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Purpose This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of research on robotics in travel, tourism and hospitality, and to identify research gaps and directions for future research. Design/methodology/approach This paper analyzes 131 publications published during 1993-2019, identified via Scopus, Web of Science, ResearchGate, Academia.edu and Google Scholar. It offers quantitative analysis of frequencies and cross-tables and qualitative thematic analysis of the publications within each of seven identified domains. Findings The paper identifies “Robot,” “Human,” “Robot manufacturer,” “Travel/tourism/hospitality company,” “Servicescape,” “External environment” and “Education, training and research” as the research domains. Most research studies are dedicated to robots in restaurants, airports, hotels and bars. Papers tend to apply engineering methods, but experiments and surveys grow in popularity. Asia-Pacific countries account for much of the empirical research. Research limitations/implications The analysis was limited to publications indexed in four databases and one search engine. Only publications in English were considered. Growing opportunities for those who are anxious to publish in the field are identified. Importantly, emerging research is branching out from the engineering of robots to the possibilities for human/robot interactions and their use for service providers, opening up new avenues of research for tourism and hospitality scholars. Practical implications The paper identified a myriad of application areas for robots across various tourism and hospitality sectors. Service providers must critically think about how robots affect the servicescape and how it needs to be adjusted or re-imagined to ensure that robots and employees can augment the service experiences (co-)created within it. Originality/value This is the first study to systematically analyze research publications on robotics in travel, tourism and hospitality.

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This paper presents a methodology for measuring the contribution of tourism to an economy's growth, which is tested with data for Cyprus, Greece and Spain. The authors use the growth of real GDP per capita as a measure of economic growth and disaggregate it into economic growth generated by tourism and economic growth generated by other industries. The methodology is compared with other existing methodologies; namely, Tourism Satellite Account, Computable General Equilibrium models and econometric modelling of economic growth.

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The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 will have a significant influence on travel, tourism and hospitality (TTH) globally. With a massive reduction in tourism globally because of the health crisis, the industry will have to plan recovery and rebuilding of the industry with greater consideration of the biosecurity of customers. A critical element in the reorganisation of the industry will involve the increased incorporation of automation technologies. This article adopts a supply-side perspective and elaborates on the opportunities that automation technologies provide to TTH companies to mitigate the negative impacts of biosecurity threats on their economic performance. It discusses the costs and benefits of the incorporation of increased levels of automation, especially in regard to the benefits of the safety and health of the consumer. It elaborates on how the current pandemic would stimulate the adoption of automation technologies. Finally, the article discusses how this fit into the business models of tourism-related industries and outlines the micro- and macroeconomic implications of the greater incorporation of automation into the industry.