Information Technology in Tourism Business Archives - Tourism Marketing and Management

How overtourism could be prevented via green digital advertising?

Have you visited a destination that has “lost its magic” due to the crowds there? Authenticity as well as the quality of life of residents has been in danger since overtourism started to eat capacities of the destinations. Overtourism is referred to as “loving places to death”². Three decades ago, Venice was home to over 120 000 people¹⁶. The number of residents is decreasing. A couple of years ago before the pandemic, there were about 55 000 residents left in the historical center of Venice¹⁶. This means that the population is about 54% less than it was before. This is because of overtourism.

Overtourism was a current issue before the COVID-19. However, the demand for tourism still exists and overtourism can be an issue once more⁷. Therefore, strategies should be created already to prevent it from happening again.

The examined question is conflicting, and that is exactly why it is interesting. Is it that digital advertising was the factor that caused overtourism? Maybe digital advertising could be the one that could prevent overtourism, but would it be against the principles of the original idea of advertising? What is the Golden mean, where overtourism could be prevented but all the tourists would not be lost? So many questions. Let’s get into the question a bit more closely by opening it up.

Overtourism?

Overtourism is googled in 2006 for the first time but is considered an older issue in another context². Overtourism is defined as the excessive increase in the number of tourists that causes overcrowding in locations, when locals face the negative effects of seasonal tourism peaks, forcing inhabitants to make permanent changes to their lives, access to amenities, and general well-being². Overtourism has a negative impact on the quality of life of residents, due to a rowdy and crowdy environment that loses its authenticity and amenity². There are strains on infrastructure, and inappropriate behaviour by tourists, but also decreased enjoyment of experiences by tourists². Residents who live in a tourism center and are vulnerable to the negative impacts are less supportive of tourism compared to those living away from the tourism center¹².

According to the study that examined the community’s trust in government and the levels of community involvement and participation in Ecotourism, the levels of community involvement and participation in ecotourism were low⁶. However, the community’s perceptions of trust in the government were quite positive. On the other hand, there are still actions toward overtourism. The term “tourismphobia” first appeared in 2008³. The term has been used to label anti-tourism protests, which are held in different cities like Barcelona and Venice³.

People holding their hands on a tree — Retrieved from unsplash.com

There is also social responsibility (SR) which is a multidimensional concept that is about respecting people, places, and things, recognizing the connection between others as well as the environment and appreciating it¹³. In the 1980s SR became part of advertising as a creative strategy¹³. According to Jerry Welsh (1985) social responsibility is a good marketing hook¹³.

Advertising?

Now, that we have investigated overtourism as a phenomenon, let’s move forward to advertising itself. Advertising is a crucial tool in our economy and society¹⁵. It is a marketing tactic and is any paid message that is delivered to consumers as meaning to make the offer more attractive to them¹⁵. Digital advertising, in turn, is advertising that involves computational networks¹¹. As considered earlier, would the opposite goal for advertising, decreasing the number of tourists, be against the principles of the original idea of advertising? Advertising is also about giving information to customers¹³. Therefore, the original principles could be applied by giving information about the destination’s real situation, as actually, has been done already.

To advertise a destination, technology is needed – the smarter, the better. Destination smartness can be about “taking advantage of smart technology in creating, managing, and delivering intelligent touristic services/experiences”¹. Destination smartness may be conceptualized based on how smart technologies are used to execute certain behaviors¹. Today, new technologies include hyper-personalized algorithms which help collect data, for example, of peoples’ lifestyles¹⁷. AI (artificial intelligence) could be utilized when targeting the advertising of overtourism to sub-target groups.

Virtual reality (VR) could be applied when combining technology with the tourism business. Along with the technological revolution, the accessibility of devices will become more probable. This is an opportunity to have better access to devices that are necessary regarding, for example, virtual reality. If people had VR headsets, virtual reality could be utilized better. Travel agencies and transport companies could invest in virtual reality for potential customers to see destinations during different seasons. The customer could see if there is a crowd at the chosen season and could decide better whether wants to go there at that time of the year. This would influence the purchase decision. Therefore, the one purchasing a trip, as well as the overtourism destination, would benefit from this.

According to the study that aimed to determine tourists’ willingness to pay taxes and public fees to improve sustainability and experience at the destination, one out of every four tourists said to reject paying any tax and/or public fee set by the tourism activity⁵. The least willing ones for payments were either retired or younger individuals with low incomes. Using this study as the base, the people with better incomes could be primarily targeted when advertising overtourism, and for example, a donation campaign could be organized. The campaign could inform the destinations which have suffered from overtourism the most. It could encourage tourists that are planning to travel to one of those destinations to donate money to the destination for resourcing the infrastructure there. Instructions for how to donate would be provided in the campaign.

Green advertising is a valid aspect to utilize. The information given is from the study “Green Advertising on Social Media: Brand Authenticity Mediates the Effect of Different Appeals on Purchase Intent and Digital Engagement”¹⁴. Green advertising is defined as an ad that addresses the relationship between a product/service and the biophysical environment, promotes a green lifestyle, or presents a corporate image of environmental responsibility. It can include ads that promote a sustainable lifestyle with or without highlighting products or services. Green advertising share opinions, some agree, and some perceive it as misleading advertising. Nowadays, there are many with “climate anxiety” – guilt about their lifestyles because of its effect on the ecosystem and future generations. There can be indirect risks experienced due to social pressures or even accepted social norms of environmental sustainability behavior. This could be the key factor in changing a certain behavior. Social norms theory (SNT) is usually applied in this. Perkins and Berkowitz (1986) define the theory as the situation of an individual making decisions based on socially acceptable behaviors or beliefs. As a cause-and-effect relationship, brands utilize this social norm by making their products eco-friendly.

What about our buying behavior? According to Crompton (1979), the tourist industry should pay greater attention to socio-psychological motives rather than cultural motives when developing product and promotion strategies⁴. Also, the facilities of the destination do not matter that much in the destination decision⁴. It is more about the push factors than the pull factors regarding the decision. This is a good sign from an overtourism perspective. If an individual wants to relax and it is the primary motive behind the destination decision, it is not concerning only one or two destinations in the world. Cooperation with influencers could be applied here.

A phone on a table with social media icons shown on a screen and the phone is next to a coffee — Retrieved from unsplash.com

Social media influencers (SMI) are part of today’s marketing. There is the study that identifies consumer motivations to follow SMIs on Instagram and its association with consumer behaviour outcomes⁹. The results were authenticity, consumerism, creative inspiration, and envy. Influencers are more likely to be followed if they are genuine, open, and relatable. Social media influencers could for example say in their travel vlogs that they chose another destination over the other suffering from overtourism, if this is the case. Those following them would start to think about their destination decisions from a different perspective. Influencers could also do live-streaming videos of the overtourism destinations, with the message of the negative impacts. One study examined the tourism live-streaming viewers’ immediate purchase decisions¹⁰. According to the results, informativity, entertainment, and interactivity positively influenced immersion and, in turn, viewers’ interest in tourism products and live streaming and therefore, buying desire. In this case, the study would be used with the opposite goal of not buying the trip to overtourism destination, by influencing buying desire.

It is predicted that advertising using traditional media will become the dominant form of advertising⁸. This could be the solution for consumers not taking the advertising of overtourism offensively due to the advertising would be targeted, for example, to all watching a TV. Newspapers and different documents have been used already in this matter of overtourism. Why has this not influenced consumers? Is prioritizing self-oriented needs and motives just humane and therefore hard to resist? Maybe. It might be that there is not even a direct solution for preventing overtourism through advertising.

Closure

When the aim of advertising is to prevent overtourism, affecting customers’ emotions could be the main goal. Showing all the negative impacts it has caused from an environmental and social point of view. Tourist destinations could do green advertising – social responsibility and norms as the base for it. Of course, by not being aggressive and using strategy, the consumer would not identify directly the social values and beliefs used behind the advertising affecting consumer behavior. The Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) could be applied here. TRA is about understanding the relationships between attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. Normative beliefs in TRA could be that others are considered to evaluate how sustainable you are. Therefore, motivation to comply would be sustainable behavior.

There is always an issue existing when advertising the negative impacts of overtourism in a certain destination. If people would not want to go to the destination anymore due to the feeling that they are not welcome there, would there be total tourist loss? This would have a negative impact on the destination from an economic point of view. What is the Golden mean?

References

¹Au, W.C.W., & Tsang, N.K.F. (2022). What makes a destination smart? an intelligence-oriented approach to conceptualizing destination smartness. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 39(4), 448-464.

²Butler, R., & Dodds, R. (2019). Overtourism : issues, realities and solutions. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg.

³Celata, F., & Romano, A. (2022). Overtourism and online short-term rental platforms in Italian cities. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 30(5), 1020-1039.

⁴Crompton, J.L. (1979). Motivations for pleasure vacation. Annals of Tourism Research, 6(4), 408-424.

⁵Durán-Román, J.L., Cárdenas-García, P.J., & Pulido-Fernández, J.I. (2021). Tourists’ willingness to pay to improve sustainability and experience at destination. Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 19 (100540).

⁶Harilal, V., Tichaawa, T., & Saarinen, J. (2022). Ecotourism and Community Development in Cameroon: The Nexus Between Local Participation and Trust in Government. Tourism Planning & Development, 19(2), 164-185.

⁷Kamata, H. (2022). Tourist destination residents’ attitudes towards tourism during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Current Issues in Tourism, 25(1), 134-149.

⁸Koslow, S., & Stewart, D.W. (2022). Message and media: the future of advertising research and practice in a digital environment. International Journal of Advertising, 41(5), 827-849.

⁹Lee, J.A., Sudarshan, S., Sussman, K.L., Bright, L.F., & Eastin, M.S. (2022). Why are consumers following social media influencers on Instagram? Exploration of consumers’ motives for following influencers and the role of materialism. International Journal of Advertising, 41(1), 78-100.

¹⁰Lv, X., Zhang, R., Su, Y., & Yang, Y. (2022). Exploring how live streaming affects immediate buying behavior and continuous watching intention: A multigroup analysis. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 39(1), 109-135.

¹¹McStay, A.J. (2016). Digital Advertising. Second Edition. Palgrave.

¹²Nguyen, V.H. (2022). Segmenting local residents by perceptions of tourism impacts in Sapa, Vietnam: a cluster analysis. International Journal of Tourism Cities, 8(1), 153-167.

¹³Pardun, C.J. (2013). Advertising and Society : An Introduction. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.

¹⁴Pittman, M., Oeldorf-Hirsch, A., & Brannan, A. (2022). Green Advertising on Social Media: Brand Authenticity Mediates the Effect of Different Appeals on Purchase Intent and Digital Engagement. Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising, 43(1), 106-121.

¹⁵Tellis, G. J. (2004). Effective advertising : understanding when, how, and why advertising works. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.

¹⁶Welsh Joint Education Committee Eduqas. (n.d.). Overtourism. Retrieved from https://www.wjec.co.uk/media/au3prjjv/level-3-tourism-overtourism.pdf

¹⁷Yoon, S. (2022). Introduction to the special issue on the future of advertising. International Journal of Advertising, 41(5), 823-826.

Does Virtual Reality (VR) Travel have the potential to be more?

Retrieved from Forbes.com

Due to the pandemic, the global tourism industry had to come to a sudden halt. Even as lockdowns were slowly lifted, travelers were skeptical, and the threat of the virus is still very real. Recently, a second wave has swept across the world which has led to a second lockdown. Until a vaccine is in place, it will be quite difficult for the tourism industry to recover from its losses and reach the pre-pandemic tourist numbers. The tourism industry is constantly innovating and doing its best to get back on its feet. The role of modern technologies in tourism is changing rapidly, leading to customer relationships developing through virtual reality in the marketing of tourist destinations. In addition to focusing on the influence of travel intentions that has prevailed in practice so far, the use of VR is expected to have an impact on the travel experience on the spot. VR has existed for some time now but using it in the travel industry was not extremely popular. But the pandemic has boosted this trend and travelers that were once skeptical and found it pointless are turning to this technology for some solace. Tourism boards, airlines, hotels, destination management companies are making use of this tech to stay relevant in their travelers’ minds and to meet the demand temporarily if not physically.

