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Based on the fact that information is nowadays commonly spread by means of digital media, poor access to any kind of digital information and communication technology can provoke severe information gaps. This paper aims at evaluating the impacts of the global digital divide on the tourism industry, taking into account various definitions and present...
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Context 1
... country of residence (e.g. Russia, South Africa) or participation in specific projects addressing the digital divide. To describe the working background of all experts in detail would go beyond the scope of that paper, though. The interviews were conducted as semi-structured personal interviews. Considering the physical distance to some of the experts (e.g. South Africa), the second option of detailed online questionnaires was utilised. The interviews included general questions about the digital divide as well as specific questions addressing the interviewees’ fields of expertise. The key issues which were addressed in the interviews are the following: the expert’s understanding of the digital divide, the digital divide’s influencers and reasons, the digital divide’s impact on society, the digital divide’s impact on tourism, possible strategies leading towards a closure of the digital divide, the relevance of the topic in the interviewee’s respective field of expertise. The analysis is conducted in a comparison and discussion of the diverse viewpoints of the experts. In this chapter the outcome of the expert interviews will be summarised. Eleven out of the twelve experts were aware of the global digital divide’s existence. They jointly agreed that the mere physical access to computers and the internet is not the primary reason for the digital divide. Further factors such as education, income, language barriers the country’s economy and general situation and nationality were mentioned. Only moderate level of agreement could be identified with the product distribution cycle being the reason for the divide, with three experts completely disagreeing and five only agreeing to a certain extent, once their attention had explicitly been drawn to this point. As far as the digital divide’s impact on global society is concerned, different viewpoints were identified, reaching from further separation of society into haves and have-nots, over increasing the poverty gap and hence global instability and psychological stress due to feeling of exclusion. The potential threat for developing countries of being unable to catch up to the lead of the more privileged societies and as a result the further widening of the digital divide was seen controversially amongst the interviewees. Five of them agreed to a certain extent with this theory based on the argumentation that the rapid changes require constant adaptation to the increased complexity of technical devices. One agreed partly that rising complexity does increase the digital divide on the one hand, on the other hand improving usability lowers it simultaneously. The latter argument was supported by other five interviewees stating that now excluded societies will not necessarily encounter difficulties in using new devices due to higher user friendliness, As far as the impact of the digital divide on tourism is concerned, the assumption of the lack of relevant information spread resulting in an information and knowledge gap amongst potential clients was confirmed, since ten interviewees agreed to the digital divide resulting in some kind of information and knowledge divide. Especially amongst the eight tourism experts the awareness of the digital divide’s threats for the tourism industry was high; seven of them agreed that the digital divide has impacts on tourism, with reduced information spread resulting in destinations’ failure to address potential target markets. One pointed out that the digital divide is also about information control, since search engines are able to dictate what users find, and this has influences on marketing expenses of tourism businesses and tourism research. Agreement to the divide having influences on tourism was also found amongst three of the other four interviewees. As far as tourism’s importance for developing countries is concerned, the two m main experts in this field agreed strongly that tourism is an important economic driver for emerging countries, ries, and that the usage of ICTs is highly valuable. Since ince availability of online information is a prerequisite for attracting visitors from industrialised countries a decrease in the digital divide might lead to an increase in tourism spending and thus to an amelioration of the overall economic situation – a viewpoint which is supported by four interviewees. The framework for the digital information and knowledge gap by Minghetti M inghetti and Buhalis (2009) suggested the division of the supply s upply and demand side into the four type of access clusters (high, upper, medium and low digital access). This paper proposes to amend this framework to suit the hierarchy of the introduced multiple divides amongst different stages of digital development and