Hospitality: fundamental concepts and relevance to tourism studies

This article aims to demonstrate the range of theoretical perspectives on hospitality and the possible contributions of this field of knowledge to a deeper understanding of societies. For this purpose, we explore the understanding of hospitality based on some conceptual and philosophical foundations and how they help us to think about societies. In the context of tourism, hospitality enables tourists to take co-responsibility for multiple experiences, removing them from the passivity in which they often find themselves. In addition, we understand that hospitality stimulates the exercise of recognizing the complexity of individuals and welcoming otherness. In this way, hospitality in the contemporary society becomes a set of theoretical and practical tools that go beyond social relations, influencing larger contexts where the various issues related to tourism and mobility are located, such as (i)migration, xenophobia and tourismphobia, and many other cross-cutting issues in societies.