The International Air Transport Association (Iata) said that international traffic “has all but disappeared”, with airlines carrying only about 10% of normal levels. By Iata’s estimate, Covid caused disruptions to put more than 41 million jobs at risk across the travel and tourism sector. Iata predicts that travel will not resume to pre-pandemic levels until 2024.

Steve Perillo is boss of Travel World VR, a US-based VR and 360-degree video marketing and production company. He says the pandemic has been a “shot of adrenaline” for a technology that to date had “not yet really arrived”. Now he says VR can whet a potential audience’s appetite. “The momentum has really picked up. It’s really launched the concept of travelling remotely.”

Retrieved from StudioBinder.com

VR acceleration?

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have had a lasting influence on tourism and will shape travel and booking behavior for generations. Undoubtedly, the desire to travel is uninterrupted, but financial and health fears and worries have made some people confused. However, every crisis can produce some positive outcomes, as difficulties stimulate new innovative ideas. Such a need creates the courage to change and that may include trust in social media marketing and distance tourism. As a result, tourists are more mobile than ever, and their information needs are constantly growing; almost no travel decision is made without prior virtual inspiration or internet research. In addition to the technical requirements of Web 2.0, there has been a change in the virtualization of social networks with much deeper consequences.

The annual travel report by Euromonitor International Accelerating Travel Innovation after Coronavirus examined innovative concepts designed to accelerate recovery to survive, sharing best practices from the most technologically advanced to the simplest solutions, in four categories:

Digital (virtual experiences, artificial intelligence and automation, biometrics, and digital identification, and 5G)
Sustainability (domestic tourism, social impact, own resources, transparency in terms of carbon emissions, and new sustainable business models)
Health (people first, safety and hygiene, social distance, diversification, and data analysis)
Guests (offers, real-time information, flexibility, personalization, and affordable luxury)

There are, however, several limitations that are currently holding the technology back, including large, unwieldy headsets and excessive costs. The most important limitation, according to Miguel Flecha, is that there has yet to be a trusted global brand to place its bets on VR. “The industry needs to believe in the technology,” he says. That may have begun to change with the launch in the US of Amazon Explore, a platform that gives access to one-on-one virtual experiences with tour guides and local residents in countries around the world. Experiences offered on the high-tech giant’s public beta version range from tours of Kyoto neighborhoods in Japan to artisan shopping in Costa Rica and fish taco cooking lessons in Mexico. As Mr. Flecha sees it, Amazon Explore may foretell the success or failure of VR in the travel industry. Serious investment by a high-tech giant and a trusted brand – Apple and Samsung are also looking into virtual reality – could, he believes, be the “great accelerator” needed.

Retrieved from Scooterrise.com

VR a blessing?

Necessity is the mother of invention, so although we had the digital tools available for us, but it is this pandemic which brought out their significance and advantage of shrinking the world and making it accessible for people to satiate their sense of exploration and discover destinations and cultures which exist around the world. One pitfall that keeps arising is that technology is hugely dependent on internet access, which sometimes can be a challenge. One major benefit of this tech is that it offers an eco-friendly alternative to the rising problem of over-tourism.

Virtual reality simulations must be created by people. Like most technologies, this means that the people responsible for creating virtual travel packages have a lot of control over how vacation destinations are represented to virtual tourists. One of the important benefits of tourism is that the tourist is usually forced to engage with native populations on their own terms (cruise ships and tropical all-inclusive resorts may be the exemption to the rule). This means that tourists can often learn that their preconceived notions of what other peoples or nations are like were wrong. With VR travel, this isn’t possible.

Ralph Hollister explained that VR has historically remained a niche concern. “When the technology was first released to global consumers the technology was hampered by technical drawbacks and unrealistic expectations. VR is incredibly hard to love unless you are experiencing high-quality VR with a high-quality VR headset. Sets such as Google cardboard provide affordability but often a sub-par experience, which may be negative for VR’s overall reputation. Travel and tourism is incredibly tangible, which is something VR cannot fully provide. It may provide a temporary fix for travelers with current wanderlust during COVID-19, but it could still be disregarded when restrictions are lifted as it can’t meet other sensory needs, such as taste or smell.”

In my opinion, I somewhat agree with Hollister (Travel and tourism is incredibly tangible, which is something VR cannot fully provide) as Virtual Travel does not offer the sensations of travel, touch smell, the environment therefore it cannot be considered as an alternative. Future tourism as we imagine it, entirely robotic, is not desirable. Humans are social beings, they need contact. A dimension that the VR cannot (yet) offer. Therefore, the consumer needs someone to accompany in their reflections and decisions. If a tour operator is not supposed to indicate which place is better than another in terms of its offers, the adviser will naturally do so, by expressing his or her opinion. Information that a robot or a virtual experiment will never be able to provide in the same way.

Retrieved from CASE.org

Replacement for Physical Travel?

A global survey by Italy4Real had found that VR travel will not replace real-life travel experiences. The following are some insights from the survey:

81 percent do not think virtual reality could ever replace real-life travel
90 percent say they would miss the full sensory experience of travelling
77 percent claim that the lack of local food and drinks would be a downside of VR travel, while 69 percent would miss meeting the locals and interacting with new people
52 percent say travel agents could be replaced by AI (Artificial Intelligence), but the majority agree that tour guides and hotel staff need a delicate touch

What are the benefits of Virtual Tourism?

Retrieved from BusinessWorldIT.com

Even VR travel may not replace physical travel, but it has handful of benefits for tourism. Because viewers can experience activities, locations, and destinations from the comfort of their own homes, there are many clear benefits to virtual tourism. The most obvious of these benefits is that viewers can see and experience a destination without traveling to it, which means they aren’t limited by available flights, travel logistics, safety concerns, and whether destinations are open. They don’t even have to think about time zones or weather conditions. The other huge benefit for viewers is cost. Virtual tourism makes destinations accessible to millions of people who may otherwise not be able to afford to travel to them. Viewers are embracing the rise in virtual tourism destinations and the increasing quality and availability of virtual reality technology to see and experience things they never thought possible.

For the travel industry, virtual reality can be used in tourism marketing to enhance travel experience and shape the behavior of travel consumers. What technology can do today is absolutely remarkable. For Tourism, the clear benefit is the ability to stay top-of-mind with potential customers and to highlight a location, amenities, and offerings. Viewers who have experienced a hotel or location through virtual tourism are more likely to book a future stay and will eagerly anticipate experiencing the activity in the real world. There are also great marketing opportunities offered by virtual tourism technology. Potential guests can see a 360-degree view of a property and its amenities, rather than the flat images on a brochure or website. Experiencing a property this way increases the chances that viewers will want to visit in the future and means that they can easily share the virtual offerings with their friends and family. VR in the travel industry also helps specific brands stand out from the rest. VR’s success, like any other outlet, depends on the quality and creativity of the experience. Designing the right things in VR and investing in its quality will guarantee the best customer engagement. This fact has always translated into revenue.

The most notable benefits of virtual reality in tourism go as follows:

Attract more visitors by enabling them to experience the destination firsthand before even booking it;
Showcase realistic 360-degree views of any destination or hotel in high resolution;
Mesmerize travelers by allowing them to explore destinations on their own from the convenience of their home;
Improve brand image by delivering unique brand engagement;
Gain competitive advantage by offering unique, unforgettable experiences;
Helping travelers worldwide become more comfortable using VR to explore travel destinations;
Virtual reality is a fantastic way to advertise on social media.

Potential for VR in Tourism

Retrived from UIEXPERT.com

Virtual reality manages to fool the tourist’s senses into believing they are in the real world in their chosen destination. Through this reality, they can interact with fictional worlds that they could not explore in real life or with worlds that they could only visit with great effort.

Nevertheless, while the virtual reality vacation is not necessarily destined to replace tomorrow’s travel, it does have features that could revolutionize the industry. Virtual reality could become tomorrow’s travel catalogue. A helmet and 360-degree immersion to help customers discover the destinations offered by tour operators would then replace the brochures on the counters. It is the perfect tool for preparing a trip without revealing everything, it would give a real foretaste and allow tourists to better target their preferred trip. Perhaps it could be even more useful. Without replacing travel, VR could make accessible destinations that are out of reach. It would help to relieve congestion at certain sites, which would be temporarily closed to allow them to regenerate in an eco-responsible manner. Consumers could also go to inaccessible places like space, for example. Or even change times. How? By reconstructing places on an archaeological site, a godsend for history fans eager for knowledge. Once on-site, the tour operator will offer an immersive and educational experience. To a small extent, of course, you don’t visit a place to have glasses on your head. Reliving Pompeii before it was destroyed, for example, like the exhibition currently on show at the Grand Palais in Paris. “Eventually, virtual reality will bring a new form of entertainment to the tourism industry,” imagines Erik Champion. It could appear in the main sites of major tourist destinations, but also as a pastime in airports.” No doubt a revolution is underway.

The future of VR in tourism is bright and believe it or not with the help of this technology, the tourism industry is going to change. The immersive and interactive virtual reality (VR) is a great opportunity for tourism and travel businesses to offer a unique and memorable experience to their customers. VR technologies will surely continue to advance, and as such, the opportunities in the tourism sector will grow exponentially. Regardless of the direction in which these advancements and developments take place, immediate applications and trends are identified and used within the tourism industry already. VR can and probably will fundamentally change the way in which tourists’ experiences and requirements are managed entirely. Virtual reality will likely enable us to impressively share our experiences with friends and family in a way that brings these destinations to life like no slide show ever could. Many companies in the tourism industry have their sights set towards the future, and some even go so far and publish reports about their expected future developments. As an example, in the 2014 Skyscanner report ‘The Future of Travel 2024’, published by the company which is mostly known for offering a global travel search engine, they envision VR as a major influence on touristic experiences. They predict VR to “become a new form of show rooming, an incredible 3D taste of a destination that will make travelers long to experience the real thing.” (Skyscanner, 2014, p.24).

The future of VR in tourism is already here, despite how far it seems away. With the most recent developments in virtual reality (VR), it doesn’t seem like that will be changing anytime soon. VR is constantly gaining traction in the travel industry, and with good reason. VR makes it easy to create an immersive travel experience for anyone, anywhere. VR allows users to be transported to anywhere in the world, which means they’ll be able to experience the world in a way they never could before. VR allows users to feel like they are in the middle of the action, which is what makes it so appealing. VR is the wave of the future in tourism, and it’s not just about experiencing another place in real time.Thus, I think VR has the potential to replace the real world with a digital one.

References

Arbulú, I.; Razumova, M.; Rey-Maquieira, J.; Sastre, F. Measuring risks and vulnerability of tourism to the COVID-19 crisis in the context of extreme uncertainty: The case of the Balearic IslandsTour. Manag. Perspect. 2021

Ralph, Hollister.; VR travel industry

Rončák, M.; Scholz, P.; Linderová, I. Safety Concerns and Travel Behavior of Generation Z: Case Study from the Czech Republic. Sustainability 2021Gössling, S.; Scott, D.; Hall, C.M. Pandemics, tourism and global change: A rapid assessment of COVID-19. J. Sustain. Tour. 2020

Rosário, A.; Raimundo, R. Consumer Marketing Strategy and E-Commerce in the Last Decade: A Literature Review. J. Theor.Appl. Electron. Commer. Res. 2021.

Denise Chen.; Virtual Reality Vacation Offers New Kind of Entertainment, 2020

Euromonitor International—Accelerating Travel Innovation after Coronavirus. Available online: https://go.euromonitor.com/white-paper-travel-201110-travel-innovation-after-coronavirus.html (accessed on 22 October 2021).

Igbaria, M.; Schiffman, S.J.; Wieckowski, T.J. The respective roles of perceived usefulness and perceived fun in the acceptance of microcomputer technology. Behav. Inf. Technol. 1994.

Kim, J.; Hardin, A. The impact of virtual worlds on word-of-mouth: Improving social networking and servicescape in the hospitality industry. J. Hosp. Mark. Manag. 2010.

