Prelims

Half Title Page

Robots, Artificial Intelligence, and Service Automation in Travel, Tourism and Hospitality

Series Page

PRAISE FOR ROBOTS, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND SERVICE AUTOMATION IN TRAVEL, TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY

This is the very first book that focuses on robots, artifical intelligence and automation technologies (RAISA) in tourism and does this from a social science perspective. It comprehensively covers the theoretical problems of RAISA adoption in tourism, principles of service automation, attitudes towards robots, impacts of RAISA on business processes and competitiveness, and the use of chatbots. Furthermore, it shows the practical issues that arrise from the application of RAISA technologies in various tourism sectors such as hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, tourist information centres, events and museums. What I find particularly valuable is that the book delves deep into the economic aspects of RAISA technologies in tourism - a problem which has been quite neglected in research. Numerous photographs and figures are used to visualise authors’ ideas. The book is valuable for practitioners, researchers, and students.

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis

Head of Department of Tourism and Hospitality, Bournemouth University, UK

This book is a welcomed addition to the travel, tourism, and hospitality literature. It discusses a timely and increasingly important issue of robots, artificial intelligence, and service automation and provides the readers with the most comprehensive collection of knowledge on these topics. The book looks at the issue from both theoretical as well as practical perspectives and provides a wide selection of current examples. With contributions from more than 30 authors from all over the world, this book is worth reading not just for tourism students, academics and practitioners, but also for anyone in service industries. Tourism and hospitality will drastically transform as the technologies discussed in this book develops, but so will many other service fields. Other service industries can also learn from the various artificial intelligence, service automation and robotic issues explored in this book.

Juho Pesonen, PhD

Head of e-tourism research, University of Eastern Finland

The book provides theoretical underpinning and practical evidence of the application and impacts of robots, artificial intelligence and service automation (RAISA) in various tourism sectors including hotels, restaurants, museums, events and tourism information centres. The book includes chapters contributed by international scholars, all recognised in their own field. The book chapters discuss the implications of RAISA from both the tourism demand and supply perspective such as technology adoption, tourists’ reactions and attitude towards RAISE, operators’ soft and hard benefits and costs. The book is a valuable reading for tourism scholars, students and professionals alike.

Professor Marianna Sigala

Director of the Centre for Tourism and Leisure Management (CTLM),

University of South Australia Business School, Australia

The book embraces the frontiers of robot development in hospitality and tourism, which can deliver useful insights to both academic researchers and university students. This book takes readers on a modern and advanced journey to conceptual frameworks of robotrelated technologies and their applications to hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, tourist information centers, and other related fields. It is a must-read primer for anyone who would like to understand the latest changes brought by robots to the hotel and tourism industry. This book indeed does a good job to start the topic with conceptual frameworks, connecting theory with principles and practice.

Rob Law, PhD, CHE

Professor of Technology Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China

Title Page

Robots, Artificial Intelligence, and Service Automation in Travel, Tourism and Hospitality

Edited by

STANISLAV IVANOV

Varna University of Management, Bulgaria

CRAIG WEBSTER

Ball State University, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2019

Copyright © 2019 Emerald Publishing Limited

Reprints and permissions service

Contact: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78756-688-0 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78756-687-3 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78756-689-7 (Epub)

Dedication Page

To our loving families and our future robotic colleagues S.I. and C.W.

Contents

List of Tables

List of Figures

About the Contributors

Bilal Aslam is a PhD student in Marketing at the University of Jyväskylä School of Business and Economics, Finland. His research interests include digital marketing/advertising, display advertising, mobile advertising, sponsored search advertising, programmatic buying, and artificial intelligence. He has extensive industry experience in a variety of marketing roles in various companies. To his last position, he was Brand Manager in a fashion retail company. His most recent publication has appeared in Telematics and Informatics.

Katerina Berezina, PhD, CHTP, CRME, CHIA, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Hospitality Management at the University of Mississippi. Dr Berezina’s research interests are in the areas of information technology in hospitality and tourism, electronic distribution, and revenue management. She serves as the Managing Editor of the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology and holds a Secretary position on the board of the International Hospitality Information Technology Association. Dr Berezina is also a Coordinator of two university programs that integrate real-life hotel software into the hospitality curriculum: innRoad University Program and M3 Link University Program.

