Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No.

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Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences

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Innovative issues and approaches in social sciences, 2019,

vol. 12, no. 3

ISSN 1855-0541

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Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

FROM INDUSTRY 4.0 TO TOURISM 4.0

Saša Zupan Korže 1

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Abstract
The fourth Industrial revolution has affected all disciplines, economies
and industries. Technology, the key enabler for Industry 4.0, also has a
tremendous influence on tourism. The purpose of the study is to explore
how the concept of Industry 4.0 has been embraced by tourism. Even
though academics have paid an increased attention to the concept of
Industry 4.0 in the last few years, the scholarly research on Tourism 4.0
remains at a preliminary stage. This is an exploratory type of paper with
a descriptive presentation of results. Data were collected from
secondary sources and processed by using the method of content
analysis. Findings reveal, firstly, different use of the term Tourism 4.0
among governments, tourism policy makers, practitioners and scholars;
secondly, tourism stakeholders have already widely implemented the
technologies of the fourth industrial revolution that are suitable for
designing tourism services. The study supports the Tourism 4.0 to
become a global paradigm and contributes to the body of literature on
technological changes in tourism.

Keywords: Industry 4.0, Tourism 4.0, technology, new paradigm

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12959/issn.1855-0541.IIASS-2019-no3-art3

Introduction
After the turn of the millennium, the technologies have become
sophisticated and integrated in such a way that they have been
transforming societies and the global economy (Schwab, 2016). In
parallel, the Internet has grown at unprecedented scales to become
ubiquitous in all economic and social aspects of life (Diez-Olivian et al.,
2019). Market development, internationalisation and growing
competitiveness have led to the emergence of the so-called Fourth
Industrial Revolution and the concept of Industry 4.0 (Piccarozzi et al.,
2018).

1
Saša Zupan Korže, Ph.D., assistant professor, is a lecturer (of law, tourism,
economics, entrepreneurship), researcher and consultant.
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

The term Industry 4.0 was coined by the German government in the
context of its high-tech strategy in 2011 (Rodič, 2017). At its early stage,
it was related to the ‘factories of the future’ or ‘smart factories’. For Diez-
Olivan et al. (2019: 92) ‘smartisation’ of manufacturing industries “has
been conceived as the fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0, a | 30
paradigm shift, propelled by the upsurge and progressive maturity of
new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) applied to
industrial processes and products«. However, the paradigm of Industry
4.0 has become global (Rodič, 2017).

From 2011 on, there have been several attempts in professional and
academic publications to determine the concept of Industry 4.0. To the
present, the determination remains non-consensual (Pereira and
Romero, 2017; Piccarozzi et al., 2018).

In academic papers, Industry 4.0 is determined as “an emerging concept

– an umbrella term for new industrial paradigm that embraces a set of
future industrial developments regarding Cyber-Physical System,
Internet of Things (IoT), Robotics, Big Data, Cloud Manufacturing and
Augmented Reality (AR)… which … are enabling an intelligent
manufacturing environment” (Pereira and Romero, 2017:1207). Park
(2017) understands Industry 4.0 as hyper automation and hyper
connectivity based on artificial intelligence (AI), big data, robotics and
IoT that can overcome the gap between the physical and cyber systems
in order to increase productivity and intensify industrial production.
Digital manufacturing technology, network communication technology,
computer technology and automation technology are the so-called “Key
Technology Enablers for Industry 4.0” (Pereira and Romero, 2017:
1211).

According to the European Parliament (2016:20), Industry 4.0 “describes

the organisation of production processes based on technology and
devices that autonomously communicate with each other along the value
chain in virtual computer models”. For Schwab (2016), Industry 4.0 is
characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the
physical, digital and biological worlds. It is based on megatrends of the
following technological drivers:
 physical – autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, advanced robotics,
new materials;
 digital – internet of things, distributed ledger technologies/block
chains, technology-based platforms and
 biological – genetics.
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

The combination of the above-mentioned drivers have been disrupting

entire industries, their related distribution and consumption; it enables
the creating of new business models and absolute customisation of
products and services (Schwab, 2016). Customisation of services is
particularly important in tourism. | 31

Over the past six decades, tourism has experienced continued

expansion and became one of the largest and fastest-growing industries
in the world; international tourist arrivals worldwide are expected to
reach 1.8 billion by 2030 (UNWTO, 2017).

