Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore how hotel employee emotional intelligence influences the formation of cultural empathy, and how cultural empathy affects prosocial behavior toward customers. Design/Methodology/Approach – This study conducted empirical analysis through various methodologies, including confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. For empirical analysis, a survey was conducted targeting hotel employees in Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang, Vietnam. The study was conducted based on 261 samples. Findings – Among the sub-factors of emotional intelligence, understanding other people's emotions, controlling emotions, and utilizing emotions significantly positively affected cognitive and emotional empathy abilities. On the other hand, self-emotional understanding was found to have a positive effect only on cognitive empathy ability. This shows that the various aspects of emotional intelligence are important in forming close relationships with customers. Moreover, cultural empathy significantly impacted hotel employee prosocial behavior. Research Implications – This study reveals that self-emotion appraisal influences only cognitive empathy, suggesting a reevaluation of its role in emotional intelligence. It underscores the importance of cultural empathy in multi-cultural service environments, and recommends enhanced training programs for hotel employees to better understand and respond to customer emotional and cultural needs.