Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not a new concept for Hospitality Industry and Recruitment functions. AI has displaced the human intervention in routine tasks. In few years, AI will take over several jobs (Kubler, 2018). Recently AI technologies support application screening, data analysis, and preliminary interviews, saving time of recruiters. Chatbots are now designated recruitment officers supporting candidates. Researchers have studied the influence of AI on Recruitment, but only a few focused on the AI displacing human in the recruitment function performed in UAE’s hospitality industry.

This research aims to understand the transformation in the recruitment function of UAE’s hospitality industry due to AI intervention. Using concurrent mixed-methods, data was collected by interviewing 10 UAE HR leaders and surveying 135 HR professionals. The inductive-deductive thematic analysis was conducted for subjective measures and descriptive analysis was performed for scaled measures.

This study found that UAE’s hospitality sector deployed AI technologies in recruitment areas such as job advertisements, collecting applications, maintaining profiles, and storing the applications. The routine, repetitive, and heavy-volume tasks in the recruitment are delegated to AI while strategic roles are retained for human professionals including development of strategies, and creation of job descriptions and specifications. While the literature review suggested a wider application of AI in recruitment function, UAE’s hospitality sector seems to be lagging. The recommendations will benefit industry leaders, HR professionals, recruitment consultants, and AI developers to rethink on the recruitment strategies, operations, and administration and to embrace the intervention of AI in recruiting the best talent proficiently.