Living with COVID-19 and Sustaining a Tourism Recovery—Adopting a Front-Line Collaborative Response between the Tourism Industry and Community Pharmacists

While the COVID-19 pandemic evolves and new variants emerge, destinations and cities look to tourism recovery, cautiously rebooting and re-opening borders. Since the start of the pandemic, dramatic lockdowns have been employed, resulting in dire economic and social consequences to the tourism and hospitality industry and creating the need for a more feasible and sustainable response in the post-pandemic era. Pandemic vigilance and resilience at the societal level have become key in pandemic preparedness. However, due to the complexity of managing COVID-19, no clear cross-disciplinary collaborative framework for tourism recovery has been developed. Cross-sector collaboration to collectively integrate resources, capabilities, and experiences should be prioritised to spearhead tourism recovery plans. With insight on public health, pandemic preparedness, and community access, we hypothesised that cross-industry collaboration between the tourism industry and the pharmacist profession is relevant to the measures adopted for recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. To examine this hypothesis, this study aimed to explore perceptions from key stakeholders in the tourism and the pharmacist sectors on cross-industry collaboration towards COVID-19 management and the “know-how” in developing, adopting, and advancing such a partnership. This exploratory study adopts and advances the ‘Four Cs’ conceptual framework of communication, cooperation, coordination, and collaboration. In terms of our hypothesis, interview responses with tourism executives and CPs confirm the framework’s suitability and the importance of an interdisciplinary collaborative approach between CPs and the tourism sector to craft a sustainable pathway to recovery from COVID-19 and future pandemic measures as borders re-open and international mobility increases. A tourism recovery strategy from this pandemic can occur more judiciously through a collaborative partnership with an extensive network of pharmacists within communities and popular tourism sites, as CPs have valuable healthcare resources and the ability to track and communicate healthcare alerts to tourism destination recovery efforts.

Deep Learning and Machine Learning Techniques for Analyzing Travelers' Online Reviews

Social media platforms play a tremendous role in the tourism and hospitality industry. Social media platforms are increasingly becoming a source of information. The complexity and increasing size of tourists' online data make it difficult to extract meaningful insights using traditional models. Therefore, this scoping and comprehensive review aimed to analyze machine learning and deep learning models applied to model tourism data. The study revealed that deep learning and machine learning models are used for forecasting and predicting tourism demand using data from search query data, Google trends, and social media platforms. Also, the study revealed that data-driven models can assist managers and policymakers in mapping and segmenting tourism hotspots and attractions and predicting revenue that is likely to be generated, exploring targeting marketing, segmenting tourists based on their spending patterns, lifestyle, and age group. However, hybrid deep learning models such as inceptionV3, MobilenetsV3, and YOLOv4 are not yet explored in the tourism and hospitality industry.

Importance of ICT Advancement and Culture of Adaptation in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry for Developing Countries

The influence of ICT on tourism and hospitality is related to the facilitation of contact with stakeholders, acting as an effective distribution channel, and providing an effective forum for marketing, among other things. Tourism and hospitality are heavily reliant on information and communication technology in developing countries as well as in the developed nations. ICT has had a major effect on this market. The primary goal of this research is to identify the difference in ICT advancement and adaptation between developed and developing countries, as well as to determine how developing countries can benefit from it and make recommendations. This research was conducted using a qualitative approach. Using various types of literature such as research papers, articles, and books, this study highlights and scrutinizes the significance of ICT and how these actions contribute to the tourism and hospitality sector to raise awareness among academicians, researchers, tourism businesses, and government officials about the effectiveness of ICT applications in tourism and hospitality.

Emotional Labor in the Tourism Industry

The chapter reviews the key concepts, definitions, individual and organizational antecedents, and individual and organizational outcomes of emotional labour (EL) in the tourism industry. The application of the concept in research and practice is discussed along with the implications. The theoretical domains of convergence and divergence are identified. key challenges and applications of EL with airlines cabin crew, restaurant service staff, and hotel industry frontline staff are identified and discussed. A systematic review of literature on EL in tourism is undertaken followed by critical appraisal of the implications of EL for HR practices in the tourism and hospitality industry.