AllThingsVR. (2015). Infographic for input technologies for VR.

Argyropoulou, A., Dionyssopoulou, P., & Miaoulis Georgios. (2011). Tourist Destination Marketing and Management Using Advanced ICTs Technologies.

Skyscanner. (2014). The Future of Travel 2024: Planning & Booking.

Barnes, S. (2016), “Understanding virtual reality in marketing: nature, implications and potential”

Jung, T., Tom Dieck, M.C., Moorhouse, N. and Tom Dieck, D. (2017), “Tourists’ experience of virtual reality applications

Beck, J. 2017. Try before you buy with Expedia. Virtual Reality in Tourism

Cavanaugh, C. 2017. Virtual Reality And Augmented Reality Will Change Brand Experiences.

Graham, L. 2016. Virtual reality devices could transform the tourism experience.

Enhancing customer experience with smart hotel technologies

Have you checked into a hotel using a mobile app? Or maybe the light in your hotel room switched off automatically when you opened the door to leave? These features are only the tip of the iceberg in smart hotels.

What are smart hotels?

According to Dalgic and Birdir ¹, a smart hotel adopts a variety of cutting-edge technologies to provide guests with novel and tech-focused experiences. These hotels demonstrate a rise in smart services, defined as the incorporation of data and connected technologies that anticipate customers’ requirements and permit adaptation in response to any changes in settings or circumstances.²

Smart hotels go beyond a single concept or the straightforward application of technology. Instead, they involve gathering, integrating, analyzing, and concerted use of both general and specific client data via connected and synchronized technologies to enhance and personalize the customer experience.³

Usage of smart hotel technologies

DiPietro and Wang ⁴ distinguished four key areas that reflect the main effects of ICTs on hotel management—strategic planning and revenue management, operations, marketing, distribution and communication, as well as customer service and relationship management. This paragraph includes some examples of most hotels implement smart technologies nowadays.

Behind-the-scenes operations management technology indirectly improves client happiness by assisting executives in managing hotel operations more effectively and efficiently. Due to its ability to streamline the maintenance of rooms and guests’ requests, software like “Opera” or “CloudBeds” aids hoteliers in providing better client services. It is a property management system that is employed in hotels for the creation of reports as well as for reservations, rate administration, guest profile upkeep, and profit management.⁵

The cost of a hotel room may be one of the major deciding factors for travellers to choose a hotel, but social media and user review websites’ credibility and content might influence travellers’ booking intentions ⁶. Because so many individuals use social media to choose their holiday destination, share their experiences, and write reviews about the places they have visited, social media has emerged as a tool of essential relevance for the hotel sector.

In addition to social media, hotels realise that they need to employ technology to develop more cutting-edge services to boost client interaction.

How to create a smart hotel experience?

People love innovative experiences, especially they are open to trying something new when travelling. A stream of research has concluded that one of the keys to a company’s success is to offer a unique client experience. ⁷Can you imagine checking into a Marriott International hotel and having smart shower doors? What are those? you might ask. These doors are made so guests can write down their thoughts while in the shower and subsequently send the image to their personal email. ⁸

Consumers are increasingly more interested in purchasing experiences, instead of buying goods and products, according to Neuhofer et al. ⁹Any successful business should prioritize determining and comprehending consumer demands and desires to improve their customer experience.

Luo & Pan ¹⁰ identified five aspects of the smart hotel experience—interactivity, personalisation, accessibility, informativeness, and privacy safety. Interactivity means technologies are easy and fun to use. Personalization means that tourists’ demands are met through customized services, which also enhance their travel enjoyment and make smart tourism hotels more appealing to them. Accessibility refers to how simple it is for a person to access and utilize the information provided. Credibility and information quality are important variables that can majorly impact visitors’ experiences. Last but not least is privacy safety, a necessary component of the technology-mediated environment is the protection and security of personal and private information.

These five dimensions are crucial to create a safe and unforgettable smart hotel experience for customers when designing an innovative experience.

Future of smart hotels

A framework for connectivity and interconnection is being adopted by the hospitality sector as an intelligence system that will revolutionize the sector. A fully integrated smart network should be capable of dynamic data sensing, storing, analysis, and interpretation. The capabilities of IoT and sensors allow for the monitoring and extraction of data from the outside world. Three domains are involved in connecting smart IoT networks: network-centric, cloud-centric, and data-centric. ¹¹

Challenges of implementing smart hotel technologies

Even though smart hotel technologies have various advantages for consumers, hotel employees, and hotel owners, there are always questionable points in every technology use. Some of them are discussed below.

Research

Hotel owners hope that technologies may assist staff in daily tasks, cut financial costs, and improve the customer journey of hotel guests. However, to support management strategic planning and decisions, modern hotel management needs a vast amount of data – hotels have to do a great amount of research.

Control

Smart services can meet client needs even before the customer is aware of them. For instance, without consumer involvement, the room temperature in a hotel room is changed to suit an individual’s demands. However, there is always a chance that the algorithm incorrectly calculated it or that the consumer would like the room to be less hot at that moment. Smart services must therefore give the consumer the option to customize the experience. How many settings or options are required to meet each customer’s unique tastes and provide them control?

Privacy

Many hotel customers are hesitant to provide or disclose their data to hotel employees because they are concerned about their privacy. Furthermore, individuals might not feel safe if they realize that service providers are gathering, storing, and using their data behind their backs. Because of these privacy concerns, some guests, for instance, could complain if a hotel records everything they do, such as what they watch on TV or what they eat or drink while they are accommodated.

Technologies vs. human interactions

While technological advancements are crucial nowadays, many travellers could concur that they alone do not produce great and memorable experiences. Therefore, for many, these experiences are created through encounters with locals, other visitors, and employees. However, many smart services use technology and machines to replace guest-staff interactions, which can occasionally be expensive and time-consuming. However, certain smart services and technologies also have the potential to improve human contact.¹² The difficulty lies in creating and implementing smart technologies that enhance existing processes in hotels while maintaining the necessary amount of human involvement.

The mind map above wraps up this blog post and gives food for thought on how to create a customer experience using smart hotel technologies. To conclude, it can be stated that the development, adoption, and implementation of cutting-edge technology across all areas of hotels will result in growth and sustained competitive advantage, therefore enhancing guests’ experiences. Smart hotels should focus on involving consumers in experiences and experiences production. However, each hotel must strike a balance between what it can provide given its resources and what its clients are expecting.

References

¹ Dalgic, A., & ¹ Birdir, K. (2020). Smart hotels and technological applications. In Handbook of research on smart technology applications in the tourism industry (pp. 323-343). IGI Global.

² Kabadayi, S., Ali, F., Choi, H., Joosten, H., & Lu, C. (2019). Smart service experience in hospitality and tourism services: A conceptualization and future research agenda. Journal of Service Management, 30(3), 326-348.

³ Gretzel, U., Koo, C., Sigala, M., & Xiang, Z. (2015). Special issue on smart tourism: convergence of information technologies, experiences, and theories. Electronic Markets, 25(3), 175-177.

⁴ DiPietro, R. B., & Wang, Y. R. (2010). Key issues for ICT applications: impacts and implications for hospitality operations. Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes.

⁵ Law, R., Leung, R., Lo, A., Leung, D., & Fong, L. H. N. (2015). Distribution channel in hospitality and tourism: Revisiting disintermediation from the perspectives of hotels and travel agencies. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 27(3), 431-452.

⁶ Noone, B. M., & McGuire, K. A. (2013). Pricing in a social world: The influence of non-price information on hotel choice. Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, 12(5), 385-401.

⁷ Kim, H., & Choi, B. (2013). The influence of customer experience quality on customers’ behavioural intentions. Services Marketing Quarterly, 34(4), 322-338.

⁸ Morgan, B. (2020). 10 Examples Of Customer Experience Innovation In Hospitality. Forbes.

⁹ Neuhofer, B., Buhalis, D., & Ladkin, A. (2015). Smart technologies for personalized experiences: a case study in the hospitality domain. Electronic Markets, 25(3), 243-254.

¹⁰ Luo, X., & Pan, Y. (2021). A Study on customer experience design through analyzing smart hotels in China. Journal of the Korea Convergence Society, 12(3), 115-124.

¹¹ Jin, J., Gubbi, J., Marusic, S., & Palaniswami, M. (2014). An information framework for creating a smart city through the internet of things. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 1(2), 112-121.

¹²Sharma, D. (2016). Enhancing customer experience using technological innovations: A study of the Indian hotel industry. Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes.

How to Improve Online Presence of Small Tourism Businesses?

Online information search is a crucial and often overlooked part of today’s consumers’ decision-making, and most of it is done through search engines or social media. The searches on search engines and social media platforms correlate with the visits in destinations[1]. Here I have a look at different research papers considering these subjects, in order to get a basic idea on how small and medium-sized tourism companies could be more active about their online presence in order to perform better also in real life.

Information gained from these channels is generally relevant and critical, giving voice to the customers and their options [2]. The holistic experience of the customer shows as a positive review online, making it easier for future potential customers to select the service provider.

Customer’s Search Process

Better business performance can be gained through investing in online marketing to get a little better spot on the search website. Consumers feel stronger value for their money and are less afraid of a fraud when they make the booking through reliable customer review site, like TripAdvisor [3]. Customers are more critical towards the actual advertisements of travel businesses and likes to rely more on consumers turned to producers, who publish their own reviews of destinations and tourism businesses [4]. Companies should always remind customers to send the reviews of their experience to keep the company visible and encouraging future customers’ interest in their products and services.

National DMOs need to make sure their presence in social media is active and relevant, and potential tourists feel easy making contact with them online [5]. Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, the destinations improved their presence in YouTube, for example, to keep future travelers intrigued and invested in travelling to their destinations after lockdowns end and borders re-open [6]. Even after the lockdowns travelling hasn’t been back to normal yet, because of all the economic and safety reasons, but the destinations kept their hopes up and reminding visitors that once it’s safe again, they are welcome to visit.

It is crucial that companies understand the customers’ search engine usage, and behavioral patterns when looking for the information and making plans [7]. When it comes to online visibility through search engines, companies and destinations need to consider the keywords they want to be found with [8]. Consumers like the search process to be smooth and easy, and they will not spend too much time looking for all the possible results, just focusing on the ones showing up first, and if the company hasn’t succeeded with being associated with the correct keywords, it will be missed among the more relevant results.

Most of the searches are made with up to 3-word questions, and 80 % of customers stop looking after the first page of results [9]. A good spot on the top of the list of search results isn’t enough, though. The snippet of the text needs to be attractive and informative enough to make the customer click it [10]. Companies should really put some thought on how they wish to be seen online, before customer enters their website or their own social media page.

Small and Medium-sized Companies

Small and medium sized hotels tend to rely on some distribution partners in order to improve the visibility, even if it leads on some adjusting on partners’ terms and ways of conduction [11]. According to Murphy & Kielgast, small and medium-sized hotels may not have the most recent and relevant IT skills, so their understanding of search engine marketing and optimization is not among the top of their skillset. Making sure that whoever is in charge of marketing of the company has basic skills in SEO, would do a major improvement on the general visibility and give the company some control over their web presence.

As small tourism companies usually run on quite low resources and few people, I understand that diving into analytics probably isn’t the top priority, no matter how useful data they could embrace there. Even if it’s not someone’s everyday job to keep an eye out of their performance on Google and other search engines, just checking and reacting to the numbers every now and then between other work tasks, could make a difference, if the data is used correctly.

Conclusions and Thoughts

Based on the research papers I read for this post, I have started to think about some small tourism business companies which I think could really improve their online presence. The number of visits at the website or social media profile can also be used as an indicator when thinking about the upcoming seasons and booking levels there. I do believe that most companies understand the significance of this, but just may be short-handed about the concrete actions they could do to make it smoother.

I think that DMOs and such could make this easier by providing some education and materials to local companies and organizations. Tourism business is competitive and co-operative at the same time and support between different operators will benefit everyone. DMOs could play big part in this by involving the local operators and possibly having someone with the skillset provide the consultation services among all the companies in the area.

I am looking forward to get more familiar with this subject, do some more research and maybe someday use my knowledge to help some small businesses’ performance improve.