Heterogeneous businesses in the field of tourism (e.g. tour organizers

and mediators, transfer companies, hotels, restaurants etc.) are offered
tremendous opportunities for development. However, their future will be
heavily impacted by social, economic, political, environmental and
technological changes and challenges. Technology advancement is
definitely one of four megatrends that are likely to have significant
impacts and relevance in tourism development (OECD, 2018).

The deployment of cutting-edge technologies of Industry 4.0 is known for

its disrupting effect that impacts many sectors, including tourism
(Manjari, 2018). Technological evolution in tourism has already been, in
certain cases, described by a new term – Tourism 4.0, which is based
on new paradigm in industry, Industry 4.0 (What is, n.d.). Due to
extensive growth of the tourism sector and its contribution to economy, it
is important to research how the term Tourism 4.0 has been used and
understood up to present and how the fourth industrial revolution and its
key enabling technologies have been embraced by this important
service sector.

Despite the rising interest in technological changes in tourism and

vigorous participation of demand and supply sides of the market in it, the
research on Tourism 4.0 have been sparse. Thus, the purpose of this
paper is to contribute to the academic research on Tourism 4.0 by
answering to the following research questions:
 When did the term Tourism 4.0 appear?
 How has the term Tourism 4.0 been used and understood up to
now?
 What kind of key technology enablers for Industry 4.0 have been
mostly used in tourism?

The introductory section is followed by explaining the methodology and

major findings about Tourism 4.0. The paper ends with the discussion
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

regarding the results of empirical research, its limitations and a proposal

for further research.

Methodology
The research on Tourism 4.0 is still in its formative stage. Therefore, the | 32
exploratory type of research was chosen to achieve the research goals
and descriptive method to present the results.

Data collection was conveyed in the systematic internet research

procedure in the period from January to July 2019. Mega search engine
of National and University Library (NUK, n.d.) was used for searching
the scholarly papers published in major scientific databases that proved
to be the most complete in terms of collection of scientific publications.
Google Scholar and Google search engines were used to search
additional relevant documents.

The process of identification of relevant documents consisted of the

following systematic steps: key phrases identification, documents
identification, quality assessment, data extraction and data analysis.

Within the first step, the basic key word Tourism 4.0 was used for
searching the existing literature. In the second step, other key phrases
were used to identify the documents by selected topics. In the second
step, additional phrases, based on the key technology enablers of
Industry 4.0, were used as the framework for further research in the
context of tourism, travel and hospitality (e.g. robotics in
tourism/hospitality, big data in tourism, virtual/augmented reality in
tourism/hospitality etc.). Google Scholar and Google search engine were
used to extract documents such as online media articles and other
online documents, published by governments, professionals,
corporations and individuals. The third step focused on the quality
assessment of the selected documents. The publication time of
documents was used as an important criterion in assessing the
relevance of particular information. Only documents from 2015 on were
taken in the fourth step, which was concentrated on data extraction. A
thematic content analysis was carried out in which bottom up coding
scheme was adopted.

The next level comprised a more in-depth approach. Data extraction and
data analysis within the context of this research were intertwined. Data
collected in the data extraction phase were thoroughly analysed. The
combination of condensation, comparison, compilation and description
methods were used to present the findings.
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

Results
Research findings are organised in three subparts. The first and the
second subpart give answer to the first and the second research
question, while the third subpart addresses the third research question.
In the first subpart, different uses of the term Tourism 4.0 are presented | 33
for each of the countries that have already implemented the term
Tourism 4.0. The second part reveal how the term Tourism 4.0 is dealt
with in scholarly papers. The third subpart condemns and compiles
examples of the implementation of key enabling technologies of Industry
4.0 in the context of tourism services.

The use of the term Tourism 4.0 by governments and tourism policy
makers
The results reveal less than ten countries that have already implemented
the term Tourism 4.0 mostly in documents, published by governments or
governmental institutions, policy makers and tourism public-private
partnerships. Those countries are clustered in two groups:
 European countries – Portugal, Finland, Italy, Spain, Turkey and
Slovenia;
 Southeast Asian countries – Thailand, Bali, Malaysia.