The Role of Social Media Marketing in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry

Social networking is a series of Web 2.0-based applications that connect, communicate, and exchange ideas, views, perspectives, knowledge, and relationships among internet users worldwide. In the age of social media, businesses' marketing tactics have shifted from bringing products out to encouraging customers to buy things into their stores to foster a more engaging and mutually beneficial relationship. It is a significant player in the online tourism sector since it is a common and influential information source for tourists looking for destination-specific information. This study was conducted qualitatively, and this illustrates and discusses the role of social media marketing and how it works in the tourism and hospitality industries, with an emphasis on Bangladesh in particular, using a range of literature, including academic articles, journals, and books. This study would educate academics, researchers, politicians in tourism industries, and government officials about the importance of social media marketing.

Digitalisation in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry

This chapter aims to review the evolution of digitalisation and its effects on the tourism and hospitality industry. A holistic perspective is adopted providing a review and analysis of digitalisation in the tourism and hospitality sector comprising both supply and demand sides for the originality of the content. The supply side, as well as the demand side, is analysed through a literature review of academic resources, policy documents published by international organisations and related websites. The existing literature and the industrial practices are reviewed to find out and classify the state of proposal and implementation of innovative technologies and the trends followed by suppliers and the demand side to use them. Furthermore, the effects of digitalisation on managerial processes on the supply side (actors, entrepreneurs, businesses, destinations) and decisional and behavioural processes on the demand side (consumer, tourists) are taken into consideration to provide a holistic perspective of digitalisation and its effects on the given sector.

Artificial Intelligence and Automation

Transformation is being observed in almost every sphere of life. Industries accept technological advancements by accepting artificial intelligence and automation to improve the quality of products and services and to have errorless processes. The industry has a large number of human resources, and it functions on the concept of human touch, also known as the essence of hospitality; however, with the advent of artificial intelligence, fear of losing the human resources and human touch in the industry is paramount. The authors of the chapter detail the significance of the human touch in the tourism and hospitality industry. The chapter also highlights the usage of artificial intelligence in tourism through predictive analysis, travel experiences through virtual assistance, and the digital transformation tourism and hospitality have observed mainly in the coronavirus pandemic. It ends with a discussion on artificial intelligence in tourism and hospitality as support system for human resources or enhanced service quality and customer experience.

Smart Tourism in Destinations

Business enterprises have gained leverage through artificial intelligence (AI) in the tourism and hospitality industry. The roots of the concept and its link with big data environment has drawn a lot of interest from researchers. The employment of technology has increased economic viability of tourism enterprises due to the efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency it creates for tourism and hospitality organizations. The chapter views the emergence of smart tourism in destination management in accordance with sustainable tourism concept and evaluates the issue both in supply side and demand side of tourism. Moreover, it aims to discuss the use of such a paradigm. If the destinations have a viable ground for motivational change to adapt, this philosophy will also be high lightened. For this reason, value creation will be evaluated in accordance with cost-benefit assessment.

An Exploratory Study of Consumers’ Travel-Related Concerns About COVID-19

This study explores consumers’ travel-related concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic via YouTube comments. Drawing on the risk perception theory and adopting a Markov Chain approach, this study demonstrates the topics that consumers discussed and empirically illustrates perceived risk in the tourism and hospitality industry via sentiment analysis across four sectors: recreation and entertainment, accommodation, transportation, and food and beverages. Results indicate discussion regarding travel-related videos is not only limited to travel-related topics but also includes a broad perspective of social, political, and historical topics. For instance, hotels have a new function as quarantine facilities with effective disease control procedures and social responsibility for public health. Additionally, health, performance, financial, social, and psychological risks are identified. Whereas the presence of travelers is typically regarded as positive, travelers during the crisis are regarded as “irresponsible” and “selfish” individuals who spread the virus and endanger public health. This shift of perception calls for both the industry and academia at large to educate people about the importance of disease control and rebuild travelers’ image and reputation. Recommendations to reduce the perceived risk in each sector are also provided.

Emerging Technologies and their Impact on the Future of Tourism and Hospitality Industry

The evolution in technology has become now a strategic choice to develop every organization and its existence in the future. The tourism industry is not an exception. This study highlights the development of technologies and the impact of their integration in the field of tourism. Furthermore, it discusses their influence on the quality of the touristic products. This study focuses on how does the emerging technology can improve the tourism industry, and the most usable information systems that are used in this domain. The purposed model has been designed to investigate the effect of adopting the technology among tourism agencies. A sample of 72 tourism agencies in Jordan has been surveyed and discussed by using structural equation modeling. The results reveal that efficiency, productivity, profitability, effectiveness, and marketing are improved after employing new technologies. Therefore, it can be concluded that the integration of technology in tourism is unavoidable for the continued existence of service providers in the market.