nd the relation between the digital and knowledge divide, and further to assess potential outcomes of this chain reaction with the purpose of ultimately developing a model of the digital divide’s main impact on the tourism industry. Fig. 2 illustrates the amended framework. As can be seen in fig. 2 any kind of digital divide on the one side results in an information divide on the other side. For instance, a destination which is affected by any of the multiple divides divide is unable to spread information to a demand market market. Hence ence the demand market is facing an a information and knowledge divide about this precise destination. On the other hand, digitally less developed markets cannot communicate municate with digitalised destinations (again an information supply gap). In n this case the latter lacks acks knowledge about the former. former This his conglomerate of divides at the end causes communication gaps which become more severe, the larger the digital and information mation / knowledge divide respectively are. The digital communication munication matrix is proposed to classify the communicatio communication’s intensity and its likelihood to happen between tourism demand and tourism supply markets influenced by one or more of the multiple digital divides, , based on the division of the two sides into the previously presented stages of digital development. development For simplification reasons the stage of “No ICT” has not been included into the matrix, since it obviously leads t to no digital interaction. The darker colour r in the bottom left areas of matrix shows a large communication gap with no or hardly any communication taking place between the demand and the supply side, side closing sing as the shading turns brighter towards the top right ri areas, as can be seen in fig. 3. Overall, sixteen different clusters have been identified. As can easily be seen in fig. 3, communication improves parallel to the digital development of both sides. It further results, as shown by the slight incline of the shading, that digital communication is better, etter, if the supply side is more developed than the demand side. This is based on the fact that higher digital development, development i.e. more sophisticated skills as well as more positive attitude, enhances the production producti on of high usability web pages and implementation of search engine optimisation tools on the supply side, supporting findability of online information also amongst less skilled users. On the other hand, if the demand side is more developed compared to the supply side, sophisticated users will be frustrated if finding low quality homepages and rather search for information on sites built according to their expectance. The digital communication matrix is suggested to be used for educational purposes on the supply side, especially targeting emerging destinations or digitally underdeveloped DMOs, to illustrate and communicate the impacts of digital exclusion and low digital access, and to convey the effects on their interaction with the demand side. It can be used to exemplify the consequences of insufficient engagement in ICTs on communication with potential clients, resulting ultimately in financial losses due to an overall smaller target market. This might reduce change resistance amongst tourism company owners and employees as well as within destinations and foster ICT distribution. Further, the matrix can be used to develop digital communication strategies as it shows precisely in which direction a destination needs to evolve to target their desired market, reach a broader potential market and it hence supports the determination of strategic goals for online communication and promotion. Provided that in further research benchmarks are included into the matrix, it may also be used by tourism companies and destinations to benchmark themselves amongst their competitors and support them in strategic decisions. Based on a literature review as well as expert interviews the phenomenon of the global digital divide has been scrutinized, various reasons for the divide’s existence and possible consequences have been presented. A hierarchical structure of four multiple digital divides (digital access, digital usage, digital skills and digital attitude divide) between five stages of digital development consisting the global digital divide was deduced and put into relation with the continuum from information to knowledge gap. This chain reaction of different divides was ultimately embedded into the tourism context, taking into consideration the inputs as provided by the interviewees. The analysis of the empirical and hermeneutical results lead to an extension of the currently single existing scientific framework of the digital divide in tourism as introduced by Minghetti and Buhalis in 2009, considering all of the above and showing the digital divide’s consequence on digital interaction between the tourism demand and supply side. The final results of this paper are shown in the model of the digital communication matrix, which is an educational tool for digitally less developed destinations, providing them with an illustration of communication problems ...