References

[1]Mi Kyung Lee, Ho Young Yoon & Han Woo Park: From Online via Offline to Online: How Online Visibility of Tourism Information Shapes and Is Shaped by Offline Visits. Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, Vol. 34, Issue 9, p. 1143 – 1154. https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.uef.fi:2443/doi/full/10.1080/10548408.2017.1330727

[2]Antonio J. D. V. T. Melo, Rosa M. Hernandez-Maestro & Pablo A. Muñoz-Gallego: Service Quality Perceptions, Online Visibility, and Business Performance in Rural Lodging Establishments. Journal of Travel Research, Vol. 56, Issue 2. https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.uef.fi:2443/doi/full/10.1177/0047287516635822

[3]Markus Schuckert, Xianwei Liu & Rob Law: Hospitality and Tourism Online Reviews: Recent Trends and Future Directions. Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, Vol. 32, Issue 5, p. 608 – 621. https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.uef.fi:2443/doi/full/10.1080/10548408.2014.933154

[4]Eric Horster & Carsten Gottschalk: Computer-assisted Webnography: A New Approach to Online Reputation Management in Tourism. Journal of Vacation Marketing, Vol. 18, Issue 3. https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.uef.fi:2443/doi/full/10.1177/1356766712449369

[5]Vitor Roque & Rui Raposo: Social Media as a Communication and Marketing Tool in Tourism: An Analysis of Online Activities from International Key Player DMO. Anatolia, An International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 27, Issue 1, p. 58 – 70. https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.uef.fi:2443/doi/full/10.1080/13032917.2015.1083209

[6] Eran Ketter & Eli Avraham: #StayHome Today So We Can #TravelTomorrow: Tourism Destinations’ Digital Marketing Strategies During the Covid-19 Pandemic. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, Vol.38, Issue 8, p. 819 – 832. https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.uef.fi:2443/doi/full/10.1080/10548408.2021.1921670

[7]Zhen Xiang & Bing Pan: Travel Queries on Cities in the United States: Implications for Search Engine Marketing for Tourist Destinations. Tourism Management, Vol. 32, Issue 1, 2011, p. 88 – 97. https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxy.uef.fi:2443/science/article/pii/S026151770900226X?via%3Dihub

[8]Chaitanya Vyas: Evaluating State Tourism Websites Using Search Engine Optimization Tools. Tourism Management, Vol. 73, 2019, p. 64 – 70. https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxy.uef.fi:2443/science/article/pii/S0261517719300196?via%3Dihub

[9]Alexandros Paraskevas & Ioannis Katsogridakis: Search Engine Marketing: Transforming Search Engines into Hotel Distribution Channels. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, Vol. 52, Issue 2. https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.uef.fi:2443/doi/abs/10.1177/1938965510395016

[10]Bing Pan: The Power of Search Engine Ranking for Tourist Destinations. Tourism Management, Vol. 47, 2015, p. 79 – 87. https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxy.uef.fi:2443/science/article/pii/S0261517714001678?via%3Dihub

[11]Hilary Catherine Murphy & Christian D. Kielgast: Do Small and Medium-Sized Hotels Exploit Search Engine Marketing? International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 20, Issue 1. https://www-emerald-com.ezproxy.uef.fi:2443/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09596110810848604/full/html

How content producers can use AI in digital marketing

Do you want to use AI to create better content? There’s no doubt that content production is getting more complex every day. It’s getting hard to get noticed on social media. Your inbox is packed with repetitive messages, and you must fight against a massive crowd to get people to read your content. And then there’s the problem of creating high-value content—it takes time and effort that many content producers and social media managers don’t have. Wouldn’t it be great if AI could help you?

Yes, it would! Today I’ll dive into how AI can produce better content for you than any human could ever do.

Fun fact – The text above was created for me in under 2 minutes using Copy.AI. All I had to do was explain what I wanted to write and what information the introduction should contain.

Original text:
Topic of the blog post: How can content producers use AI in marketing?
A few key points:
Common problem: It’s getting harder to get noticed on social media. The content needs to be engaging, informative and stand out from the massive crowd. Creating high-value content takes time and effort that many content producers and social. media managers don’t have.
What to expect from the blog post: An introduction to how you can use AI to create better content.
Ask: Do you think AI can produce better content than you?

Impressive, right?

But what is AI?

Artificial intelligence can be used by businesses to, for example, inform customers about their products, provide personalized alternatives, and understand their customers better.¹ Businesses and content creators also use Ai when creating content for campaigns and digital marketing, such as copywriting (copy.ai), graphic design (graphicdesign.ai) and even photography (dall-e 2).

And why is high-value content important?

Creating content is time-consuming but necessary to maintain connections online. A study by Kenzie Burchell² shows that social media users feel disconnected from people who use the same social media platform but for different reasons than themselves. And a study by Stina Bengtsson and Sofia Johansson³ shows that young social media users in Sweden “unfollow” other social media users to whom they don’t feel connected. They “unfollow” users that they are not inspired by, and users make them feel “the wrong thing”.

A study by Nicolas Hamelin, Sameh Ai-Shihabi, Sara Quach and Park Thaichon in 2022⁴ showed that the company logo and brand name aren’t as important as the photographs and information used in advertisements. According to the study, we can assume that it is more important now than ever to create high-value content offline and online. With 96% of 20 to 30-year-old Swedes using social media daily³, this is also very important online. Businesses should focus on creating lively entertainment to strengthen their relationships on social media. ⁵ By using pictures and text to evoke emotions, you affect how your customers receive your content. How successful you are in evoking emotions in your customers can be measured with, for example, likes and engagement rates.

It’s time to embrace AI
– Nobert Wirth

How can you use AI in content creation?

Artificial Intelligence can help digital marketers achieve big things. ⁶ New AI applications are appearing on the market constantly. An AI application should be able to learn, reason, predict and plan. With this, you can use AI to create better content, for example, text production, image editing⁷ and video production. AI solutions are already replacing human knowledge in online targeting and dynamic attribution. ⁷

Here are four different ways you can use AI to create better content:

Copywriting.
1. AI can be used to create simple text but also more complicated ones. You can use AI to write text for your Instagram och blog post, create content for your website and even write difficult e-mails.
Proofread your content
1. You can also use AI to proofread the content that you have created. Having AI proofread your text is an easy and fast way to check your grammar and even get suggestions on making your text easier to read. Another fun fact; this text was proofread by Grammarly, which helped me make the text easier to read = better SEO points, YEY!
Edit your photos

You can use AI to get beautiful and professional-looking results quickly. Some apps can edit the light and colours and even delete unwanted things from the photo. Using Dall-e 2 you can create an image from scratch without leaving your home.
Edit videos

You can use AI to create new videos and edit your own. Ai can, for example, be used to match the colours of your video clips and cut your video clips so that the transitions are smoother. And just like photos, Ai can create new videos from scratch (more on the negative aspects of this later).

So… Should you use it?

Social media can negatively impact entrepreneurs⁸ and social media and marketing managers. Social media is becoming a big part of our lives, and social media connections require more time and attention than ever before⁸. A study on by Fakhar Shahzad, Adnan Fateh, Raja Suzana, Raja Kasim, Kashif Akram & Sheikh Farhan Ashraf showed that entrepreneurs with many social media followers are spending more and more time maintaining their connections. According to the study, female entrepreneurs feel stressed when they cannot keep their social media at the required level. Also, a study by Faseeh Amin and Mohammad Furqan Khan⁹ shows that people who are concerned about their number of likes and followers on social media are more stressed due to social media. It also shows that people who are dependent on social media platforms are more likely to feel stressed than others.

From the studies mentioned above, we can conclude that social media managers and marketers feel stressed when they have less time to create content and maintain relationships with their customers on social media. By using AI to help you write engaging Instagram captions and create eye-catching graphics, you’ll have more time to engage with your followers, build relationships and drive traffic to your social media accounts. And since social media platforms work best when used as a tool to communicate with your customers¹⁰, you should use more time to engage and communicate instead of just creating the content.

What can be the negative impacts of AI-produced content?

Remembering the negative impacts AI can have on content production is crucial. You can even create fake videos and photos of people doing things that they haven’t done¹ which, in my opinion, isn’t ethical at all. It can be challenging to notice if an AI-made video is fake, and it can be very dangerous. Fake videos made by AI are used in, for example, political campaigns.

Leave your opinion in the comments!

In my opinion, AI applications like Grammarly, Copy.Ai, and Adobe Sensei are great additions to a content producer’s toolbox. In my experience, content production can be highly time-consuming. Creating engaging content for over five social media accounts daily can be challenging. Having the chance to use AI to create better content is always welcome. With that said, it is essential to use them ethically. For example, I don’t think creating false pictures of a destination or business is ethical. My question is… If you use AI when creating content, does it mean that the content is no longer yours, or are these just more tools for the content producer’s toolbox to make even better content?

So what do you think? Is AI something you consider using when creating content for your next marketing campaign?

Sources:

¹ Patrick Van Esch and J. Stewart Black (2021), Artificial Intelligence (AI): Revolutionizing Digital Marketing

² Kenzie Burchell (2017), Everyday communication management and perceptions of use: How media users limit and shape their social world

³Stina Bengtsson and Sofia Johansson (2022), The Meanings of Social Media Use in Everyday Life: Filling Empty Slots, Everyday Transformations, and Mood Management

⁴Nicolas Hamelin, Sameh Al-Shihabi, Sara Quach and Park Thaichon (2022), Forecasting Advertisement Effectiveness: Neuroscience and Data Envelopment Analysis

⁵Xi Chen, Chunlan Jiao, Ran Ji and You Li (2021), Examining Customer Motivation and Its Impact on Customer Engagement Behavior in Social Media: The Mediating Effect of Brand Experience

⁶Mithun S. Ullal, Iqbal Thonse Hawaldar, Rashmi Soni and Mohammed Nadeem (2021), The Role of Machine Learning in Digital Marketing

⁷Nobert Wirth (2018), Hello marketing, what can artificial intelligence help you with?

⁸Fakhar Shahzad, Adnan Fateh, Raja Suzana Kasim, Kashif Akram and Sheikh Farhan Ashraf (2021), Late-Night Use of Social Media and Cognitive Engagement of Female Entrepreneurs: A Stressor–Strain–Outcome Perspective

⁹Faseeh Amin and Mohammad Furqan Khan (2020), Online Reputation and Stress: Discovering the Dark Side of Social Media

¹⁰Amir Zaib Abbasi, Raouf Ahmad Rather, Ding Hooi Ting, Saima Nasir, Khalil Hussain, Muddasar Ghani Khwaja and Amjad Shamin (2022), Exploring tourism-generated social media communication, brand equity, satisfaction, and loyalty: A PLS-SEM-based multi-sequential approach

How Ambient Intelligence can bring value to travel experience?

It is almost a norm in science fiction movies that doors open automatically, rooms know when you are about to enter, and coffee machines can predict when it is time for a hot cuppa. Ambient Intelligence has been a concept for a long time, but only through recent technological advancements, it has become a real possibility to bring this interactive technological omnipresence into our everyday lives. First Ambient Intelligence systems are already here but the future promises even greater advantages.

But what is Ambient Intelligence, actually?

Ambient Intelligence, or AmI for shorter, is a term used for sensor-reliant, sensitive technologies, that interact with the user, interconnecting different appliances 3. Many have probably heard about Amazon’s voice-command assistant Alexa or have used a smart tv, but Ambient Intelligence goes beyond voice-recognizing AI. Smartness and AmI are often mentioned together but are not synonyms of each other. Rather, smartness includes many different technologies, including Ambient Intelligence, that all together create a smart environment 1. Special characteristics for AmI are interactivity, sensitivity, adaptability, and omnipresence 1. Plus it is embedded in everyday life. An example of AmI system could be interconnected, voice-operated kitchen appliances. Now, wouldn’t it be cool to let your fridge order the groceries?

