Abstract
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.
TopEvolution Of Artificial Intelligence In Smart Tourism
Technology was predominantly being utilized in innovations with a critical effect of development on the tourism industry (Hjalager, 2010). Borras, Morreno & Vals (2014) recorded the surveys where these structures were applying some of the AI practices such as;
intelligent autonomous agents that can analyze the users behavior, learn about their profile and derive proactive recommendations in certain period of time, optimization in terms of a detailed timetable of the visit according to the opening hours of the site clustering or classifying tourists, with similar characteristics, inferring the preferences of the users through approximate reasoning methodologies, deducing users’ preferences through reasoning of tourism domain knowledge by ontologies (Borras et all 2014, pp.7370-7371).
Big data and analytics has given rise to emergence of smart tourism ecosystem within large data sets in many different formats obtained from various stakeholders through the internet of things, artificial intelligence, cloud computing services, sensors, mobile devices and the Internet are processed with different analysis techniques such as emotion analytics, text analytics, and web analytics. Then this information is being transferred by algorithms into interpreted information to guide decision-making process.
Embarking on Industry 4.0 and the latest progress in communication and information technologies have given rise to improvement of new product and services in line with this paradigm modification. In the digitalization process we live in, the big data that emerges as a result of the widespread use of the internet, smart phones and social media applications is analyzed and then tried to be used in decision making process (Chen H, Chiang R H, Storey; 2012). Naturally, tourism as an industry is also one of the fields that try to keep up with this rapid change and start to benefit from the opportunities offered by big data and data analytics (Carigliu A, Del Bo; 2011).
The tourism industry, which has changed with a data oriented approach, has adopted the word “smart”, which we have started to hear frequently in different areas, pointing to the use of the concept of Smart City and Smart tourism, and as a result, a paradigm shift triggered by digitalization in the field (Del Bo and Nijkamp, 2011; Boggia and Camarda 2014; Damari 2013; Albino, Berrardi and and Dangalico, 2015).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Smart Tourism: Creating augmented tourist product through collecting, combining, or processing data smart or mobile phones in order to ensure sustainability and efficiency issues.
Smart City: Finding solutions to tourism related problems of tourists by employing information and communication technologies in cities supported by different stakeholders.
Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA): It is an analytical approach that can be utilized to measure and differentiate the environmental and socio-economic costs and benefits in decision-making process of project or program assessment.
Big Data: Extensive amount of data which cannot be gathered, saved, or converted by traditional instruments such as word processor within a given time span.
Willingness to Pay Approach: It is mainly used for securing improvement of highways related projects and plans and individuals are accepted to pay for a cost in order to receive a benefit.
Human Capital Approach: Some ethical and economic concerns are attached to the approach since it is mainly utilized in the labor market earnings are given to employees for them to take more unsafe jobs.
Sustainable Tourism: This concept fundamentally requires to create a balance between consumption and preservation pattern in counterbalancing future generations’ needs along with current tourists’ needs.