Humanitarian Hospitality: A Framework for Ethical Encounters in Crisis Tourism

Abstract

This paper introduces humanitarian hospitality as a conceptual framework for understanding relational ethics and care practices in crisis-affected tourism. While volunteer tourism, disaster recovery travel, and solidarity-based travel bring individuals into crisis-affected destinations, the hospitality that unfolds in these non-commercial encounters remains under-theorised. Drawing on philosophical perspectives and exploratory qualitative insights from 145 Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers and aid workers, the study examines how emotional labour, ethical care, and informal hosting are enacted in contexts of conflict and displacement. The findings both parallel and complicate conventional host–guest dynamics, highlighting the ethical and emotional complexities of providing care under conditions of scarcity and trauma. The proposed Humanitarian Hospitality Framework (HHF) positions humanitarian encounters as an underexplored domain of tourism and hospitality research. It extends hospitality theory by integrating principles of dignity, neutrality, and relational accountability into crisis-driven encounters. While not claiming empirical validation, the paper conceptually grounds the HHF as a starting point for future tourism scholarship, with implications for post-crisis recovery, volunteer mobilisation, and ethical engagement in vulnerable destinations.