Leadership in tourism management plays a crucial role in directing organizational efforts toward achieving service excellence, customer satisfaction, and sustainable growth. Since tourism is a service-intensive and people-oriented industry, leadership theories provide frameworks for understanding how managers influence employees, shape organizational culture, and respond to dynamic environmental conditions. Various leadership theories have evolved over time, each offering distinct perspectives on how leaders function and how leadership behavior affects organizational outcomes in tourism enterprises such as hotels, travel agencies, airlines, and destination management organizations. The Trait Theory of leadership is one of the earliest approaches. It assumes that effective leaders possess certain inherent qualities or traits that differentiate them from others. These traits may include intelligence, confidence, integrity, sociability, determination, and adaptability. In the context of tourism, leaders who demonstrate emotional stability, communication skills, and cultural sensitivity are often more successful because they deal with diverse customers and multicultural workforces. For instance, a hotel general manager with strong interpersonal skills and resilience can handle guest complaints, staff conflicts, and operational stress more effectively. However, trait theory has limitations because it does not explain how traits are developed or how situational factors influence leadership effectiveness. Behavioral Theories shifted the focus from who leaders are to what leaders do. These theories suggest that leadership effectiveness depends on specific behaviors rather