As information and communication technologies have had such a profound impact on every part of our lives, the globe has undergone significant transformation. This impact will not only increase productivity and efficiency, but will also have a substantial positive impact on all aspects of sustainable development. Recent developments in technologies that convey dynamic and real-time data, like the digital twin, have the great potential to revolutionize our concept of sustainability in smart manufacturing and monitoring natural resources. With the use of digital twin technology, one may decrease and potentially eliminate possible energy waste, maintenance expenses, and time waste by making quick predictions and taking prompt remedial action during the manufacturing process. This conceptual paper contends that digital twin can significantly boost an organization's productivity and profitability while enhancing destinations' values, including distinctive natural, cultural, and environmental resources, without endangering the lives of the next generation.
TopIntroduction
The age we are currently living in is called “digital” which makes everything possible everywhere with the click of our finger. The way businesses work, from creating products to creating marketing strategies, has undergone a substantial paradigm shift as a result of advanced technology in the decades past. The convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with large data and sensors has led to the emergence of digital twins. As stated by Marai, Taleb, and Song (2021), these technologies are interrelated and help one another in many ways. Digital twins have great potential to provide more accurate, dynamic, and prompt predictions based on the data they gather in real-time from these technologies (Kantaros, Piromalis, Tsaramirsis, Papageorgas, & Tamimi, 2022; Li et al., 2022; Qi, Tao, & Nee, 2022). The digital twins serve a variety of purposes, including enhancing productivity and efficiency and assisting in the identification of failure points during cyber replication. (Tao, Zhang, Liu, & Nee, 2019).
Digital twins, in contrast to many other modern technologies, give the tourism industry a number of important benefits. In contrast to many other contemporary technologies, digital twins offer the tourism sector a number of significant advantages. Although there is a lack of evidence-based information in the current literature on tourism and hospitality, it is anticipated that in the near future, based on multidisciplinary literature from the service industry, healthcare, manufacturing, development of smart cities, and construction, digital twins will be used in the industry's various segments (Aheleroff, Xu, Zhong, & Lu, 2021; Allam & Jones, 2021; James, 2021; Mylonas et al., 2021; Opoku, Perera, Osei-Kyei, & Rashidi, 2021). In this context, adopting digital twins technology in this situation can enhance staff productivity and increase business efficiency in the fiercely competitive travel and tourism sector.
This study argues that once digital twins evolve even more significantly, they will have a big impact on tourism industry in a variety of ways. Firstly, based on real-time data collecting and analysis procedures, digital twins have the potential to increase companies' effectiveness and enable sustainable development with regard to the ecosystem. Secondly, due to ongoing monitoring and evaluation of the digital representation of the real thing, digital twins also offer functionality that checks the products before they are ever acquired or made (based on the possible scenario). Thirdly, using computer-generated simulations to actively monitor, measure, and reflect the actual dynamics of the organization, the convergence of digital twins with artificial intelligence (AI) and huge databases has the potential to save maintenance costs and increase overall operational effectiveness. Furthermore, digital twins can aid in the abolition of dubious and foreboding marketing strategies that jeopardize the viability and endurance of the destinations' priceless resources, reputation, and integrity. Last but not least, the deployment of sensors in actual locations allows digital twins to save the unique cultural heritage sites and essential natural resources for future generations.
Technology has a huge impact on the tourism industry's transformation in a number of ways, including by advertising the attractions and locations and assisting with every stage of an organization's commercial operations (Allam & Jones, 2021; Buhalis & O'Connor, 2005; Yuce, 2022c). For the past three decades, tourism has been expanding at an even quicker rate, particularly since the introduction of the most cutting-edge creative technologies like immersive and AI (Huang, Backman, Backman, & Chang, 2016; Pirker, Loria, Safikhani, Künz, & Rosmann, 2022). However, although being a relatively new idea in social sciences, digital twins technology also presents a potentially game-changing opportunity for the tourism and hospitality sector to obtain a competitive edge and helps for the long-term viability of its valuable resources (Qi et al., 2022; Shubenkova, Valiev, Shepelev, Tsiulin, & Reinau, 2018). As previously mentioned, if it reaches its full potential, digital twins' characteristics have the potential to improve businesses' operational effectiveness while minimizing and even avoiding the problems with organization’s overall carbon footprint that have a detrimental impact on ecological balances and pose significant risk of jeopardizing future life forms.