Context 2
... participation in specific projects addressing the digital divide. To describe the working background of all experts in detail would go beyond the scope of that paper, though. The interviews were conducted as semi-structured personal interviews. Considering the physical distance to some of the experts (e.g. South Africa), the second option of detailed online questionnaires was utilised. The interviews included general questions about the digital divide as well as specific questions addressing the interviewees’ fields of expertise. The key issues which were addressed in the interviews are the following: the expert’s understanding of the digital divide, the digital divide’s influencers and reasons, the digital divide’s impact on society, the digital divide’s impact on tourism, possible strategies leading towards a closure of the digital divide, the relevance of the topic in the interviewee’s respective field of expertise. The analysis is conducted in a comparison and discussion of the diverse viewpoints of the experts. In this chapter the outcome of the expert interviews will be summarised. Eleven out of the twelve experts were aware of the global digital divide’s existence. They jointly agreed that the mere physical access to computers and the internet is not the primary reason for the digital divide. Further factors such as education, income, language barriers the country’s economy and general situation and nationality were mentioned. Only moderate level of agreement could be identified with the product distribution cycle being the reason for the divide, with three experts completely disagreeing and five only agreeing to a certain extent, once their attention had explicitly been drawn to this point. As far as the digital divide’s impact on global society is concerned, different viewpoints were identified, reaching from further separation of society into haves and have-nots, over increasing the poverty gap and hence global instability and psychological stress due to feeling of exclusion. The potential threat for developing countries of being unable to catch up to the lead of the more privileged societies and as a result the further widening of the digital divide was seen controversially amongst the interviewees. Five of them agreed to a certain extent with this theory based on the argumentation that the rapid changes require constant adaptation to the increased complexity of technical devices. One agreed partly that rising complexity does increase the digital divide on the one hand, on the other hand improving usability lowers it simultaneously. The latter argument was supported by other five interviewees stating that now excluded societies will not necessarily encounter difficulties in using new devices due to higher user friendliness, As far as the impact of the digital divide on tourism is concerned, the assumption of the lack of relevant information spread resulting in an information and knowledge gap amongst potential clients was confirmed, since ten interviewees agreed to the digital divide resulting in some kind of information and knowledge divide. Especially amongst the eight tourism experts the awareness of the digital divide’s threats for the tourism industry was high; seven of them agreed that the digital divide has impacts on tourism, with reduced information spread resulting in destinations’ failure to address potential target markets. One pointed out that the digital divide is also about information control, since search engines are able to dictate what users find, and this has influences on marketing expenses of tourism businesses and tourism research. Agreement to the divide having influences on tourism was also found amongst three of the other four interviewees. As far as tourism’s importance for developing countries is concerned, the two m main experts in this field agreed strongly that tourism is an important economic driver for emerging countries, ries, and that the usage of ICTs is highly valuable. Since ince availability of online information is a prerequisite for attracting visitors from industrialised countries a decrease in the digital divide might lead to an increase in tourism spending and thus to an amelioration of the overall economic situation – a viewpoint which is supported by four interviewees. The framework for the digital information and knowledge gap by Minghetti M inghetti and Buhalis (2009) suggested the division of the supply s upply and demand side into the four type of access clusters (high, upper, medium and low digital access). This paper proposes to amend this framework to suit the hierarchy of the introduced multiple divides amongst different stages of digital development and nd the relation between the digital and knowledge divide, and further to assess potential outcomes of this chain reaction with the purpose of ultimately developing a model of the digital divide’s main impact on the tourism industry. Fig. 2 illustrates the amended framework. As can be seen in fig. 2 any kind of digital divide on the one side results in an information divide on the other side. For instance, a destination which is affected by any of the multiple divides divide is unable to spread information to a demand market market. Hence ence the demand market is facing an a information and knowledge divide about this precise destination. On the other hand, digitally less developed markets cannot communicate municate with digitalised destinations (again an information supply gap). In n this case the latter lacks acks knowledge about the former. former This his conglomerate of divides at the end causes communication gaps which become more severe, the larger the digital and information mation / knowledge divide respectively are. The digital communication munication matrix is proposed to classify the communicatio communication’s intensity and its likelihood to happen between tourism demand and tourism supply markets influenced by one or more of the multiple digital divides, , based on the division of the two sides into the previously presented stages of digital development. development For simplification reasons the stage of “No ICT” has not been included into the matrix, since it obviously leads t to no digital