Catherine Muyama Kifworo – författare

The tourism and hospitality industry is rapidly undergoing a disruptive transformation owing to advances in information and communications technology. This book aims to highlight how the unfolding digital transformation trends help the industry attain sustainable development by taking full account of its current and future economic, social, and environmental impacts and addressing the needs of tourists, the industry, the environment, and destinations.  With the advent of digital technologies following the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), there has been a rapid change in how customers and businesses interact regarding the timeliness and relevance of communication. Although the positive effects of digital transformation have received sustained scholarly interest, its adverse effects, as well as how the digitisation of tourism operations can enable the achievement of sustainable development, have attracted limited academic focus.

The book comprises contributions that generate theoretical insights, empirical findings, and evidence-based recommendations by focusing on emerging and forecasted technologies used in the tourism and hospitality industry, such as blockchains, robots, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, big data, and analytics. The book could be helpful for future research to focus on the impact of different forms of digital technology by examining their sociocultural and environmental effects. Building on prior research, the chapters in this volume extrapolate current studies on digital development to provide more links to tourism and hospitality.