Prabhath Sirisena
Prabhath Sirisena, lecturer at Hotelschool The Hague, researches how AI agents shape hospitality, workforce wellbeing, and guest experiences. Combining applied research with industry collaboration, he develops practical, sustainable solutions that enhance hotel operations and staff satisfaction.
Prabhath Sirisena explores the intersections of human, more-than-human, and technological worlds, particularly in hospitality and modern society. He holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from University of Colombo, building on earlier studies in business psychology and information technology.
Alongside his academic work, Prabhath is the co-founder of Hiveage, a fintech company with roots in the US and the UK. Born and raised in Sri Lanka he also spent part of his early life as a forest-dwelling Buddhist monk. An experience that continues to shape his thinking about technology, wellbeing, and the “technologies of the self” that help people live and work more meaningfully.
Prabhath as a lecturer
At Hotelschool The Hague, Prabhath teaches the Year 4 course Regenerative Business and supervises students completing their thesis work through Innovating for the Future and Innovating for the Industry. His teaching encourages students to go beyond incremental improvements and instead imagine hospitality businesses that genuinely restore and regenerate people, communities, and environments.
Research focus
AI Agents for Efficient and Sustainable Hospitality Workforce
Prabhath’s research focuses on how AI agents are reshaping the hospitality workforce, especially the common assumption that conversational AI saves staff time and effort. While data suggests these efficiencies exist, hotels are not consistently seeing this time reinvested into more meaningful guest interactions or improved staff wellbeing.
His work, conducted within the NWO-funded project Smart Service, Sustainable Workforce, brings hotel employees, managers, and technology developers together to explore where these “savings” actually go. This includes examining whether they contribute to genuine rest and wellbeing or simply lead to digital distraction.
By testing AI tools in real hotel environments, the project aims to develop practical, co-created solutions that enhance operational efficiency, elevate job satisfaction, and strengthen the human side of hospitality. The insights generated will help build a smarter, more sustainable hospitality sector, with potential applications beyond hotels.
In this research, he will collaborates with Alexander Lennart Schmidt Professor of Technological Innovation in Hospitality.