interaction. The darker colour r in the bottom left areas of matrix shows a large communication gap with no or hardly any communication taking place between the demand and the supply side, side closing sing as the shading turns brighter towards the top right ri areas, as can be seen in fig. 3. Overall, sixteen different clusters have been identified. As can easily be seen in fig. 3, communication improves parallel to the digital development of both sides. It further results, as shown by the slight incline of the shading, that digital communication is better, etter, if the supply side is more developed than the demand side. This is based on the fact that higher digital development, development i.e. more sophisticated skills as well as more positive attitude, enhances the production producti on of high usability web pages and implementation of search engine optimisation tools on the supply side, supporting findability of online information also amongst less skilled users. On the other hand, if the demand side is more developed compared to the supply side, sophisticated users will be frustrated if finding low quality homepages and rather search for information on sites built according to their expectance. The digital communication matrix is suggested to be used for educational purposes on the supply side, especially targeting emerging destinations or digitally underdeveloped DMOs, to illustrate and communicate the impacts of digital exclusion and low digital access, and to convey the effects on their interaction with the demand side. It can be used to exemplify the consequences of insufficient engagement in ICTs on communication with potential clients, resulting ultimately in financial losses due to an overall smaller target market. This might reduce change resistance amongst tourism company owners and employees as well as within destinations and foster ICT distribution. Further, the matrix can be used to develop digital communication strategies as it shows precisely in which direction a destination needs to evolve to target their desired market, reach a broader potential market and it hence supports the determination of strategic goals for online communication and promotion. Provided that in further research benchmarks are included into the matrix, it may also be used by tourism companies and destinations to benchmark themselves amongst their competitors and support them in strategic decisions. Based on a literature review as well as expert interviews the phenomenon of the global digital divide has been scrutinized, various reasons for the divide’s existence and possible consequences have been presented. A hierarchical structure of four multiple digital divides (digital access, digital usage, digital skills and digital attitude divide) between five stages of digital development consisting the global digital divide was deduced and put into relation with the continuum from information to knowledge gap. This chain reaction of different divides was ultimately embedded into the tourism context, taking into consideration the inputs as provided by the interviewees. The analysis of the empirical and hermeneutical results lead to an extension of the currently single existing scientific framework of the digital divide in tourism as introduced by Minghetti and Buhalis in 2009, considering all of the above and showing the digital divide’s consequence on digital interaction between the tourism demand and supply side. The final results of this paper are shown in the model of the digital communication matrix, which is an educational tool for digitally less developed destinations, providing them with an illustration of communication problems with potential target markets owed to their insufficient ICT ...
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Only social sciences-based techniques have been used in the numerous publications on the digital divide. A relatively small number of studies have also exclusively examined the digital gap from a philosophical and ethical perspective. An unequal, undemocratic, and unfair society are all products of the digital divide. In addition to raising significant discussion on digital justice, knowledge, power, democracy, globalisation, and information capitalism in Africa, this work raises ethical and moral issues and seeks to address them. This study's justification is that globalisation and information technology go hand in hand. This essay will also go into great detail about how all of these factors relate to information capitalism and how they influence Third World countries, particularly Africa. This research falls under the purview of digital culture and employs textual and critical analysis as philosophical approaches. Résumé Seules des techniques basées sur les sciences sociales ont été utilisées dans les nombreuses publications sur la fracture numérique. Un nombre relativement restreint d'études ont également examiné exclusivement la fracture numérique d'un point de vue philosophique et éthique. Une société inégale, antidémocratique et injuste est le produit de la fracture numérique. En plus de susciter un débat important sur la justice numérique, la connaissance, le pouvoir, la démocratie, la mondialisation et le capitalisme informationnel en Afrique, ce travail soulève des questions éthiques et morales et cherche à les résoudre. La justification de cette étude est que la mondialisation et les technologies de l'information vont de pair. Cet essai examinera également en détail la manière dont tous ces facteurs sont liés au capitalisme informationnel et comment ils influencent les pays du tiers monde, en particulier l'Afrique. Cette recherche s'inscrit dans le cadre de la culture numérique et utilise l'analyse textuelle et critique comme approches philosophiques.
We are currently living in an era of change induced by a new technological cycle that promises to redefine our culture, our society and our economy. Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Big Data (BD), blockchain, robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), the metaverse and the rest of cutting-edge technologies are leading a new innovative wave that is plunging us fully into the so-called IV Industrial Revolution.