The first country that used the term Tourism 4.0 seemed to be Portugal.
However, the term Tourism 4.0 – used in 2016 – had not much in
common with key technology enablers for Industry 4.0. Actually, it was
related with the initiative of promoting the entrepreneurship, with support
of travel and tourism start-ups, and with facilitating innovations in tourism
(Turismo de Portugal, 2017). Portugal presented the above-mentioned
initiative under the name of Tourism 4.0 (Ferreira Nunes, 2016). The
same year, the project was announced as one of the four finalists of
UNWTO for receiving the award for Excellence and Innovation in
Research and Technology in Tourism (UNWTO Awards, 2016). The
term Tourism 4.0 was again used in 2018, in the wine tourism project –
‘Wine Tourism 4.0’ – to promote ecotourism tourism in the Alentejo
region (Wines, 2018).

In Finland, Tourism 4.0 comprises the action programme that aims to

ensure the growth of tourism industry with various measures (Tourism
4.0 key projects, 2017). The Tourism 4.0 action programme is a package
of measures to promote international growth and renewal of Finnish
tourism in 2018 and 2019. The government should grant EUR 16 million
to the programme that consists of tourism marketing, reinforcement of
the digital competence of tourism business, development in the year-
round supply and furthermore, for reducing and streamlining the
regulation (ibid.).
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

In Italy, Tourism 4.0 is related to digital innovations in transport and

related activities, within hospitality and culture. Italians were aware that
the technologies of intelligent travel, e.g. robots, self-driving vehicles,
chat-boots, artificial intelligence, big data etc. have been rapidly | 34
changing the world of travel. Thus, Italy’s Osservatorio Nazionale del
Tourismo concluded a partnership with a private corporation to go in
step with new trends (Milano, 2017). In Italy, the application of Industry
4.0 in tourism has been named Tourism 4.0 and is related mostly with
the analysis of big data, digitalisation and the Internet of Things and
Machines (Abrogio, 2017). At the beginning of 2018, one of the largest
banks has announced a deal with the Ministry of Culture to invest EUR 5
million in the following three years for the project ‘Pact for Tourism 4.0’,
which also includes technical innovation (Edvards, 2018). To acquire
technological competencies in Industry 4.0 and its transfer into tourism,
one of the academies in Verona promotes an executive master study in
hotel management and digital tourism 4.0 (Masterin, n.d.).

Tourism 4.0 is considered “almost totally digitized sector” in Spain. Yet,

the only available data related to Tourism 4.0 is about launching the
Touriscoin, a new cryptocurrency, by a private corporation from
Alhambra. Tourscoin should make payments and contract services
presumably with ‘zero intermediaries’ (Pino, 2018).

Turkey announced to develop and invest in the latest concept named

‘Tourism 4.0’ to support the development of digital marketing in tourism
in 2017 (Digital Tourism, n.d.). However, there has been no data
available about the further progress of the concept.

In Thailand, Tourism 4.0 is a policy implemented by the government

dedicated to five goals: to develop tourism intelligence centre system, to
promote digital tourism, to improve E-document system, to change the
organisational culture and to enhance research and development (Five
pillars, 2017). In 2018, the University of Phayo, Bangkok, decided to
organise a new educational program with the title ‘Tourism 4.0: The
Impact of digital disruption’. The decision has been a result of
government awareness of the changes in tourism business models
(Evensi, 2018). Various talks have been organised about Tourism 4.0 on
a yearly basis (Tourism 4.0, 2018).“

The government of Bali is trying to develop smart destinations, utilizing

information and technology to cope with younger and more tech-savvy
tourists (Millennials) that are always connected to internet platforms.
Therefore, the government has started to educate people about new
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

technologies in Tourism 4.0: about blockchain, big data, virtual and

augmented reality (Capturing Millennial, 2018).

In Malaysia, Tourism 4.0 is about designing digital ecosystem for

reaching Chinese tourist; digital technologies should enhance tourism | 35
offer and improve tourist experience (Tan, 2018). Malaysia Smart
Tourism 4.0 initiative is to take tourism sector to the next level utilising
opportunities in the digital age. Public-private partnerships will provide
digital ecosystem in the country for targeted marketing (Restanis, 2018).

In Slovenia, the term Tourism 4.0 appeared in 2018. It was related to a

paradigm of Tourism 4.0 and to a research project implemented in the
country (Kick-off meeting, 2018).

