Reframing Sustainable Human Resource Management in Tourism: Education, Social Exchange, and Destination Governance

Despite growing attention to social sustainability in tourism, employment relations remain predominantly studied at the firm level, overlooking the broader systemic contexts that shape how workforces function. This paper argues that Sustainable Human Resource Management (SHRM) in tourism cannot be fully understood without examining what workers expect from employment before they enter it, and how those expectations are formed. Drawing on Social Exchange Theory (SET) and revisiting the longstanding vocational–liberal debate in hospitality and tourism education, the paper reframes education as a formative mechanism shaping social exchange expectations prior to labour market entry. An integrative framework is developed, bringing together four literature streams—tourism labour markets and employment precarity, hospitality and tourism education, SET, and destination governance—to connect educational orientations, SHRM practices, and destination-level governance structures. Education conditions how workers read and respond to HR practices, while governance arrangements determine whether the relational foundations of employment are sustained or eroded across destination labour markets. Workforce sustainability thus emerges from coordinated social exchange relations embedded across tourism destination systems rather than from isolated HR initiatives. The framework’s main contribution lies in repositioning education as a relational mechanism central to SHRM theory, framing workforce sustainability as a system-level outcome, and offering practical directions for destination governance bodies, policymakers, and curriculum designers seeking to strengthen the institutional foundations of sustainable tourism employment.