Given this panorama of change, it is obvious that the entire Spanish economy and its productive fabric will be totally affected. Precisely, in this thesis we want to focus our attention on how one of the most representative sectors of our economy, tourism, is facing this wave of innovation. As was already the case with the emergence of the technological leap of Information and Communications Technology (ICTs), this new innovative impulse promises to transform the sector, although with some notable differences: this new wave will bring changes that are increasingly rapid, continuous and intense over time, posing a major challenge, perhaps as never seen before, for the tourism industry.
The tourism sector is one of the most consolidated and important economic sectors in the world. During the last decades, it has established itself as one of the fastest growing and largest sectors worldwide, setting a record figure of 1.5 billion international tourists in 2019, surpassing those of 2018 by almost 5% (WTO, 2020). This translates into a contribution of more than 10% to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) worldwide, more than 7% of total international trade and nearly 30% of world exports of services, keeping pace globally with the value of oil or automobile exports, thus making tourism one of the top five activities in world trade (WTTC, 2019).
Justifying the economic importance also for the Spanish case, international tourist arrivals in 2019 exceeded 83.5 million travelers, accounting for more than 11% of the total international market and a growth in travelers of almost 1% compared to 2018 figures. Thus, tourism is established as a fundamental pillar of the Spanish economy, due to its contribution to GDP, employment or economic growth, well above the rest of the OECD countries (Figure 1.1), and due to the compensating role of the external imbalance that the Spanish economy suffers structurally (Pedreño-Muñoz and Ramón-Rodríguez, 2009). These characteristics give it an undeniable resistance to the latest economic crises, although it is true that the COVID-19 pandemic has overexerted it, has forced it to transform itself once again and has made evident the excessive dependence of our economy on tourism, due to its multiplier effect on the rest of the economy, because of the transversal nature of the consumption of tourist demand.
In this globalizing context and the integration of new digital technologies in practically any area of society, it is unthinkable that the evolution of the sector should be linked to the digital economy, being one of its basic pillars of development (Hojeghan and Esfangareh, 2011). This digital revolution is taking place in an environment where the number of tourists worldwide is growing steadily, with the rate of growth of tourism demand exceeding the rate of growth of the economy, due to the emergence of emerging countries, the greater ability of young generations to travel and the lower costs of air travel, and represents a significant opportunity for digital innovation in the sector.
As we will discuss below, the sector in question is characterized by a low capacity to generate innovation, although at the same time it is extremely sensitive to the adaptation of its structure to new technologies. This fact implies a constant need for renewal within the sector in order to adapt its competitive capacity through the new innovations already mentioned. In fact, as we will see in this thesis, there are many examples in the literature on the adaptation of the sector to BD and AI, clean energy, mobile technology, augmented reality, IoT, virtual assistants or blockchain, among others.
But all these advances have as their starting point a common element: data. These are the key element to raise the productivity of companies and make the most of these technologies, so having the ability to collect, exchange, process and analyze data is indispensable in any industry. The introduction of data and algorithms oriented to price management, demand capture, user segmentation and optimization of value chain processes, among other applications, as a fundamental part of the structure of any industry has a fundamental impact on the study of industrial economics. Researchers, public administrations, companies and all the actors involved must adapt to this new reality, implement policies that promote the digitization of the productive fabric and address new lines of research to understand the new participants, thus achieving a greater understanding of this data-driven tourism.
Precisely here lies one of the main strengths of tourism compared to other sectors: it has a huge amount of varied, dispersed and representative information, as it is produced by the 'digital footprint' of the tourist on each trip. The challenge for companies in the sector, from large hotel companies to SMEs, is to make the most of this data. Otherwise, they will be swept away by new technology companies, whose main source of business is innovation, and not the tourism sector. In fact, the new technological reality of the industry has created a competitive environment in which technology-based disruptors, who know how to create new markets by satisfying untapped needs, coexist with traditional players who generally do not have the capacity to innovate.