The term Tourism 4.0 as a new paradigm is used ‘for the current trend of
big data processing collected from a vast number of travellers to create
personalised travelling experience; it is based on a variety of modern
high-tech computer technologies’ (What is, n. d.). It leverages the 4th
Industrial revolution technologies such as AI, IoT, big data analysis,
cloud computing, virtual and augmented reality (ibid.) (see Figure 1).
The new paradigm transfers the concept from Industry 4.0 to tourism
with the aim of transforming the perception of tourism and business
around it (Arctur, 2018).

In Tourism 4.0 research project, the research team – consisted of

consortium of three universities in Slovenia and a private computer
company – aims to research the Tourism 4.0 paradigm and its possible
implementation in the next three years. The aim of the project is to
develop appropriate ICT tools and an ecosystem, which will enable
collaboration between key stakeholders in tourism and through new
business models (Kick-off meeting, 2018). The project should be co-
financed by the Slovenian government.

In September 2018, the project was presented on UNWTO World

Tourism Day in Budapest as an example of Slovenia being Tourism 4.0
‘Living Lab’.
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

Figure 1: Tourism 4.0 understood in Slovenia

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Source: http://en.turistica.si/blog/2018/09/10/launch-of-the-tourism-4-0-
project/

At UNWTO level, the term Tourism 4.0 was first mentioned at the 22nd
Session of the UNWTO General Assembly – Special Session on Smart
Tourism in September 2017. Yet, the term was used in the context of
facilitating innovation in tourism sector and stimulating the tourism
entrepreneurial ecosystem (Conference note, 2017).

The above examples give a thorough insight on how differently

governments, tourism policy makers and practitioners use and
understand the term Tourism 4.0. There is a wide range of ideas and
activities put ‘under the umbrella of Tourism 4.0’ in different countries,
e.g. fostering tourism entrepreneurship, implementing tourism action
programmes, encouraging tourism digital innovations, designing tourism
digital ecosystems etc. However, most of them are related to
technological changes of the fourth industrial revolution, adapted to
tourism. While tourism is characterised mostly by services (and not by
physical products) which are co-created by their users, it is logical that
the paradigm of Tourism 4.0 is slightly different to the paradigm of
Industry 4.0.

Understanding of Tourism 4.0 by scholars

Until the middle of 2019, there have only been a few scholarly papers
that included the term ‘Tourism 4.0’. However, none of the papers have
been published in the highly-ranked journals on tourism.

In their research on measuring technology for online purchase intention

in hotel industry in Malaysia, Allamy et al. (2018) use the term Smart
Tourism 4.0. In this case, Smart Tourism 4.0 is an initiative of the
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

Malaysian government to take tourism on the next level of utilising the

opportunities in the digital era. However, authors simply refer to the
Tourism 4.0 governmental action plan for further tourism development
without giving any further determination of ‘Tourism 4.0’.
| 37
Papathanassis (2017: 212) used the term Tourism 4.0 in relation to
digital transformation and intelligent automation in tourism, referring the
“Tourism 4.0-related technologies such as cloud computing, mobile
internet, robotics, AI, autonomous vehicles and even 3D-printing”.
However, these technologies are mentioned in the context of having
considerable impact on the skill requirements and on the composition of
the global tourism workforce (ibid.), but not in the context of
determination of the term Tourism 4.0.

Manjari (2018) considers Tourism 4.0 as a new stage of tourism

development compared to E-tourism and M-tourism, where:
 E-tourism refers to digitalisation of tourism establishments and
encompasses setting up commercial relationship using the
Internet to offer tourism-related services, e.g. hotel reservation,
flight or car service;
 M-tourism is understood to represent accumulated tourism-
related interactions acquired through mobile devices (e.g. GPS,
electronic maps, information about points of interest, shops,
restaurants etc.).

Tourism 4.0 exemplifies broader scopes and deeper aspects than e-

tourism and m-tourism: it refers to a “current trend of big data processing
collected from a vast number of travellers to create a personalized
travelling experience”. It could be viewed as an “exhortation trying to put
the Industry 4.0 and tourism altogether” (ibid.).

