Impact of Industry 4.0 on Sustainable Tourism

Innovative modern technologies are utilised in the hospitality and tourist industry to attract prospective consumers. Travel vlogs have emerged as a type of visual travel blog which includes information regarding tourist destinations, accommodation, cuisine, touristic activities, mode of accessibility, etc. The current study aims to investigate the influence of vlogger credibility on triggering the tourist intention to visit an eco-tourism destination.

The present study is a quantitative study, and it was conducted by surveying 218 respondents. A structured, close-ended and self-administrated questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents.

The findings indicated that vlogger trustworthiness, expertise and attractiveness significantly impact Bangladeshi tourists' intention towards visiting an eco-tourist destination.

The present study has several theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, the research framework illustrated how the vloggers' trustworthiness, expertise and attractiveness on Bangladeshi tourists' visit intention to eco-tourist destinations. Practically, tourism industry practitioners, particularly destination marketers, will get benefit from the present study.

Technology is an important factor contributing to the economic development of countries. In the context of the 4th industrial revolution, a country's success lies in its ability to grasp and absorb the level of technology into production and economic development. This aims of this research are to evaluate the impact of the tourism and technological contribution on economic growth in East Asian countries in the period of 2010–2019.

This research uses the feasible generalised least squares (FGLS) to revise the diagnostic problems and other advanced techniques to check the robustness; the research results confirm that there is no impact between tourism and economic growth.

The main driving force behind economic comes from: technological contribution, financial development and foreign direct investment inflows.

The research confirms that there is a significant and negative relationship between exchange rate and economic growth.

This chapter aims to highlight the existing applications and future prospects of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the tourist business. In addition, this chapter investigates the obstacles in using AI in the Indian tourist industry.

To achieve the study's aims, both primary and secondary data are used. Using secondary sources, desk research was conducted to investigate the existing uses and future prospects of AI application in the global tourism industry. In addition, qualitative interviews with 25 executives in the Indian tourist business were undertaken to study the obstacles to using AI in the Indian tourism industry.

The research found that the applications of AI in the worldwide tourist business are extensive. Nonetheless, corporations are actively using AI-based technology to improve the customer experience via chatbots, intelligent forecasting and smart, tailored travel experiences. The qualitative interviews found that the implementation of AI technology in the Indian tourist industry is hindered by budgetary restrictions, knowledge constraints and barriers relating to human resources.

The use of AI in the tourism business may significantly improve the client experience. As a consequence, the use of AI-based chatbots and intelligent travel aides is growing exponentially. The research examined the many uses of AI in the worldwide tourist industry as well as the obstacles associated with the deployment of AI in the Indian tourism industry.

This research aims to explore the potential of big data technology for sustainable management and investigate its impact on tourism. Its goal is to obtain meaningful results related to sustainable tourism to understand better how big data technology plays a role in decision-making by looking at it through the lens of various studies.

A systematic review, which is a qualitative method, was used in this study. The analysis was conducted using secondary data from the Web of Science Core Collections databases.

Big data technology has many economic benefits for businesses, but it also has managerial benefits such as forecasting, decision-making and tracking human and machine behaviour. Furthermore, big data technology offers sustainability benefits such as resource efficiency, preventive quality systems, carbon reduction and environmentally friendly production.

Big data's capabilities enable businesses to make more informed business decisions, improve overall business performance and contribute to achieving various SDGs. Big data, which aids in developing smart and sustainable tourism in the tourism sector, assists tourism managers in making economically, socially and environmentally sound decisions.

This chapter aims to provide a comprehensive overview of virtual tourism and its potential contribution to sustainable development in the tourism industry.

In this chapter, a qualitative approach is used to analyse relevant documents and resources to explore the relationship between virtual tourism and sustainability.

The findings of this study indicate that virtual tourism has numerous applications in the tourism industry, with evident potential for the future. Furthermore, this research identifies virtual tourism as a promising alternative for sustainable tourism, offering the potential to address key sustainability issues in the field.

This chapter adds to the existing literature by examining the link between virtual tourism and sustainability, highlighting the potential of virtual tourism as an alternative to traditional sustainable tourism practices. The insights generated from this study can inform the practices of both academics and practitioners in the tourism industry, promoting more sustainable and responsible tourism practices.

The aim of the study is to explore the adoptions of augmented reality and virtual reality used by hotels in terms of increasing room sales and reaching out to potential clients. Mobile technology is an exceedingly important tool for hotels to provide booking-related information and also creates a great opportunity for innovative services and experiences for customers.

Based on extensive literature, study examines how the augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are important in the selling of hotel rooms and providing an innovative experience to guests while selecting and booking of hotel rooms.

The contribution of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) is to discuss the increasingly significant role in the selling of hotel rooms. This chapter deals with the mobile technology to provide an opportunity and a platform to hotel management as well as guests.

In order to fully comprehend the level to which hotel guests accept the use of these technologies for hotel selection, this study focuses on mobile technologies, such as smartphone applications. Since mobile technology has space for growth and will fundamentally alter the way that hotels are now managed.

Scholars have increasingly researched on how the uprise of Technologies 4.0 will alter the way in which the tourism destinations, the hospitality and tourism sector will operate. Research points out to the fact that the massive digital transformation can lead to a human-centric experience design perspective which is against the principles of tourism sustainable development. In fact, one of today's challenges is predicting how destinations can use immersive digital experiences like metaverse to instill sustainable behaviours. Bearing that in mind, in this chapter, one first explores the concept of metaverse in general and after in the context of tourism destinations management organisations, showing that metaverse that seeks to turn imagination into reality using a panoply of technologies should be seen as the perfect mean for sustainable tourism.

The study proposes a conceptual framework to create an understanding of metaverse experiences envisioning sustainable practices.

Finally, one identifies research gaps and proposes an agenda with the potential of benefiting destination's management organisations. Furthermore, it was our intent to identify opportunities and challenges involving the use of metaverse with sustainable ends by tourism destination management organisations.

This study assumes that metaverse can be used by destination management organisations to educate potential ‘tourists’ by providing to them innovative educational environments where they can ‘live’ all sorts of non-human-centric sustainable experiences. With that intent, a model for the implementation of metaverse was created with its foundations on current experiments happening worldwide.

This chapter examines how Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0) influences shape and reshapes the tourism industry. Tourism 4.0 technology enables user engagement with a system, improvement of the real tourist experience and the development of new approaches to influence behaviour change and even long-term user transformation.

Using an in-depth review of existing data, this chapter explains IR 4.0 and its integration into the tourism industry, especially on tourist behaviour.

Although technology integrates very slowly into the tourism industry, its phase of integration, especially Industry 4.0, is highly evident. Technology proved that it could enhance products and services in tourism and with its optimal use it can sustainably integrate into the tourism industry.

Service is still the keyword for tourism, and at a certain level, services are integrated into the tourism industry for standardisation and consistency. The recent global pandemic paves the way for several alternatives to integrate technology into the services.

This chapter conceptualises a link between Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0), big data, data science and sustainable tourism.

The author adopts a grounded theory and conceptual approach to endeavour in this exploratory research.

The outcome shows a significant rise of big data in the tourism sector under three major dimensions, i.e. business, governance and research. And, some exemplary evidence of institutions promoting the use of big data and data science for sustainable tourism has been discussed.

The conceptualised interlinkage of concepts like IR 4.0, big data, data science and sustainable development provides a valuable knowledge resource to policy-makers, researchers, businesses and students.