Maria Francisca Blasco López is Dean of Commerce and Tourism Faculty and Titular Professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She has a PhD in Marketing and has a degree in Communication Studies. She is a researcher in RETO H2020 Program in Development of Neuromarketing Metrics. She is Director of Postgraduate Programs: Master in Marketing Management and Master in Neuromarketing and Consumer Behaviour and Co-author of Marketing del Turismo Cultural (ESIC, 2016 ) and Employer Branding (Pearson, 2018) between others books. She is Editor at Journal Cuadernos de EstudiosEmpresariales and Associate Editor at Journal of Business and Management Science. Her research interests are tourism marketing, consumer behavior, neuromarketing, employer branding, and technologies in marketing published in journals like Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Tourism Review, Physiology & Behavior, Soft Computing, BRQ Business Research Quarterly, Procedia Computer Research, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Universia Business Review, etc.

Ryan Caldwell is a Software Engineer at Raytheon Company in State College, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Slippery Rock University with a Bachelor of Science in Computing, specializing in Computer Science.

Olena Ciftci, MS, CHIA, is a Doctoral student in the Department of Nutrition and Hospitality Management at the University of Mississippi. She holds two Master’s degrees: one in Mathematics with a minor in Informatics and another one in Hospitality Management. Prior to joining a doctoral program at the University of Mississippi, Ms. Ciftci worked as a Hospitality Data Analyst in the M3 Center for Hospitality Technology and Innovation at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee. Her research interests include information technology in hospitality and tourism, big data analytics, revenue management, and consumer behavior.

Cihan Cobanoglu, PhD, CHTP, is the McKibbon Endowed Chair Professor in the College of Hospitality and Tourism Leadership (CHTL) at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee, who also serves as the Director of the M3 Center for Hospitality Technology and Innovation and Coordinator of International Programs for CHTL. He is a renowned hospitality and tourism technology expert. His research involves the use and impact of technology in the hospitality industry. Dr Cobanoglu is the Editor of the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Technology, the Journal of Global Business Insights, Co-Editor of the Journal of Global Education and Research, and Associate Editor of Tourism Review. He is also currently serving as the President of Association of North America Higher Education International.

Hristina Filipova is a PhD student at the University of Economics – Varna, Bulgaria, in the Department of Economics and Organization of Tourism. She holds a Bachelor degree in International Economic Relations from the University of Economics – Varna and a Master degree in Management of Taste and Luxury Goods from the University of Reims Champagne – Ardenne, France. Her main research interests are in the field of consumer behavior in tourism, marketing, cross-cultural relations, restaurant management, tangible and intangible cultural heritage, and souvenirs.

Alexander Gessinger is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Computing at Slippery Rock University. His research interests are in robotics, vision processing algorithms using artificial intelligence, machine learning methodologies, and implementing benchmarking tools for high performance computing systems.

Ulrike Gretzel is a Senior Fellow at the Center of Public Relations, University of Southern California and serves as the Director of Research at Netnografica, a market research company that extracts insights from online conversations. She received her PhD in Communications from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on the impact of technology on human experiences and the structure of technology-mediated communication. She studies social media marketing and destination marketing, influencer marketing, and the emerging reputation economy. She has also researched the design of intelligent systems in tourism, smart tourism development, technology adoption and non-adoption in tourism organizations, tourism in technological dead zones, and the quest for digital detox experiences. She is frequently acknowledged as one of the most cited authors in tourism.

Galina Ilieva has PhD in Tourism and Master’s degree in English Philology and Tourism. Currently, she works as a Lecturer in English at the College of Tourism in Varna and Front Office Manager in hotel and SPA “Astera” in Golden Sands. She also lectures on marketing in tourism and technology in hospitality services in University of Economics – Varna. Her scientific fields of interest are marketing in tourism and innovative technologies, intercultural communication and encounter staff, gambling tourism, and contemporary forms of tourism. She has participated in a number of research projects such as “The Application of Innovative Technologies in Hotel Service” and “Intercultural communication as a factor for sustainable tourism” funded by the University of Economics Varna, “Update of the National Strategy for Sustainable Development of Tourism in the Republic of Bulgaria 2014–2030” funded by the Ministry of Tourism, and “Research of competitiveness of Varna Municipality as a tourist destination” funded by Municipality of Varna.

Stanislav Ivanov is currently Professor and Vice Rector (Research) at Varna University of Management, Bulgaria (http://www.vum.bg). Professor Ivanov is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Tourism Research (http://ejtr.vumk.eu) and serves in the Editorial boards of over 30 other journals. His research interests include robonomics, robots in tourism/hospitality, revenue management, destination marketing, tourism and economic growth, political issues in tourism, etc. His publications have appeared in a range of academic journals – Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management, Tourism Management Perspectives, International Journal of Revenue Management, Tourism Economics, Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, Journal of Heritage Tourism, Tourism Today, Tourism, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Tourism Planning and Development, International Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Administration, Technology in Society, Journal of Economic Studies, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, South-Eastern Europe Journal of Economics, and other journals.