However, when comparing different stages of tourism development,

Manjari (2018) ignores the term/concept of ‘smart tourism’, which has
been studied intensively by several authors for the last few years. The
definition of smart tourism seems to be close to understanding the term
Tourism 4.0. E.g., for Hunter et al. (2015: 105) smart tourism is a “social
phenomenon arising from the convergence of information technology
with the tourism experience”. According to Gretzel et al. (2015) smart
tourism describes the increasing reliance of tourism destinations,
providers of tourism services and tourists on emerging forms of
information communication technologies and other cutting-edge
technologies that allow massive amounts of data to be transformed into
a value proposition.
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

There have been only two scholarly studies found related to ‘Tourism
4.0’ so far:
 The first one is of Yildiz and Davutoglu (2018) about the
transition of tourism to Tourism 4.0 and the use of technologies
of Industry 4.0 in the context of tourism. | 38
 The second is of Starc Peceny et al. (2019) about challenges in
marketing a paradigm shift of Tourism 4.0.

According to Yildiz and Davutoglu (2018: 230), “there are not many
tangible examples of the implications of Industry 4.0 in the tourism
sector”. However, authors state that among heteronomous tourism
subsectors, only tourism travel sector has made by far the most changes
toward Tourism 4.0. These changes has happened due to the fact that
many people – when buying a plane ticket or book an accommodation –
prefer the Internet to travel agencies. In tourist accommodation, there
are no notable improvements other than the hotels managed by robots
(ibid.).

Starc Peceny et al. (2019) refer to Tourism 4.0 as to a new paradigm.

Tourism 4.0 should “unlock the innovation potential in the whole tourism
sector” with the help of key enabling technologies of Industry 4.0 (e.g.
IoT, big data, blockchain, AI, virtual and augmented reality). It is also
about establishing collaborative ecosystems, involving local inhabitants,
local authorities, tourists, service providers and governments that can
co-create an enriched tourism experience in the physical and digital
world. In this new collaborative ecosystem, the key enabling
technologies from Industry 4.0 should be harmonised with the Tourism
4.0 principles. The focus of Tourism 4.0 ecosystems are the local
communities and not only tourists. Authors point out the marketing of the
new paradigm Tourism 4.0 as one of the important issues in the way of
its successful implementation.

Up to present, the project on Tourism 4.0, implemented in Slovenia,

seems to give the best outlines about Tourism 4.0. Undoubtedly, it is by
far the most communicated approach on the web. The authors advocate
the position that Tourism 4.0 is a new paradigm, which needs to be
marketed well to be accepted by practitioners and academia. The paper
strongly indicates similarities between the concept of Industry 4.0 and
Tourism 4.0, particularly as the key technology enablers. Yet, the new
paradigm of Tourism 4.0 encompasses the particularities of the tourism
sector and its ecosystem.
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

Examples of key technology enablers for Industry 4.0 in subsectors of

tourism
The importance of key technology enablers of Industry 4.0 in tourism is
emphasized by several expressions, e.g.:
 ‘The most widely used’ (e.g. the Internet), | 39
 ’An essential feature’ (e.g. big data),
 The one that ‘plays important role in tourism’ (e.g. virtual reality),
 The one that ‘creates network matching between buyers and
sellers’ (e.g. technology-based business models),
 The one that ‘drives innovation and monetisation’ (mobile
technology),
 ‘The most popular sphere’ (e.g. robots and AI),
 ‘The most visible sphere’ (e.g. chatbots etc.).

The most widely used technical innovation in tourism is the Internet. In

the 4th industrial revolution, it has become affordable to masses, as well
as high-speed (European Parliament, 2015). In tourism, the Internet has
been contributing to self-organised holidays and independent travels. In
fact, it has shifted 'the balance of power from the providers of tourism
services to consumers' – travellers and guest (ibid.). To providers of
tourism services, it has brought two major advantages. The first one is
the cost reduction: there can be fewer intermediaries than before,
processes are streamlined and tourist companies can save time and
expenses (Brain, 2017). The second major advantage of the Internet in
tourism is related to marketing: on the Internet, geographical barriers
disappear; tourism companies can easily enter foreign markets and
reach more customers and customers can reach them (ibid.).