As technology progresses, it is forecasted that in the future existing and emerging technologies will be more interconnected and interoperable through smart technologies. 1 Ambient environment has been described as a place where humans are “surrounded by intelligent interfaces supported by computing and networking technology that is embedded in everyday objects, such as furniture, clothes, vehicles and smart materials”. 2 This suggests that future with ambient environment is slowly but surely on its way, but are the users ready for this?

Judging by the full potential AmI technologies have, we are still in the beginning stages of the journey. However, AmI systems are already used in many places, such as hospitals, smart homes, and even in schools and kindergartens. 3 Smart homes utilizing AmI systems are helping inhabitants to live happier, safer, and healthier lives. 4 AmI can help relieve stress by making everyday tasks easier, faster, and less stressful. Other perks are its ability to offer entertainment and even customize environments. 4

There has also been research on use of AmI in commercial settings. Combining AmI and e-commerce principles can create foundations for ubiquitous commerce, or u-commerce in short 5 , a new potential for e-commerce. Another research has been focusing on utilizing geomarketing in the creation of a personal shopping assistant for customers visiting a store. 6 This implies that AmI will be used on a much wider scale than at first glance one might comprehend, truly intertwined with everyday experiences, making it difficult to specify when AmI is assisting you or not.

Ambient Intelligence in tourism ecosystems

In the tourism field, Smart hotel concept has been gaining a lot of interest. Much like smart homes, hotels utilizing smartness and AmI systems will create interconnected and sensitive environments. This kind of hotel can use technologies such as a digital wallet, sensor-activated lights, voice-assisted room functions, room décor customization, or even automated real-time translation 7 to create an ambient environment.

Opportunities with AmI have been also explored in interactive museums and even on a city tour 8 but there is much more potential in tourism-related enterprises. One of the biggest, life-changing aspects of AmI is that it increases inclusiveness and accessibility. For example, AmI systems can make it easier for guests with impairments to deal with physical and service-related barriers that they face during their stay. 9

But what does Ambient Intelligence actually bring to tourism ecosystems? Intelligence, flexibility, sensitivity, and adaptability to all stakeholders, including customers. 1 Good thing about AmI technologies is that they can be used in many places. For example, technologies tested and used in healthcare could very well benefit visitors staying at a hotel or visiting a spa. For companies, the real challenge lies in integration of these new systems into their existing business, which should be done in a way that complements the existing practices, rather than replaces them completely. 2

Value for customers

For customers, Ambient Intelligence can create new experiences and value. AmI supports service that happens in real-time. For customers time is essence and technologies such as AmI allow them to engage with companies and brands whenever they desire. AmI technologies enable value co-creation across multiple platforms among all stakeholders. As an effect of smartness, everybody becomes dynamically interconnected within the ecosystem, and therefore everybody participates in creating value. 1 For AmI systems to work as intended, it is important to add a touch of human element to them. Interaction should be enjoyable, natural, and technology itself easy to use. These systems should recognize user preferences, needs, and wants, but also know when to interrupt and when the communication is too much. 3

Ambient Intelligence is unfortunately not all positivity and rainbows. Technological advancements bring up darker issues such as privacy, compromised accessibility, and even worries about people neglecting their basic needs as a result of excessive smart technologies. 10 These concerns might seem a bit farfetched for the time being, but it is important to keep in mind the possible negatives that come along all the positives. For customers loss of privacy, information leaks, and hacking can cause serious consequences.

So how does AmI bring value to travel experiences?

All in all, Ambient Intelligence presents intriguing possibilities, and it will be very interesting to follow how AmI systems and usage will develop in upcoming years. For the tourism sector, it gives new opportunities for value creation, and for customers, it will be thrilling to explore all the new ways everyday life can be enhanced. At this moment intelligent systems are more common in home and healthcare environments, but the real experiential value lies in the possible use in tourism and leisure. Global pandemic has introduced us to a world that is more accustomed to technologies and tourism industry is taking notes. It is not plausible to take your Alexa with you on holiday, yet, but perhaps in the near future, it will be possible. It would make a tourist’s journey a whole lot easier if it would be possible to integrate your own smart device into the AmI system that is used in the destination, acting as your own, fully personalized electronic butler. But for now, there are still concerns about privacy, and AmI applications are not advanced enough yet.

Reoccurring themes on articles used on this post have been the expected growth in interest for real-time interactions. This is undoubtedly one of the biggest pros of AmI systems and will make lives more convenient, but at the same time a question emerges about what happens in a long run to our everyday lives? Will our cultural and traditional tendencies fade, or does the AmI support our cultural roots? Is human-on-human contact going to be more rare as we move towards a world where technologies and robots are doing tasks for us, instead of us doing them ourselves? If every day is seamlessly assisted with technologies, it surely will translate into travel behaviour as well. Judging by how us humans are using phones even during holidays, it could be very possible that AmI technologies would be the first thing to pack with you to a holiday. On the other hand, in the future value of travelling could also lay in experiences outside the scope of technology, and digital detox would be a big trend. However It is impossible to see in the future, but for the time being, technology is definitely presenting more promising opportunities for the future of travel.

1 Buhalis, D. 2019. Technology in tourism-from information communication technologies to eTourism and smart tourism towards ambient intelligence tourism: a perspective article. Tourism Review 75 (1), 267-272.

2Buhalis, D., O’Connor, P. 2005. Information Communication Technology Revolutionizing Tourism. Tourism Recreation Research 30 (3), 7-16.

3Cook, D., Augusto, J., Jakkula, V. 2009. Ambient intelligence: Technologies, applications, and opportunities. Pervasive and Mobile Computing 5, 277-298.

4Friedewald, M., Da Costa, O., Punie, Y., Alahuhta, P., Heinonen, S. 2005. Perspectives of ambient intelligence in the home environment. Telematics and Informatics 22 (3), 221-238.

5Keegan, S., O’Hare, G., O’Grady, M. 2008. Easishop: Ambient intelligence assists everyday shopping. Information Sciences 178 (3), 588-611.

6Zaim, D., Benomar, A., Bellafkih, M. 2018. Geomarketing Solution: An Ambient Intelligence Application in Shopping. Smart Application and Data Analysis for Smart Cities (SADASC’18).

7Mutreja, A., Chan, J., Peko, G., Sundaram, D. 2022. Jazz: A Design Metaphor for Ambient Intelligence Tourism Systems. AMCIS 2022 Proceedings 13.

8Sadri, F. 2011. Ambient intelligence: A survey. ACM Computing Surveys 43 (4), 1-66.

9Michopoulou, E., Buhalis, D. 2013. Information provision for challenging markets: The case of The accessibility requiring market in the context of tourism. Information and Management 50 (5), 229-239.

10Aczel, M. 2017. The dark side of technology, by Peter Townsend: Scope: general interest, review. Level: general readership, non-specialist, specialist. Contemporary Physics 58 (3), 1-2.

Can service robots replace human labor in hotel industry?

Technology human touch background, modern remake of The Creation of Adam

How would you feel if a robot welcomed you when arriving to a hotel instead of a human? Would you be more pleased of robot’s convenience or the real face-to-face interaction that a human being can offer? Robots in hotel industry can bring so many opportunities yet so many challenges. Nobody knows about the future, so would it be possible that robots will replace human labor in hotel industry?

The impact of robot employees has been gaining attention in recent years. It is not a news flash that technology has been replacing human employees for years, but especially after Covid-19, the conversation around replacing humans in customer service has gotten even louder ⁴. The development of Artificial Intelligence has given more opportunities for developers to take robots to so called “humane” fields, such as hospitality industry. The concern that are robots really replacing humans has become more and more real.

Many faces of Artificial Intelligence

Diving into the world of robotic employees, we need to understand what Artificial Intelligence actually means and how to use it in hospitality field. AI, short for Artificial Intelligence, has ability to collect and handle enormous amount of data to help gain more knowledge of certain subject. According to Knani, Echchakoui and Ladhari, AI is depending on three different attributes, which are algorithm, processing capacities and data. Algorithm, big data and capacities help solve difficult tasks that need intelligence that can take less time than humans do, which is a great advantage for companies.²

AI technology brain background digital transformation concept

AI has been developing robots to manage human services and has gotten attention from different companies in hospitality field. A really good example is Henn-na Hotel, in Japan, which was opened in 2015, is the first fully automated hotel with only robot employees. Customers have no human employee contact in the whole time they are a guest. The reception area is managed by a female android robot and a dinosaur that help guest with room log in and log out. A customer uses different buttons to get a reaction from the front desk robots. Robots are also in charge of cleaning the rooms, and with a help of Tulie, a guest can use a voice-command to control the TV, lights or rooms temperature. In this scenario, AI has been used to run the entire hotel, without usage of human employees. These sorts of hotels are a niche market in the hospitality world and experts have been trying to develop robots to more and more human-like, which can be done by characterizing robots to do certain tasks and add more social elements to the mix. ³

Robots are coming – are you ready?

Labor shortage, cost-saving and the sanitation policy has increased the number of robot employees in hotel industry. Usage of robot employees are getting more popular in different parts of the world and it lowers the costs and lifts efficiency in work related scenarios.¹ Cost-effectiveness in robot employees can be seen in the fast work pace and the fact that employers don’t have to pay them salary, sick leave or bonuses, because, well, they are not human.

Due to Covid-19 pandemic, labor force in hospitality industry has decreased rapidly. When thinking about outside of the efficiency that technology provides to hospitality industry, contactless service and sanitary policies are the ones lifting their heads. Robots can offer no-contact services and can fight against infections which could bring comfort and shut down negative feelings towards hotel industry.⁴

When talking about AI, we can’t ignore the fact that it can bring negative impact to the mix. Robot employees and other technological features directly affect to hotel employees and it can cause job losses. This can lead to stress, reduced productivity and negative atmosphere among hotel employees and workplace.

Robots also lift questions about privacy and personal data. AI has rapidly grown in recent years and it brings up concerns about ethical issues. Customers share personal information in many settings and collecting and sharing that data would be all in the hands of robots.² For my own point of view, it would be important to study this subject more in detail and collect customers perceptions on data collection and does it affect customers trust in companies using robots. In this way, we can measure trust and find ways to handle it with more care.

So how do customers feel about robotic employees then? It has been shown that robots spark more sensorial and intellectual experiences than human employees but creates less affective experience⁴. This may not come as a surprise, but robots have a hard time replacing communication with a real human employee and it reduces social interactions rapidly, which is why we move on to the next question – is cheaper always better?

The power of a simple smile

With increasing use of robots in the hospitality sector, it naturally decreases the human interaction. This means, that a robot is responsible for the emotional experience that the customer will perceive. Easy right? Not quite. Kim, Kam Fung So & Wirtz has said that one of the ways a human can read emotions from another human is through their facial expressions, it can be an impossible task for robots to create this sort of interaction⁶.

Robots can express emotions, but they stay rather superficial and it is not enough to give customer a satisfaction. Fuentes-Moraleda, Diaz-Oerez, Orea-Giner, Munoz-Mazon and Villace-Molinero studied the customer satisfaction between robot and human employees. The study showed that even though customers found robots interesting, they still wanted to rely on human employees instead⁵. In this kind of situation, the importance of social presence and interaction enters the picture. With the help of this theory, we will understand more about the importance of communication in different settings and in this case, contact between a customer and hotel employee.

Even though technological features are important in hotel industry and I do believe that robots are giving great amounts of opportunities in hotels as said before, experts are still trying to connect technologies with communication, which explains the need for socialization. Social presence has an effect on customer experience: good, authentic face-to-face experience can be the reason a customer comes back to that certain hotel⁷.

Fast decision-making, problem solving and showing empathy comes more naturally to humans and that is a valuable asset in hotel industry. Human employees can be a link between customers and technology and can bring them closer together and in that way, increase its acceptance.⁹Technology and human employees don’t rule each other out, but we can see them helping each other by using both of their strong suit by making customer service and other parts of hotel services as smooth as possible. Robots bring data collection, fast work phase and contactless option to the hotel world as well as human employees bring emotions, problem solving and warmth to the environment.

Robots and humans – better together?

With understanding the importance of technology, communication and human labor, we must start to see robots replacing different chores, but not jobs. There is still much to be studied, but I believe we need to look at the big picture and see how much robot usage is affecting customer trust in different scenarios, whether it’s handling data or measuring service quality. Suppressing human interaction creates low communication which can lead to unwanted service^8.