Maya Ivanova, PhD, is an Associate Professor at Varna University of Management, Bulgaria, Program Director of the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Editorial assistant of European Journal of Tourism Research, member of the Editorial board of Tourism Management Perspectives, and a certified IATA/UFTAA Instructor. Her research interests include: tourism and hospitality management, air transport, tourism intermediaries, and hotel chains. She is a co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Hotel Chain Management (2016).Due to her large practical experience, she works closely with the business as a Consultant and a Trainer.

Michael Karavias received his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Slippery Rock University specializing in parallel computing. He has published on improving the efficiency of Carthagene (“Consensus Clustering: A Resampling-Based Method for Building Radiation Hybrid Maps”), and has received recognition for his work in building automation for increasing efficiency thereby lowering operating costs.

Heikki Karjaluoto is a Professor of Marketing at the University of Jyväskylä School of Business and Economics, Finland. His research interests include customer relationship management, marketing communications, mobile communications, and retail banking. Previous publications have appeared in the Business Strategy and the Environment, Computers in Human Behavior, European Journal of Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, and others.

Velina Kazandzhieva is Associate Professor at the University of Economics – Varna, Bulgaria, in the Department of Economics and Organization of Tourism. Her research interests include tourism management, tourism economics, travel agencies and tour operators, special interest tourism, and e-tourism. Dr Kazandzhieva participated in 10 research projects, four of which as a manager, in the field of: innovative technologies in hotel services, sustainable tourism development, tourist destination competitive advantages, and youth and rural tourism. She is a member of Bulgarian Union of Scientists, Varna Chamber of Tourism, Bulgarian Union of Tour Guides.

Petranka Kelly is a marketing and management professional with a wide-ranging experience including financial services, hospitality, and consumer research. She is passionate about crafting effective and innovative marketing strategies which result in a win–win situation for all parties involved. Her PhD thesis, titled “An interpretivist study of customer self-service technology usage and experiences in the tourism sector,” was completed at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland. She publishes in the area of self-service technologies and the role of customers in co-creating service experiences.

David Lamb is an experienced Senior Academic with management experience of both staff and curriculum. David has extensive lecturing experience at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels with on- and off-campus students. His area of expertise in research and teaching is within the discipline areas of sport events and leisure management. He is an active and competent researcher and is presently involved in a number of research projects, one of which is the application of technology and innovation in event management practice. David has worked as an academic at universities in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. He is presently a Consultant and holds a Senior Adjunct position at the University of Notre Dame in Fremantle, Western Australia.

Jennifer Lawlor is a Lecturer in Strategic Management in the School of Hospitality Management and Tourism at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland. Her research interests include the role of the customer in a service organization, self-service technologies, value co-creation, and organizational change. She has presented a number of competitive conference papers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe in the area of inter-firm collaboration and co-operation and self-service technologies, and has published articles in Personnel Review, International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management, and Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing.

Georgina Lukanova has PhD in Tourism. Currently, she works as an Associated Professor at University of Economics – Varna. She is a Lecturer in Hotel Management, Restaurant Management, Service Management in Tourism, and Franchising in Hospitality. Her scientific fields of interest are management and operations in hospitality, innovative technologies in tourism and hospitality. She has participated in a number of research projects such as “The Application of Innovative Technologies in Hotel Service,” “Application of timeshare in the Bulgarian Black sea coast,” and “Tourist profiling of the municipality” funded by the University of Economics Varna. She also has experience in the hotel’s operations since she has worked in high-class hotels on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast.

Zachariah Miller graduated from American University in Washington, D.C., with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and is currently pursuing a Post-Baccalaureate degree in Computing at Slippery Rock University. He has published on improving query time for large-scale databases using partitioning and high-performance computing. His research interests are in 3D printing, robotics, and vision processing algorithms using artificial intelligence and machine learning methodologies.

Michael Mulvey is President of the Dundalk Institute of Technology. He was previously Director of Academic Affairs and Registrar at the Dublin Institute of Technology.

Jamie Murphy, an Adjunct Professor with the University of Eastern Finland, has given invited/keynote presentations on six continents and taught tourism/hospitality at Essec, Florida State University, and the Lausanne Hotel School and taught marketing at the University of Western Australia. His background includes European Marketing Manager for PowerBar and Greg Lemond Bicycles, Lead Academic for the Google Online Marketing Challenge, restaurateur, F&B manager in Yellowstone National Park, and a PhD from Florida State University. Professor Murphy’s industry and academic experience spans continents and includes hundreds of academic publications and presentations, as well as dozens of New York Times and Wall Street Journal stories. His research focuses on robots, sustainability, MOOCs, and effective Internet use by citizens, businesses, and governments.