Big data are an essential feature of Tourism 4.0 (Manjari, 2018). The
implementation of big data in tourism means having real-time
information about tourists, their movements, their preferences, their
buying decisions, their aspirations etc. Big data are collected from
different sources, where tourists leave behind their digital fingerprints: on
social media, on tourist portals, with robots and chat bots etc. (Dolgos,
2018). The advantage of extracted data by big data applications is that
those data are based on actual tourist actions and not on data obtained
by surveys. Thus, they are reliable, representative, detailed and include
segmentation capacity; moreover, they allow the implementation of the
useful predicting models to improve the efficiency of customer service
(Kraus, 2017). Big data have already driven all marketing decisions and
areas important to ‘stay ahead of what customers need’ (McCraken,
2018).
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

Virtual reality (VR) plays a big role in tourism. Tourists like to make a
virtual journey to the existing or fictions places from the touch and 360-
degree holidays videos with VR (Fes, 2018). In April 2018, a massive
Virtual Reality Theme park was opened in Guizou, China (Ashcraft,
2018). Some airlines have already committed to VR technology: in 2015, | 40
Quantas launched a pilot program showcasing virtual destinations (such
as Kakadu National Park, Great Barrier Reef, Hamilton Island) to first
class passengers (Manjari, 2018), while KLM has handed VR headsets
to tourist flying from New York to Europe (Drescher, 2017).

Augmented reality (AR) technology is revolutionizing the traveller

experience by making the planning journey more seamless, interactive,
and simple (Augment, 2016). AR makes changes to a person’s
perception of their physical surroundings, when viewed through a
particular device. The technology has similarities with VR, but AR does
not replace the real-world environment, but augments it by overlaying
digital components (Revfine, n.d.). AR technology makes it possible to
layer digital enhancements over an existing reality or a real-life scenario.
For tourism, this means that booking a hotel, accessing information
while being there, navigating around the destination, translating written
or spoken signs or conversations and locating dining and entertainment
options can all be done simply through an app on mobile devices
(Augment, 2016).

Mobile technology is the one that drives the innovation and monetisation
of the tourism business (Meza, 2017). In hotels of the future, digital
technologies could turn hotel rooms to a ‘feel-good location’. Several
actions can already be done in hotels simply by using mobile
applications on smartphones, e.g. check-ins, checkouts, setting the
room temperature etc. (Fes, 2018). For young travellers, the smartphone
is becoming a room key, the menu, the bill (Majendie, 2018). In KViHotel
Budapest, everything is controlled by the guest smartphone: guests can
check-in by their apps from everywhere; the smartphone is the room key
that controls everything in the room and can offer the concierge service
(KViHOTEL, n.d.). Furthermore, in Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana, one of
the hotels in the city centre also enables guests to check-in, pay and
checkout with a mobile application. Guests receive the room-key via
smartphone (Pušnik, 2018). Furthermore, there is also a strong link
between airlines, airport and smartphone users (check-in etc.) (Grad,
2014). In the near future, mobile interface and devices will probably
allow travellers to have their digital identity and carry it with them (World
Economic Forum, 2018).
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

Wearable technology – smart watches, bracelets, glasses – is slowly

becoming a reality in tourism. American Airlines has enabled boarding
passes, gate change and baggage claim notifications on Apple Watch,
Uber enables users to request rides and be notified of their arrival on the
watch. Hotels are working with Apple Watch, enabling guest check-in, | 41
review reservation details, make last minute booking or door unlocking
using wearable devices. The future of smart watches-enabled travel is
much higher; however, the travel management companies are still rather
technologically behind this trend (Dorsi, 2016).

New digital ledger technologies should enable trust and authenticity

(Hausold, 2017); thus, there have been several ideas regarding how to
provide quick transfer of money using digital ledger technology, how to
pay with crypto assets, how to be rewarded for loyalty with crypto
currencies, etc. (e.g. Pino, 2018; Starc Peceny et al., 2019). It is
predicted that in the near future, digital ledger protocols (e.g block
chains) should allow the travellers to go to the airport leaving their valet
and identity document at home (Hausold, 2017).

Robots in hotels and restaurants are probably the most popular sphere
of new technological advances. They have been developed in
combination of robotics and AI. There are a few examples of how
hospitality and travel sector of tourism employ artificially intelligent
robots.
 In Marriott hotel in Ghent, Belgium, the guests are welcomed by
humanoid robot Mario. Mario talks to guest in 19 languages
about events, bus schedules, breakfast buffet etc. (Hyland,
2017).
 At Hilton hotel in McLean, USA, humanoid robot Connie performs
similar tasks as Mario does in Marriott (Threjos, 2016).
 In several hotels in the US, Aura, Botlr or Relay robots assist at
delivery of towels, toothpaste or drinks to the hotel rooms (Wood,
2017). Robots look like rolling boxes and can communicate with
guests only by display screens. To navigate around the hotel,
they use Wi-Fi, sensors and 3D cameras (Martin, 2016).
 In Yotel hotel in New York, the futuristic storage robot in the
lobby takes care of the guest luggage and put it in the storage
lockers (Martin, 2016).
 In Turkey, they have been trying to use humanoid robot Robin in
airports to guide people, show ads, etc.; the robot could be
trained for hotels as well (Freifer, 2017).
 The Henna-na hotel (it means Weired Hotel), in south-western
Japan, is the world’s first ‘no human employees’ hotel. A robot,
the humanoid one for Japanese speaking guest, and a dinosaur
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