Under these premises, this doctoral thesis aims to review the economic principles of tourism from an innovative perspective, analyze the potential impact of the application of AI in the tourism industry at all levels and the need for the use of machine learning algorithms in research in the sector. To this end, first of all, the conceptual framework on which it is framed is constructed. Chapter II of the thesis is devoted to a review of the evolution of the concept of innovation and its importance in economic theory. For this purpose, theoretical references that have studied the role of technology and innovation in economic growth, such as Schumpeter, Solow, Romer or Lucas, are studied. The aim is to understand the impact that the disruptive changes we are experiencing in the economy are having, in order to subsequently apply them to the transformation of the structure of the tourism industry.
It is precisely in Chapter III where an applied analysis of innovation and the impact of new technologies on the tourism sector is carried out. It will study the state of innovation in the tourism sector, making important clarifications on the sector's capacity to adapt or develop innovations. In addition, it will explain the digital principles that are transforming the tourism industry and the new research cycle derived from the emergence of BD and which is led by techniques based on ML algorithms, thus justifying the choice of the tourism sector as a case study.
Chapter IV provides a complete review of the transforming process that the structure of the tourism industry is undergoing due to the technological paradigm shift. Thus, it studies how these innovative processes are developing a new tourism demand based on data, how the tourism value chain is being reinvented, how tourism prices are set in a market with almost perfect information, what challenges are posed for the labor and training market in the sector, and what role they play in the emergence of new technology-based competitors in the sector.
In Chapters V and VI, Airbnb is chosen as an applied case study, as it is representative of all the challenges faced by the sector in terms of technology, political regulation, market intervention, reinterpretation of the tourism value chain, emergence of economic or pandemic shocks that researchers must face. The applied analysis of Airbnb aims to contribute to the research of the sector in this empirical context dominated by BD and by the increasingly imperative need to apply machine learning-based algorithms to understand the different challenges posed by Airbnb in the sector, highlighting among them the processing and simplification of huge databases.
Chapter V has as a case study Madrid, the capital of Spain and the fourth destination by number of Airbnb ads in Europe. For this applied case, we study whether the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the structure of Airbnb supply and demand. For this purpose, the study starts from a logit model of hedonic panel data, different alternative methods of variable selection and likelihood tests are applied to confirm the existence of the structural change affecting the decision making when renting an apartment from the Platform. This work aims to contribute to the research of the sector, and specifically of Airbnb, based on BD.
Chapter VI focuses the study on the Valencian Community, one of the main sun and beach tourist destinations, to carry out an analysis on the pricing of tourist accommodation on the platform. This case study aims to analyze whether the application of ML algorithms allows companies to optimize prices in a more efficient way than traditional models. To this end, the performance of a traditional hedonic pricing model is compared to an estimation model based on neural networks to demonstrate the best fit in the predictive capacity of machine learning-based techniques when setting prices.
Thus, the doctoral thesis constitutes a valuable and novel contribution to the new research cycle in the sector. It proposes an exhaustive review of all the implications and applications of new technologies in tourism and the advantages of using machine learning based analysis techniques for researchers in their study.
The findings of this study are original in their contribution to the literature in a myriad of ways. Primarily, they postulate that research on the adoption of technology in firms requires a holistic approach before key factors are determined. This is unlike the reductionist approach to technology adoption as is expressed in previous studies where positivism is applied. Yet, for a much clearer perspective about the critical emergent factors, the Critical Theory facilitates transparency and inclusiveness, thereby providing for subliminal matters to be addressed before deeper insights can be extracted for clarity. Another significant contribution of the research is the conceptualization of staged adoption through a combination of leadership traits and typologies that dictate the movement of firms along the hierarchy of adoption for single inventions.
An important area of focus in the literature on Organizational Theory is culture, which embraces both national and organizational culture. In this study, emphasis will be placed on national culture. This is as a result of the analysis of small, owner-managed firms, in the preceding findings chapter which established that there is a link between internal factors of the organization and their malleability by the leaders of these firms whose business decisions and practices often reflect their preferences and experience. Considering this, internal factors such as structure, organizational culture, resources, and strategy are recognized as secondary factors in influencing firm behavior in small owner-managed firms.