Nikola Naumov is a Senior Lecturer in Hospitality and Tourism Management at the Department of Events, Tourism, and Hospitality at University of Northampton, United Kingdom, Visiting Lecturer at ESH Paris Hotel School, France, and Visiting Assistant Professor at Meikai University, Tokyo, Japan. He has undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Tourism and Hospitality Management and a PhD in Human Geography completed at King’s College London. His research interests include cultural and historical geographies of Eastern Europe, critical heritage studies, heritage tourism, service quality in hospitality, and innovation in tourism and hospitality management.

Alfred Ogle is a Researcher and Academic specializing in Hospitality Management and the Services Industry. He runs a research consultancy in Perth, Australia and is a Sessional Academic at Edith Cowan University. An Hotelier in North America and Asia prior to his entry into academia, he enjoys boundary spanning applied research and industry collaboration. His current research interests include hospitality facilities management, environmentally friendly design, sustainability, and service enterprise atmospherics.

Nuria Recuero Virto is Postdoctoral Researcher at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, with a special grant of Santander Bank. She holds a PhD from the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, which also awarded her a Predoctoral Scholarship (2010–2014). She was finalist of FITUR’s awards for best doctoral thesis (2013). Her specific areas of interest are: tourism marketing, employer branding, and neuromarketing. She is Co-author of two books Marketing of Cultural Tourism (ESIC, 2016) and Employer Branding: Manage Talent in 5 Steps (Pearson Education, 2018). She has extensive experience in research – more than 14 papers in international conferences and she has published in different international journals, such as Tourism Review, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, among others. She is the Associate Editor of Cuadernos de Estudios Empresariales. She is Researcher in a national project on Neuromarketing RETO H2020 and in a project on cultural tourism of the Autonomous Community of Madrid.

Jessica Seibert is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Computing at Slippery Rock University. Her research interests are in vision processing algorithms using deep neural networks.

Sam R. Thangiah is Professor and Director of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory of the Computer Science Department in the College of Health, Environment, and Science at Slippery Rock University. His main areas of research are robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and application of evolutionary heuristics to solving vehicle routing and scheduling problems. He has published in IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications, International Conference on Genetic Algorithms, Annals of Operations Research, International Journal of Science and Technology in the Tropics, Lecture Notes in Economic and Mathematical Systems, Journal of Mathematical and Management Sciences, and Central European Journal of Operations Research. He has written book chapters for Application Handbook of Genetic Algorithms, Practical Handbook of Genetic Algorithms and Fusion of Neural Networks, Fuzzy Sets, and Genetic Algorithms. He is also on the board of editors for the Journal of Medical and Health Informatics.

Dandison C. Ukpabi is a PhD student in Marketing at the University of Jyväskylä School of Business and Economics, Finland. His most recent publications have appeared in Telematics and Informatics and in Tourism Management Perspectives. He has presented papers in conferences such as ENTER e-Tourism conference, Bled eConference, and the European Marketing Academy Conference. His research interests are e-tourism, digital marketing and social media, relationship marketing, and marketing strategy.

Abdullah Wahbeh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at College of Health, Environment, and Science. He holds a DSc and MSc in Information Systems from Dakota State University. He worked as an Adjunct Instructor in The College of Business and Information Systems at Dakota State University. Dr Wahbeh serves as a reviewer for a number of conferences such as the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), European Conference on Information Systems, and Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). His research has been presented at many conferences such as HICSS and AMCIS. His current research interests include socio-technical design, systems analysis and design, design science research, healthcare analytics, and mobile health and self-care technologies.

Craig Webster is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management at Ball State University, USA. He has taught at Binghamton University, Ithaca College, the College of Tourism and Hotel Management, and the University of Nicosia. His research interests include the political economy of tourism, public opinion analysis, and human rights. Dr Webster is the Editor-in-Chief of Tourism Today, has published in many peer-reviewed journals internationally, and has co-edited the book Future Tourism: Political, Social, and Economic Challenges (2012), an edited book published by Routledge. He currently teaches courses in Hospitality Management at Ball State University’s Miller College of Business.

Matthew Wherry graduated from Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania, with a Bachelor of Science in Computing specializing in computer science. He is currently working as a Junior Software Developer/Analyst for Premier Comp Solutions.

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank all the authors who submitted their high-quality chapters and made this book possible. Special thanks go to the reviewers of the chapters who provided valuable feedback to improve the manuscripts. They also thank the robotics companies that provided photos and interviews to inform some of the chapters. The publishing team at Emerald provided invaluable support and guidance throughout. Of course, nothing would have been possible without the help of our loving families who lived through this project with us.

Thank you!