for the English-speaking guests, assist guests with check-ins and

checkouts. The visitor still has to punch a button in the desk and
type information on a touch panel screen at the arrival. Guests’
baggage is transported to the rooms by another robot. Facial
recognition technology is used instead of a standard electronic | 42
key to open the hotel room (The Guardian, 2015). In only two
years, the Japan’s first robot-staffed hotel has been so
successful that the hotel owner has been considering forming a
network of 100 hotels with robot staff in the country (Freifer,
2017).
 Pizza Hut announced that it would hire robot waiters, Pepper, to
take orders and process the payment at its fast-food restaurants.
Pepper is an artificially intelligent robot that can read and
respond to human gestures, expressions and the tone of voice. It
allows customers to communicate with ‘just like they would with
friends and family’ (Curtis, 2016).
 Royal Caribbean uses robots as bartenders (Venegas and
Belarmio, 2018).
 A robot suitcase called Tavellmate is an example of robotics for
dealing with luggage easily to traveller. An autonomous suitcase
is able to follow its owner by itself. It uses anti-collision
technology and has 360 degree turning capabilities. It eliminates
the need for carrying, pulling or pushing the suitcase (8
Examples, n.d.).

Travelzoo’s (2016), a global study on the acceptance of robots working

in travel, showed that travellers expect robots to play a big part in their
lives by 2020; three quarters out of more than 6,000 respondents would
be comfortable with robots in travel sector. Although international
travellers are largely positive towards the use of robots in their holiday
destinations, some nations appear more cautious than others. Germans
and French were the most averse to robotics and AI, while Chinese and
Brazilians were the most positive. The main advantages that
respondents see in robots are general efficiency, data retention and
recall. More than three quarters of respondents think that robots would
be better than humans at handling data (81 %) and dealing with different
languages (79 %), while 76 % believe robots have better memories.

Probably the most visible manifestation of AI in tourism and hospitality at

present are chat bots – virtual assistants, which are able to hold a
natural language conversation with human through bots and chap apps
(e.g. Amazon’s Alexa). They are ideal for customer-centric businesses
like tourism, particularly for carrying out basic requests for information.
Dutch airlines KLM was one of the first to implement the use of bots and
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

chat apps sending their passengers boarding passes and flight

information via Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Viber and other chat
apps (Peterson, 2018). Some reservation platforms for tourist
accommodation (e.g. Expedia) have already implemented travel chat
bots. In Andas Singapore Hotel, ConsierGo – a chatbot with AI – | 43
communicates with guests through hotel’s Facebook messenger
account (Manjari, 2018).

When robots and chatbots perform tasks, they collect all kinds of data
about hotel guests; therefore, they are becoming ‘active mobile big data
collectors’. Moreover, since they are machines connected to larger IoT
networks, they have threefold usage. Firstly, they can serve as data
collection points; secondly, they can interact with guests; and thirdly,
they can complete other tasks (Hospitality technology, 2017).

Other evident examples of technical evolution of the 21th century are

technology-based business models that create networks matching
buyers and sellers (Schwab, 2016). Technology-based companies has
become new members of some economic sectors (Brain, 2017). They
make possible what can be called ‘on demand economy’, referred to by
some as sharing economy. In tourist accommodation sector, Airbnb is by
far the most known business model of this kind (Zupan Korže, 2018).

Apart from the rise of intelligent automation (robotics, AI and IoT), the
other major technology trend in travel and tourism is the dominance of
digital platforms. Powered by AI, the next wave of technical solutions will
gather unprecedented amount of data for disparate systems via multiple
touchpoints that travellers have with providers (World Economic Forum,
2018).

Conclusion
This paper is about the transfer of the concept of Industry 4.0 to tourism.
Due to the important share of tourism in the global economy and its
continuous growth for the last few decades, the effects of the fourth
industrial revolution on tourism (demand and supply side) need closer
attention.