Robots are still great with handling huge amount of information and can be used in a cost-effective way, but I don’t see the chance that robots could fully replace human labor any time soon. This is due to the fact that robots cannot make connections or build strong customer relationships nor do they have emotional intelligence that humans have. In hospitality industry – and in customer service in general-, problem-solving is an important skill to require and robots are not the first ones to solve issues that calls for sensitivity and understanding. I do see robot employees being used in other various tasks, that includes for example cleaning, luggage carrying or using them as assistants. Hotel industry is and will be more efficient with the help of robots due data collecting and speed, but I see them more in an assisting role to human employees than replacing them fully. I believe real face-to-face communication is too valuable asset to go to waist.

References

Song, H., Wang, Y., Yangm H. & Ma, E. 2022. Robotic employees vs. human employees: Customers’ perceived authenticity at casual dining restaurants. International Journal of Hospitality Management, Vol 106 No. 9. Referenced on 27.10.2022. https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0278431922001633?token=01F7633DB1DE16A35E947B8648256D8C3299201C46A76DB4AA78B90015BEBC66D3B1A117FF070B2469D79B54BD5F8C16&originRegion=eu-west-1&originCreation=20221026121030
Knani, M., Echchakoui, S. & Ladhari, R. 2022. Artificial intelligence in tourism and hospitality: Bibliometric analysis and research agenda. International Journal of Hospitality Management, Vol 107 No. 10. Referenced on 27.10.2022. https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0278431922001797?token=1911CD69B3218590D037275390B968AD012808153CBCC3D629E9F14540CF7FA07934E19BC936A09A465F99F6868E123C&originRegion=eu-west-1&originCreation=20221027122007
Reis, J., Melao, N., Salvadorinho, J., Soares, B. & Rosete, A. 2020. Service robots in the hospitality industry: The case of Henn-na hotel, Japan. Journal of Technology in Society, Vol 63 No. 11. Referenced on 27.10.2022. https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0160791X20308290?token=C0D2551AA292530EBD7CEEFEA124ED2129929A7636BAA0FB2656AB1CBA15BEE5533FFC3A151CB92CEBC8291B043A6B0B&originRegion=eu-west-1&originCreation=20221027123614
Parvez, M., Özturen, A., Cobanoglu, C., Arasli, H. & Eluwole, K. 2022. Employee’s reception of robots and robot-induced unemployement in hospitality industry under COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Hospitality Management, Vol 107 No. 10. Referenced on 28.10.2022. https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S027843192200202X?token=67B4516FD32C8D89A5B5A6551917BA65AC4E4DC8887613C2F52D07C0563C211EFC9B31C1D3517E4920BA2A96A1211831&originRegion=eu-west-1&originCreation=20221027120103
Fuentes-Moraleda, L., Diaz-Perez, P., Orea-Giner, A., Munoz-Mazon, A. & Villace-Molinero, T. 2020. Interaction between hotel service robots and humans: A hotel-spesific Service Robot Acceptance Model (sRAM). Journal of Tourism Management Perspectives, Vol 36 No. 10. Referenced on 3.11.2022. https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S2211973620301185?token=1C98D48EF847CF713F0D290B1BEBDE725CEE7E00F2D5C3F477FFC238AC2F0B89E4DF9F16C3B09654A248AB2A9DE82D1B&originRegion=eu-west-1&originCreation=20221103102134
Kim, H., Kam Fung So, K. & Wirtz, J. 2022. Service robots: applying social exchange theory to better understand human-robot interactions. Journal of Tourism Management, Vol 92 No. 10. Referenced on 3.11.2022. https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0261517722000504?token=B0374897BCB3C983F680EE1138A5CD278874BA52211584E1BC67909E1AD421A9DB43160F7E0EE89BC3354BEB20D621AB&originRegion=eu-west-1&originCreation=20221103104545
Wu, C., Huang, S. & Yuan, Q. 2022. Seven important theories in information system empirical research: A systematic review and future directions. Journal of Data and Information Management, Vol 6 No. 1. Referenced on 3.11.2022. https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S2543925122001048?token=BE259680C2013901F2C313EADAB015919065DA9BCD1760FE185A1779673831EBA58658BB3B380FC8081061449B88D851&originRegion=eu-west-1&originCreation=20221103104327
Osawa, H., Ema, A. Hatori, H. & Akiya, N. 2017. What is real risk and benefit on work with robots?: From the analysis of a robot hotel. Referenced on 7.11.2022. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314296083_What_is_Real_Risk_and_Benefit_on_Work_with_Robots_From_the_Analysis_of_a_Robot_Hotel
Fan, H., Gao, W. & Han, B. 2022. How does (im)balanced acceptance of robots between customers and frontline employees affect hotels’ service quality? Journal of Computers in Human Behavior, Vol 133 No. 8. Referenced on 7.11.2022. https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0747563222001091?token=F989CC8257598A9E209157427B75D22BEF5E57FCDFA7D5E575FF6B821EBBCFAFA653BD244FD215CF15304D2D32E25FC8&originRegion=eu-west-1&originCreation=20221107145658
Wang, L., Ho, J., Yeh, S. & Huan, T. 2022. Is robot hotel a future trend? Exploring the incentives, barriers and customers’ purchase intention for robot hotel stays. Journal of Tourism Management Perspectives, Vol 43 No. 7. Referenced on 7.11.2022. https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S2211973622000496?token=89FED05404FE666973AC4E7AD221C2D900A7EDE99855A532EFE0F5875EC60279D5D8055B328EB08FC2E018FF34DD1588&originRegion=eu-west-1&originCreation=20221107160740

Can technology make tourism more transformative ?

Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash

Transformative tourism (TT) is a type of meaningful and purposeful tourism. Traditional tourism is often used as an escape mechanism from everyday life (5). Transformative tourism is motivated by seeking (10). In transformational tourism the tourist seeks personal growth during their travels, which can take place in areas such as well-being, spirituality and education. The transformative experiences tourists have can be physical, emotional, attitudinal changes as well as the acquisition of context-specific skills (17). These types of tourists are motivated to return home with some personal tools enriched by the experiences of their journey (16) – the purpose of travel instead of escaping reality is about possibly making the reality somehow better or more meaningful.

Transformative tourism is about change (hopefully) for the better and it can provide meaningful experiences. Because of this, it has gained a lot of attention during recent years; it has the power to change human behaviour and have a positive impact on the world (17). These explanations should be enough to support the idea that this type of tourism should be encouraged and developed further.

What makes designing and developing transformative tourism tricky is that it can be different for every tourist. By enhancing the experiences by deepening them, and making them more immersive, can support the occurrence of unintentional transformative tourism and elements of it. There are three different kinds of experiences that are considered transformative: epistemically transformative experience (having a first time experience), personally transformative experience (changes your point of view, your core preferences or you learn something that expands your mind) and epistemically and personally transformative experience, which is a holistic experience that possibly changes the course of one’s life (15).

Technology has changed the value creation process in customer service as it has become a key contributor to consumer experience; a big part of the hospitality and tourism products and services are nowadays delivered by different technologies (8). Technologically enhanced tourism is also changing travel behaviour and activities (7). As technology is said to enhance the customer experience (1), could it also be used to develop and enrich tourism to be and to have more transformative elements? What kinds of solutions are already out there that could be used to make tourism services and experiences possibly more transformative?

There are two critical digital technology stimuli that can lead to a rich customer experience: personalisation and interactivity (14). Based on my readings, I would also add immersion to the list of stimuli. Immersion is the level that describes a feeling of ‘being there’ (20). These can be considered to be the key factors in any tourist experience maximization and thus important factors to consider when talking about whether technology can make tourism more transformative.

Smart tourism’s transformative possibilities

Let’s look into the question through the concept of Smart Tourism, which means technology enhanced tourism. A Smart Travel Destination uses technology based tools in its products, services, spaces and experiences (7). These tools are Smart Tourism Technologies that refer to both general and specific applications that can enhance tourists’ experiences as well as generate added value (25). These applications can be anything from ubiquitous connectivity through Wi-Fi to sensors, smartphones and virtual reality (7; 8). Let’s have a look at how Smart Tourism Technologies (STTs) with the most transformative potential have to offer transformative tourism.

Gamification

Gamification is the use of game design elements and game thinking in a non-gaming context (6) so it is more of a point of view when using smart technologies and designing transformative tourist experiences. With the help of gamification, tourists can get more engaged with the information and the experience they are receiving. If the tourist engagement rises, it can enhance the tourist experience in terms of flow, motivation, pleasure, immersion, enjoyment and presence (3). An example of using gamification and technology together to create a more transformative tourism experience could be an application that teaches the tourist history in the form of a game on a self-guided city tour.

Augmented reality

An augmented reality system merges physical and virtual objects in a natural environment, aligns them, and runs them interactively in real time (22). The goal of augmented reality is to support user interaction with the world around them (2). Augmented reality systems can be wearable computers, such as a smartwatch or smart glasses (26). How smart watches can enhance the tourist experience and possibly make it more transformative is that they extend the tourist’s sensory, cognitive, and motor limitations (2) and adapt the tourists behaviour to the changing environments. A wearable device can shape how tourists orient themselves, interact, and control their interactions with tourism attractions (21). Wearable computers, like any other computer, can also model behaviour and predict the future actions of the tourist so they are said to have potential to transform touristic experiences (21).

Augmented reality has already been applied to destinations and to tourist experiences to assist tourists with retrieval and processing of information on points of interest at physical structures, national parks, walking experiences, historic and cultural objects, museum exhibits, art galleries, and indoor theme parks by overlaying exhibits with additional information through touch-screen displays, smartphones, and/or wearable devices (21). With the help of technology assisted immersion, in this case augmented reality, tourists can be engaged in a more unique and interactive way than in traditional tourism (12). Also, if information is presented through augmented reality (or virtual reality), the information can become more memorable (11) and thus possibly more transformative.

As an augmented reality system merges physical and virtual objects in a natural environment to support tourists’ interaction with the world around them there are clear indicators of experience enhancement, which could make the experience more transformative. If we think about the gamification application example (the history teaching, game-like self-guided city tour application), it could also have augmented reality elements to it. These elements could be for example Google glasses type of images and videos of the historical events. Maybe they could even be holograms in the future. Whether or not the information provided to the tourist is transformative by itself, its transformative qualities could be enhanced and supported with augmented reality.

Virtual reality

When it comes to virtual reality there are more indicators of possible experience enhancement which could make the experience more transformative than augmented reality; the whole tourist experience can be designed from start to finish to be as transformative as possible. According to NASA virtual reality is “the use of computer technology to create the effect of an interactive three-dimensional world in which the objects have a sense of spatial presence.” In tourism it is used to capture destinations, attractions, to re-create events or to create totally new destinations, events and experiences (24). Virtual reality experiences have three key elements: visualisation components, immersion into the experience is a key factor and interactivity is involved in the experience (4). In the future these can most likely be personalised which means that there will be technically everything (personalisation, interactive and immersion) needed for a tourist to have an experience – whether or not that experience can be transformative depends on the tourist.

Other Smart Tourism Technology possibilities

If we look at Smart tourism from a less futuristic and a more practical lens, STT is already capable of making experiences and customer touchpoints more interactive and personalised according to tourists’ preferences (13,11). With the help of STTs almost everything can be personalized and tourists can be provided with the most relevant and context-specific information, expertise, and experiences delivered in real-time or just when they need it (14). To have more personalized services and experiences can support transformative experiences happening, because each tourists’ experience and transformativity is highly objective.

Tourism products can also be tailored to be more interactive with the help of STT (11). Interactivity gives buyers a sense of control so they can feel like they are in control of their own experience (27) – this can support the possible transformativity. At the same time, tourists can also interact with local residents within destination business ecosystems and the larger tourism ecosystems (7). This can support transformation as socialising with people from different cultures or just people outside your own circle of people can teach you something or show you a new point of view. Also, the use of STTs might affect the engagement and immersion of tourist experience (11).

Smarter the more transformative?

