Aarni Tuomi

Haaga-Helia ammattikorkeakoulu · Hospitality Business

Physiological and psychological constraints, e.g. increased risk of serious illness or loneliness imposed by mobility restrictions, make older adults one of the hardest hit tourist segments amidst during and after COVID-19. Older adults play a particularly important role as consumers of cultural tourism services. To mitigate for lack of in-situ cul...

Tourism and hospitality is increasingly characterized by platformization. Key issue with tourism platforms is the power asymmetry between platform and users. In this paper, a novel conceptual framework of Deliberative Governance for Tourism Platforms is developed. Overall, more research is needed to apply, refine and expand novel governance approac...

The rise of the silver economy has drawn a growing interest in understanding the needs and behaviours of older adults, both by academics as well as the business and public sectors. Services promoting wellbeing can have several benefits both on individual and national levels, and social connectedness, as one aspect of wellbeing, has been found to po...

Older adults have been recognized as a key tourist segment for cultural tourism. Despite the growing population of older adults, limited research have explored their experiences and needs within digital cultural experiences. Therefore, this research note takes on an exploratory approach in understanding older adults’ perceptions towards digital cul...

Powerful new AI models such as OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 or GPT-3 afford creative freelancers as well as hospitality and tourism SMEs new ways of generating and using creative content for marketing purposes. However, given AI’s rapid development, little is known about the current and potential future applications and implications of AI-generated content on...

In many countries, on-demand food delivery platforms (e.g. Deliveroo, Wolt, Uber Eats) have become an inseparable part of the hospitality and tourism ecosystem. A key area of interest in technology research has been how platforms algorithmically manage the interaction between task requesters (e.g. customers, tourists) and task fulfillers (e.g. rest...

COVID-19 has prompted cultural organisations to leverage digitalisation in order to find new ways of bringing cultural experiences to users. However, there is limited understanding on the specific needs of older adults, a significant user segment of digital cultural services, particularly in the context of classical or high arts such as opera or ba...

Purpose The rapid growth in volume and value of on-demand restaurant food delivery, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is causing a paradigm shift in the food service sector. However, there is a lack of hospitality management research into this emerging phenomenon. To address this gap, this paper defines and develops a novel conceptual model and...

Purpose The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) is leading to a job transformation within the service ecosystem in which issues related to AI governance principles may hinder the social sustainability of the sector. The relevance of AI startups in driving innovation has been recognized; thus, this paper aims to investigate whether and how AI...

Purpose Given little light has been shed on the preference of Generation Z tourists or tourists from different cultural backgrounds toward service robot preference in hospitality contexts, this study aims to explore robot service preferences in the accommodation sector in the Chinese market, with a specific focus of Generation Z customers. Design/...

The global agricultural sector is facing a disruption driven by economics, emerging technology , and environmental and personal well-being. In particular, advances in cellular biology, along with the emergence of novel production techniques such as precision fermentation, are making the mass-cultivation of alternative proteins in vitro for human co...

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented the hospitality industry with novel challenges. In this paper, we follow four case restaurants for a period of 12 months and track how they have innovated their business models and their learning processes through several cycles of iteration. Our work is based on the notion of simple rules. Eisenhardt and Sull (2...

COVID-19 lockdown measures have forced hospitality operators to re-configure their dynamic capabilities through innovating operational practices and pivoting traditional business models. The high-end food service sector has undergone a particularly drastic shift towards a new normal. This qualitative study explores factors facilitating innovation a...

Purpose Automation poses to change how service work is organized. However, there is a lack of understanding of how automation influences specific sectors, including specific hospitality jobs. Addressing this gap, this paper looks at the relative automatability of jobs and tasks which fall within one specific hospitality context: frontline food serv...

Article highlights: -Deepfake text is increasingly difficult to distinguish from human-authored text. -Computer-generated consumer reviews will have a high impact for tourism management. -Deepfake reviews resemble other fake reviews in terms of content but not in volume -Implications for future research into deepfake reviews in tourism are discusse...

As artificially intelligent conversational agents (ICAs) become a popular customer service solution for businesses, understanding the drivers of user acceptance of ICAs is critical to ensure its successful implementation. To provide a comprehensive review of factors affecting consumers' adoption and use of ICAs, this study performs a systematic lit...

Purpose This paper aims to explore the implications of integrating humanoid service robots into hospitality service encounters by evaluating two service prototypes using Softbank Robotics’ popular service robot Pepper™: to provide information (akin to a receptionist) and to facilitate order-taking (akin to a server). Drawing both studies together,...

Governments across the world have imposed strict rules on social distancing to curb the spread of Covid-19. In particular, restaurants have been impacted by government-mandated lockdowns. This study adopts a mixed methods approach to explore how Finnish high-profile restaurants used Instagram as a means for service innovation and diffusion during n...

Increasing implementation of automation has brought global concern over the future of jobs in various sectors. This study conceptualizes how automation, found in tourism to be driven largely by labor shortage, can be used to promote decent work. Utilizing Grounded Theory to analyze data from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with indu...

Global megatrends such as urbanization, climate change and resource scarcity, shift in political and economic power, demographic change, and increasingly disruptive technological breakthroughs are transforming the conventional socio-technical system of food service. This study identifies and discusses key changes already impacting the service conce...

Service robots continue to permeate and automate the hospitality sector. In doing so, these technological innovations pose to radically change current service production and delivery practices and, consequently, service management and marketing strategies. This study explores the various impacts of robotization in the sector by offering one of the...

Resistance to the Adoption of ICTs in Independent Restaurants: Insights from China & the UK Organisations are increasingly employing innovative Information Communications Technology (ICT) solutions to drive growth and create value. Yet the uptake of such tools does not seem to be as widespread in hospitality and tourism as might be expected. This a...