The extensive Internet research of secondary sources gives answers to

three research questions: firstly, when did the term Tourism 4.0 appear,
secondly, how has the term been used and understood up to present
and what are the most visible examples of technologies of Industry 4.0 in
the context of tourism. Subsequently, the results indicate the parallels
and differences between the concept of Industry 4.0 and Tourism 4.0.
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

It is almost generally accepted that the term Tourism 4.0 is rooted in

Industry 4.0, where the combination of technological drivers has already
disrupting entire industries, including tourism. The term Tourism 4.0 first
appeared in 2016 in Portugal, while the term Industry 4.0 appeared for
the first time in 2011 in Germany. In both cases, the term was coined by | 44
the public sector (governmental bodies or policy makers), not by
academia. However, while the term Industry 4.0 (and not smart factories,
smart technologies, etc.) has gradually become a research agenda
among scholars, in tourism, research was more focused around ‘smart
cities, smart destinations, smart tourism’, not around the concept or
paradigm of Tourism 4.0.

The term Tourism 4.0 appeared in 2017 in the documents of

governmental bodies, policy makers and professionals in less than ten
countries (Portugal, Finland, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Turkey, Thailand,
Malaysia and Bali). The term was used as ‘an umbrella term’ for
fostering tourism within the particular country, for enabling technological
changes in tourism, for implementing new tourism ‘ecosystem’, etc. Yet,
the technological changes in tourism – digitalisation, big data,
robotisation, artificial intelligence, mobile technologies, virtual reality,
distribute ledger technologies etc. have been the ‘leading thread’ in all
documents related to Tourism 4.0.

Only five papers have been found that have certain characteristics of
scholarly papers on Tourism 4.0, although none of them has been
published in the high-ranking scientific journals on tourism (with journal
citation index). Nevertheless, those papers provide the initial insight on
what Tourism 4.0 might be (a concept, a paradigm) and all five of them
relates it with the key technology enablers of Industry 4.0. It seems that
the Tourism 4.0, explained in the latest manuscript of Starc Peceny et al.
(2019), gives the best outline about Tourism 4.0. Moreover, it is by far
the most communicated on the Internet and the one that connects
academia with other stakeholders in the ‘real-life’ tourism. The paper
indicates similarities between the concept of Industry 4.0 and Tourism
4.0, particularly in the field of key technology enablers. On the other
hand, Tourism 4.0 encompasses the particularities of the tourism sector:
service nature of the tourism outputs (not tangible products), co-creation
of the tourism services by customers, high urge for customisation of
services, etc.

The selected examples of practical use of technology enablers for

Tourism 4.0 in different tourism sectors indicate that tourism has already
been deeply following the steps of Industry 4.0. However, due to the
diversity of tourism businesses and the nature of their output, the scope
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

and the scale of new technologies in tourism, it is slightly different from

the one in Industry 4.0.

It is suggested that by 2030, AI might contribute up to EUR 13.33 trillion

to the global economy (Busquets, 2019) and that digitalisation in travel | 45
might create up to USD 305 billion of value until 2025 (World Economic
Forum, 2017). If these predictions are correct, technology might become
the top driver in tourism.

There are a few limitations related to this research. The first one is
subjectivity of the researcher, which might commonly accompany the
selecting and processing the non-numerical data for content analysis.
This argument might be related to the collection process and analysis of
data for providing the answer to the third research question. As all
available sources on the Internet (according to the researcher’s
knowledge) were included for getting the relevant data for answering the
first and the second research question, there might be less limitation
related to this part of the research.

The second limitation relates to the limited number of data available on

the research topics and their quality. In academia, the kind of sources,
used in this research, might be characterised by the term ‘grey literature’
or papers that are ‘more driven by the practice than research’.

Thirdly, the topic of this research might be labelled ‘non-academic’.

However, the history of research gives evident examples of how certain
topics or subjects do not become interesting for academic research at
once, but within the course of a longer period of time. They depend on
individual academic interest and trends, on policy of editors of scientific
journals, on repeating and reinforcement, etc. (Rangus & Brumen,
2016).

Following the example of Industry 4.0 and considering the results of this
study, it is suggested that Tourism 4.0 should find its place in academic
research. Thus, further research on this subject is needed to
conceptualise the Tourism 4.0 and, primarily, to clarify the difference
between Tourism and ‘smart’ tourism.
Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 3

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