Even though smart technologies are slowly getting more popular to use in tourist experiences and at smart tourism destinations, research on smart tourism destinations is limited. Research about gamification in tourism is also limited and the application of gamification in tourism is still in its infancy (8). There’s also no clear definition of what a consumer technology experience is or what a technology experience is. Because of the lack of research, the impacts of consumers’ technology experience on their overall experience remain unknown (11). Needless to say, this means that there are also no studies about whether technology can make tourism more transformative so we have no way to answer whether or not technology can actually make tourism more transformative.

Regardless of the lack of research, the introduction of guest-facing technologies is changing one of the industry’s key characteristics, human-to-human interactions, into guest-technology interactions. Tourists are already interacting with artificial intelligence chatbots, service delivery robots (11), and mobile tour guide apps have partly replaced the traditional human travel guide and information desk. Travellers are also creating their own travel itineraries with the help of the internet. Social contacts and socialising with new cultures is a big part of travel; a cross-cultural interaction can already be a transformative experience. Is there a possibility that technology could be making tourism less transformative? Technology is also making travelling a lot more convenient and easy. Yet somehow it seems that the reward of seeing the sunrise is much more transformative if you have climbed a mountain to witness it.

Also, a big part of the tourist experience is about immersion. Technology can of course help with immersion, but it can also hinder it. The term selective unplugging refers to being partially connected or disconnected from technology during travel to be more connected and present in the moment (19). To be more connected and present is essential for transformative travel, but what if connection and the feeling of being present are provided with the help of technology? Maybe then the tourist has chosen the wrong destination to travel to, but it’s an important topic to think about when designing and promoting technology-mediated travel experiences. Also when thinking about transformative travel, the tourists who decide to unplug are most likely tourists that are escaping their reality. They are not seeking something, which means that most of them are not transformative tourists. Still, the possible avoidance of technology makes it challenging to create transformative elements to tourist destinations and experiences with smart tourism, if people are not motivated to use technology during their trip.

Even though technology is changing the way we travel, its power and possibilities are yet to be harnessed when it comes to transformative tourism. Smart tourism in tourist experiences and in tourism in general is often in a supporting role; most smart technologies tourists use are STTs like maps/navigation apps, ride-sharing programs, city guide apps, mobile payment, and parking apps (14). Yet we can see that technology, especially augmented reality and virtual reality, has great potential to make tourism experiences more transformative in the future. Still, what is transformative to the tourist will always depend on the tourist itself – meeting a local in a travel destination can be a far more transformative experience to the tourist than an augmented reality city tour. The city tour can just be a memorable and unforgettable experience at a smart tourism destination, which doesn’t sound like a bad thing at all.

REFERENCES

Accenture (2019). Accenture-China-Digital-Transformation-Index-2019. Accenture.
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Brown, E. & Cairns, P. (2004). A grounded investigation of game immersion. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems – Proceedings.
Cruz-Neira, C., Sandin, D. J., Defanti, T. A., Kenyon, R. V. & Hart, J. C. (1994). The cave: audio visual experience automatic virtual environment. Communications of the AMC.
Cohen, E. (1996). A phenomenology of tourist experiences. The sociology of tourism: Theoretical and empirical investigations.
Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., & Nacke, L. E. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: Defining “Gamification”. Mindtrek 2011 Proceedings. Tampere, Finland: ACM Press.
Gretzel, U., Sigala, M. & Xiang, Z. (2015). Smart tourism: foundations and developments. Electron Markets, 25.
Huang C.D., Jahyun, D., Kichan, N. & Woo, Y.C. (2017). Smart Tourism Technologies in Travel Planning: The Role of Exploration and Exploitation. Information & Management 54, 6.
Huotari, K., & Hamari, J., 2012. Defining gamification: A service marketing perspective. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Academic MindTrek Conference, Tampere, Finland: ACM.
Iso-Ahola, S. E. (1997). A psychological analysis of leisure and health. Work, leisure and well-being. New York, NY: Routledge.
Jeong, M., & Shin, H. H. (2020). Tourists’ Experiences with Smart Tourism Technology at Smart Destinations and Their Behaviour Intentions. Journal of Travel Research, 59, 8.
Lee, H., Lee, J., Chung, N. & Koo, C. (2018). Tourists’ happiness: Are there smart tourism technology effects? Asia Pacific J. Tour. 23.
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Parise, S., Guinan, P.J. & Kafka, R. (2016). Solving the crisis of immediacy: How digital technology can transform the customer experience. Business Horizons, 59, 4.
Paul, L.A. (2021). Teaching Guide for Transformative Experience. Yale University Department of Philosophy.
Robledo, M.A. & Batle, J. (2015): Transformational tourism as a hero’s journey, Current Issues in Tourism.
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Shin, H.H., Jeong, M., So, K.K. & DiPietro, K. (2022). Consumers’ experience with hospitality and tourism technologies: Measurement development and validation. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 106.
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Torabi Z., Shalbafian, A.A., Allam, Z., Ghaderi Z., Murgante. B, & Khavarian-Garmsir, A.R. (2022). Enhancing Memorable Experiences, Tourist Satisfaction, and Revisit Intention through Smart Tourism Technologies. Sustainability 2022, 14.
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How can mobile app boost your tourism business to success?

Did you know travel applications are the seventh most popular category of most downloaded apps and over 60 percent of travelers choose to use mobile apps while traveling?¹ In the future, there will be thousands of new mobile applications with new facilities that offer travelers daily movement without the assistance of humans while traveling. Therefore, it is important for the tourism industry and mobile technology developers to improve or create a mobile application that understands the landscape of mobile applications in the market and sees what is absent.²After reading this blog post, you should gain more information about mobile apps and how can they benefit the tourism industry.

Mobile Apps in a nutshell

In 2019 there were over 3 billion mobile app users and it has been studied that the average mobile app user spends proximately 3,7 hours a day in applications. Mobile applications have been designed for smartphones and tablets for micro-problems that the app designer has identified, and the app’s purpose is to come up with a solution. ³ Currently, there are two major App stores that are designed for specific devices: Apple Store (for iOs devices, iPhones, iPads) and Google Play Store (for Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi). There are mobile apps that are free to download and apps with a fee. The mobile app’s idea is to be an easy and quick way to use and it can be downloaded whenever you want or where ever you are. In addition, mobile apps are designed for several purposes: To offer entertainment, gaming, helping users in everyday life tasks (E.g., counting calories, budgeting, food delivery, etc), social media (Facebook, Instagram, etc), seeking company, finding a transfer and sending messages or video calls. ³ The app’s purpose can be educational, ideal for business, or for a daily lifestyle.

A mobile app can also consist of help in augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR). Mobile AR technology has developed nowadays greatly and travelers can access tourist resources for their travel choices directly by using smartphones.⁴

The behavior of tourism apps users

It is clear as of the day that a successful mobile app is an app that benefits the user. By understanding the user’s behavior as well as motives and needs it is possible to create an app that is useful for the user. Moreover, external and internal motivations, cognitive beliefs, contextual promotion, and tourists’ past experience of smartphones during a trip and experience of smartphones affect tourists’ acceptance and apprehension of mobile apps.⁴

I found out that research shows that mobile AR apps have an important role in tourist behavioral intentions in making unexpected purchases. Notably, as the utility, user-friendly, and interactivity of the apps increase, the perceived enjoyment, and satisfaction of the user increase and give rise to a stronger impulse buying behavior. In addition, many researchers have noted that the role of AR in mobile apps has affected tourist intention to visit a particular destination.⁵

According to research done by Google, over 70 % of leisure travelers have downloaded or used travel applications during their trips and over 60 percent of business travelers use the application for reservations. More than half think applications are convenient, and over 40 percent think it’s easier to book through the application than a mobile browser: Intention to more frequently search for information from the brand, having a bonus point, and using loyalty systems. Friends, family, or colleagues acting as recommenders such as reviews and recommendations in app stores. In addition, consumers think that a poorly designed mobile app drives potential customers to competitors and it affects negatively the brand image. ⁶ To summarize this chapter, smartphones are used throughout the travel process, including for inspiration during the trip for buying activities or ancillary services. Almost half of those who use their smartphone for leisure travel inspiration ultimately book through another method. ⁶

Benefits of Mobile Apps

For many tourism businesses, mobile apps are very important tools to help customers quickly search for specific information or make quick reservations. According to previous research, mobile devices have the plausible to have an enormous effect on the tourism business. The key elements in the development of mobile applications must be taken into consideration. The key elements are, costs, opportunities to operate on a wider range of devices, and accounting for the specific needs of users. Mobile applications not only serve the purpose of being smart and fast but to overcome the dependency on human work and reduce costs. ³

Travelers prefer mobile apps over websites since there are many benefits mobile apps can offer. Mobile devices offer for tourist do last-minute purchases which are used in all phases of the tourist service process, from a destination survey and online booking to post-travel suggestions and reviews. In addition, travel agencies see efforts and invest money in mobile apps which put wise to that service providers surely see benefits in the mobile apps.⁷ Here are listed some of the top advantages of mobile apps:

– Purchasing services: Flight tickets, ancillary services, accommodations

– Accessibility & having information at any time of the day, even without wifi connection

– Tourism mobile application improves and shows the best available trip packages for the destination. Users can get details from the destination and view the itinerary.

-Travel apps assist in planning the trip, routes, and travel guides give precise information about various famous and even lesser known

– The app can be a travel guide and even a map to take the traveler to the destination

-Usage of simple tags such as Quick Response codes, that can greatly enrich the tourist experience at a destination.

-AR technology in destinations is a fun and immersive way to learn more about the destinations

As a result, tourists can have an immersive, more favorable, and gain richer experience. Mobile apps have a positive impact on the tourism business: Gaining new leads, service quality and competitiveness, providing information, encouraging customers to use your services, brand awareness, the possibility to promote new products, and the chance to gather customer data.⁷

Tips to design a successful mobile app

Van Baker, vice president at Gartner, states that effective app development requires businesses to rethink business processes and a mobile employee works to take advantage of the benefits that technology offers. When designing a mobile app that improves business productivity with a real return on investment and satisfies user needs. ⁸ You must take into account three elements:

User experience (UX) – means how someone feels when interacting with an app, well designed UX takes into account user attitudes and behaviors and it compasses under the control of a developer or designer. An easy and clear user interface (UI) is also important to take into consideration in context.⁸
Architecture— Proper architecture in a mobile app is critical to designing successful mobile apps that positively impact the business and facilitate the rapid development of apps that work with existing record systems. They incorporate services that improve the mobile app’s functions.⁸
Business process – By changing and extending the current offers in the tourism business process it can create an impactful mobile app. This can be done by adding new abilities to the business concept.⁸

The quality characteristics that affect mobile applications quality are: portability (if an application has a tendency to run on multiple platforms or not), extensibility, and adaptability as applications adapt to changes from their environment like adaptability in input methods and different orientations of handheld devices, efficiency, maintainability, usability (user-friendly), and data integrity.¹¹ Forbes’s research on mobile apps states that mobile all should be simple and ensure that users can use the app with the fewest possible taps and swipes, use chatbots, and promoting the app on social media and optimize app store content and elicit user reviews. You should also spread awareness of the mobile apps through ads, encouraging downloads via SMS and email offers, and adding the app download QR code to your website homepage. ⁹

Recognizing your target demographic is important when designing an app since different individuals have their own unique habits when it comes to smartphones. Understanding the needs of different generations, you can design an app that serves many users.¹⁰ When creating an application, you must also think about if your target group is iOS users or Android users and whether AR technology would benefit the users.

Conclusion & suggestions

To summarize this blog post, mobile apps are highly appreciated and their usage is continuously rising. A well-designed mobile application serves the user and creates value for the user as well as for the tourism business. There are many different types of mobile applications with different purposes. I brought up here three of the most important benefits that mobile applications serve for tourism businesses, sales leads, or clients. To put the most important components in one figure, I create this module to understand clearly the whole context more. Blue boxes describe the benefits for tourism businesses and green boxes describe the benefits for the customers or sales leads that mobile apps offers.

