitality. It’s that protectionism, short-term thinking and exhaustion hollow it out before we realise what we’re losing.

I see AI as a tool that, used well, gives hospitality back its soul. If machines take care of the admin, the repetition and the noise, then humans can focus on what they do best: welcoming, cooking, caring, hosting.

Which brings me back to why I left law in the first place. I didn’t switch careers because hospitality was easier. It isn’t. I switched because it felt alive. Because at its best, it’s generous, emotional and deeply human. And the more automated the world becomes, the more I believe people will seek out places where that humanity is not just present, but protected.

From the outside, hospitality looked like joy. From the inside, it turns out that joy lies in its humanity. And that’s exactly why it will last.

Karan Gokani is a London-based chef and restaurateur who spends his time cooking, travelling and exploring what the world is eating. He loves the gym, biriyani and his frying pan. Not necessarily in that order.

Published – March 13, 2026 04:15 pm IST