Businesses can gain data on their customer’s paths in a mobile app, the business can improve its UX when they gather more data about the client’s path in the application. To improve the mobile application in tourism businesses, industries could have surveys in the application that the customer could answer and earn rewards. By using surveys they could lead the app user to different platforms in the app and after visiting all platforms, the customer could give reviews about the app. Regularly reading online reviews from app users will help firms prioritize features that matter to users by gaining data about clients’ needs, motives, and UX by an improve mobile applications all the time to meet the needs and expectations of the customer or potential leads.¹²

In addition, there are many travelers who have a disability or they are oldster, I could suggest that the mobile app designers could concentrate the mobile app marketing for older people to reach out to them. By marketing mobile apps as user-friendly they could also target older users. Perhaps, marketers could market mobile apps by marketing how simple it is to implement and use. Another suggestion is that the mobile app could speak and direct the user to use the app’s features since older travelers can have impaired vision. In this way, tourism businesses could have more value for the app.

Every new step that tourism industries take to develop mobile applications to meet customer needs, is a win for the company and key to success. As earlier mentioned, mobile apps can reduce human work and thus generate savings, create brand awareness and competitive advantage, and many other advantages. These advantages are all very important aspects to head up for success.

References

¹GoodWorks Labs. 2015. How mobile app benefits travel and tourism industry. https://www.goodworklabs.com/how-mobile-app-benefits-travel-and-tourism-industry/

²Roswati Abdul Rashid et al 2020 J. Mobile Apps in Tourism Communication: The Strengths and Weaknesses on Tourism Trips. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254250344_Tourism_and_the_Smartphone_App_Capabilities_Emerging_Practice_and_Scope_in_the_Travel_Domain

³Lupton, D. 2020. The Sociology of Mobile Apps. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341568463_The_Sociology_of_Mobile_Apps

⁴Chen, S. 2020. Mobile Technology in Tourism.https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/2239

⁵Do, H., Shish, W., Ha, G. 2020. Effects of mobile augmented reality apps on impulse buying behavior: An investigation in the tourism

field.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402031511

⁶Google. 2014. __qs_documents_918_2014-travelers-road-to-decision_research_studies.pdf.

⁷ Iskren Tairov 2017. Tourism mobile applications – development benefits and key features. ttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/344467609_Tourism_mobile_applications_-development_benefits_and_key_features

⁸Gartner. 2016. Three Elements of Successful Mobile Apps. https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/three-elements-of-successful-mobile-apps

^9.Rao, A. 2021. Seven Ways To Create A Successful Mobile App Strategy.https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2021/02/17/seven-ways-to-create-a-successful-mobile-app-strategy/?sh=5b95308e5279

¹⁰A Definitive Guide to Mobile App Stats and User Behavior. 2021.https://www.webiotic.com/a-definitive-guide-to-mobile-app-stats-and-user-behavior/

¹¹ An Efficient and Effective New Generation Objective Quality Model for Mobile Applications. 2013. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274048560_An_Efficient_and_Effective_New_Generation_Objective_Quality_Model_for_Mobile_Applications

¹² App Development Tips for Small Businesses. 2021. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354418736_App_Development_Tips_for_Small_Businesses?_iepl%5BgeneralViewId%5D=25k5u8Xb3cPIJpVc1HqGzqFMLDH0Ik72QQWI&_iepl%5Bcontexts%5D%5B0%5D=searchReact&_iepl%5BviewId%5D=FUNJkGq0CUuPy9QCxFfTCmREvf2oqp1GX7r7&_iepl%5BsearchType%5D=publication&_iepl%5Bdata%5D%5BcountLessEqual20%5D=1&_iepl%5Bdata%5D%5BinteractedWithPosition4%5D=1&_iepl%5Bdata%5D%5BwithoutEnrichment%5D=1&_iepl%5Bposition%5D=4&_iepl%5BrgKey%5D=PB%3A354418736&_iepl%5BtargetEntityId%5D=PB%3A354418736&_iepl%5BinteractionType%5D=publicationTitle

Does AI in tourism have unlimited possibilities?

Are all possibilities positive? Will there be a new level of crime, automation and robots displace workers and ICT has stifled human interaction?

Are we ending up in a circle of choises or does this lead us to pilgrimage unknown paths? Have hardcore tourist ended up to be unsung hero of software tourism?

During era of 21st century Artificial Intelligence has made dramatic changes. Tourism has been one of fastest growing industries. Between 2005 to 2015 it has made global change of international tourists from 528 million to 1.19 billion visitors. Most of this increase is studied to be result of digital marketing and would exceed 800 million crosses by the year of 2020. Some studies have been made with some major operators like Google Travel or Trip Advisor and was found out that 85% of the customer used AI serviced during reservation process.¹ Compass to navigate through all these options needs lot of effort, when you have too much to choose from and endless options, I wonder will it start to be harder to makes actual decision.

Internet of Things IoT is in key role of all these possibilities that include electronic shopping guides, self-guided tours, electronic navigation, fast data processing combined secure online payment systems giving tourists endless possibilities to plan and execute travels from anywhere and anytime. With all the information available, tourism management sector can provide all the useful data all the way to destinations and local governments, so things are made efficiently.² Here we come to the question how efficiently and effortless should it be or is the actual tour guide still giving extra value to that moment, not to forget if something happens, there is always some one to help or at least knowing where to get help.

Main role and the star of the show is of course tourists. It has been welcoming sight from both sides of the parties, the service providers and tourism marketing travelers. This leads to better understanding of customer need, by providing more simpler and quicker tourism production, change to conquers wider market and option for destinations to grow independently when they are no longer under the mercy of tour operators. Web marketing is the most cost-effective way to gain access to the customers and provide multiple options for theirs to choose.³

Lord of the holidays sounds like I have American black master card to rule them all and yes, money do make things possible, and it works vice versa.

Time of Covid-19 world was basically lock down. Tourism and hospitality were a business that took the biggest hit of all, including flight operators and everything else. Drop in sales was 51% and total of 2.86 trillion U.S dollars. People had more time and they started to use more social media platforms for information, including travel-based apps for more need of more open information from real people, not from google and basic tv news. Many tourists were hold in their hotels as quarantine stations. This gathered data will help tourism businesses to prepare in case of next major happening, but also it has taught improvision and forcing them to find new solutions to keep business alive.⁴ With sustainability in mind digitalization offers chance to overcome the markets for enterprises that had lots of restrictions. Government still has vital role of supporting XR based solutions. ⁶

Fantasy, Virtual Reality, Vr, Vr Glasses — Pixabay

During Covid-19 tourism came to halt and gave time to different destinations to think how to proceed. People from Amsterdam voted that they would rather focus on quality tourism instead of mass tourism. This though will affect to similar cities which most of the money revenue comes from tourists. Over tourism of course will create needs of accommodation and restaurants etc. but also unwanted social acts start to happen like assaults, robberies, money laundry and drug trafficking. ICT gives destinations and smart cities better awareness of present tourism situation at the location so number of police officers can be temporarily increased. ⁹

One example, study shows that ICT has leverage to promote agricultural and rural tourism since ICT plays big role in agribusiness and local development. That way farmers can promote their services directly without travel agencies, giving them better profit and control of tourism markets. By time of writing research were most other tourism genres using lot of ICT in their promotion but those small operators at cultural field having lack of money and expertise to use these methods. Taking e-tourism to part of rural tourism enables preserving and balancing to be achievable equation between these two. ⁷

Internet began the era when it was key to access to information and it did not happen more than some years ago around 2010 when it changed to be necessity to engage for people. It has been said that if you are not online, you do not exist and for businesses it is true. Measured by citations at tourism studies, digitalization is the largest field and increasing year by year. When these studies are taken to the practice ICT and AI enables to observe customers pre order, on the time and postal ways to make decisions. ⁸

We must remember if it is too good to be true, usually it is not true. This also the case of AI too. All these positive things mentioned before in this blog are followed by some critical things to keep in mind. Research done by TripAdvisor shows results of job loss, security issues, privacy concerns and loss of human contact, that might be side effect of technology where AI is involved. AI is in, even huge leaps that has been done in early stage now and it takes several years if not more to solve these unwanted little side effects. ¹⁰

Looking the future scenarios from the customer’s perspective, AI will allow them to prepare their travels more faster, with signiﬁcantly lower transaction costs and a fully personalized package that suits their needs and interests. They will receive predictive offers that ﬁt their requirements. During the trip, technologies will help tourists to navigate unknown environments seamlessly, reducing the anxiety and fear of the unknown. Language and cultural differences will not be barriers to tourism, but an additional attraction instead. 11

There is almost a vortex in tourism industry how it will operate in the future and most likely we see much more human-AI robots interaction. This may come in form of service consepts or hospitality. Not even AI aircrafts to transfer commercial tourist is not far in the future.

Depending on the purpose of the travel, to destination, it varies how much human based services you encounter, wanted or not. Even remote places it is useful to know nearest hospital and grouser store, little about up coming weather and know a person to ask help from. Still help of ICT companies that use it, can overtake through multiple tasks like online booking and free their staff to serve you better. ⁵ So, I think AI is here to stay and provide many yet unknown possibilities to tourism. “To bot or not to bot” Would maybe Shakespeare ask in a play today.

References

Samala, N., Katkam, B.S., Bellamkonda, R.S. and Rodriguez, R.V. (2022), “Impact of AI and robotics in the tourism sector: a critical insight”, Journal of Tourism Futures, Vol. 8 No. 1, 73-87.

Wang et al., “Realizing the Potential of the Internet of Things for Smart Tourism with 5G and AI,” in IEEE Network, vol. 34, no. 6, 295-301

Nikoli, G., & Lazakidou Α. (2019). The Impact of Information and Communication Technology on the Tourism Sector. Almatourism – Journal of Tourism, Culture and Territorial Development, 10(19), 45–68.

Abbas J, Hassan S, Mubeen R, Zhenhuan L, Wang D (2022) Tourists’ Health Risk Threats Amid COVID-19 Era: Role of Technology Innovation, Transformation, and Recovery Implications for Sustainable Tourism

Bethapudi A (2013 )The role of ICT in tourism industry National Institute of Tourism & Hospitality Management, Telecom Nagar, Gachibowli, Hyderabad, A.P., India JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS, VOL.1, ISSUE 4 – DECEMBER, PP. 67-79
Andrei O, Kwok J (2020) COVID-19 and Extended Reality (XR) 1935-1940

7. Shanker D (2008) ICT and Tourism: Challenges and Opportunities, Conference on Tourism in India – Challenges Ahead, 15-17

Gössling S (2020) Tourism, technology and ICT: a critical review of affordances and concessions 733-750
Lee P,Cannon ,Hunter W and Chung N (2020) Smart tourism city: Developments and transformations, Smart tourism city roles

1. Grunder L, Neuhofer B (2020) The bright and dark sides of artificial
  intelligence: A futures perspective on tourist destination experiences Journal of destination marketing & management 18 November 2020, 3-4
2. Bulchand-Gidumal J (2020) Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality. Hand book of E-tourism. Springer, 17

Overtourism?

Advertising?

Closure

What are smart hotels?

Usage of smart hotel technologies

How to create a smart hotel experience?

Future of smart hotels

Challenges of implementing smart hotel technologies

Research

Control

Privacy

Technologies vs. human interactions

Customer’s Search Process

Small and Medium-sized Companies

Conclusions and Thoughts

References

But what is AI?

And why is high-value content important?

How can you use AI in content creation?

Here are four different ways you can use AI to create better content:

Copywriting.

Proofread your content

Edit your photos

Edit videos

So… Should you use it?

What can be the negative impacts of AI-produced content?

Leave your opinion in the comments!

Sources:

Many faces of Artificial Intelligence

Robots are coming – are you ready?

The power of a simple smile

Robots and humans – better together?

Smart tourism’s transformative possibilities

Gamification

Augmented reality

Virtual reality

Other Smart Tourism Technology possibilities

Smarter the more transformative?

REFERENCES

Mobile Apps in a nutshell

The behavior of tourism apps users

Benefits of Mobile Apps

Tips to design a successful mobile app

Conclusion & suggestions

References