Biosecurity, crisis management, automation technologies, and economic performance of travel, tourism and hospitality companies – a conceptual framework

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 will have a massive impact upon travel, tourism, and hospitality globally. With a massive reduction in tourism globally because of the health crisis, the industry will likely have to plan a recovery and rebuilding of the industry. Part and parcel of the reorganization will involve increasingly depending upon automation technologies. In this article, we discuss how the virus has impacted upon the global industry and discuss how automation technologies will be implemented into the industry to ensure a vibrant return to a strong tourism economy. We expect that employers and industry will look differently upon many automation technologies and implement these technologies into their operations to ensure a return to a situation in which tourism can take place in ways that ensure the biosecurity of travellers and ensure that the industry’s operations return to be able to work in profitable ways.

A conceptual framework of the service delivery system design for hospitality firms in the (post-)viral world: The role of service robots

“…Furthermore, the pandemic depleted the financial resources of hospitality companies, forcing their managers to look for ways to cut costs. While the inevitable short-term decision of many hospitality firms was to fire employees as a way to cut costs and remain liquid, in the long-term the COVID-19 pandemic may serve as a driver of automation and robotisation because, from an accounting and finance perspective, the robots allow companies to decrease their fixed labour costs and the cash outflows ( Ivanov et al, 2020 ). Therefore, the adoption of service robots is expected to increase due to the pandemic ( Zeng et al, 2020 ), leading to transformations in the service delivery systems of hospitality companies.…”

“…Prior research has already recognised the strategic role of information and communication technologies ( Buhalis, 1998 ; Benckendorff et al, 2019 ; Neuhofer et al, 2014 ), including automation ( Ivanov and Webster, 2019a ; Tussyadiah, 2020 ), for hospitality companies’ marketing communications, distribution strategies, supply chain management, experiences design, creating and sustaining competitive advantage, etc. However, the current COVID-19 pandemic may assign additional roles to technologies, especially robots, in the strategic management of hospitality companies ( Gretzel et al, 2020 ; Ivanov et al, 2020 ; Sigala, 2020 ). The pandemic forced health authorities to impose physical distancing as a way to slow down the spread of the virus ( Li et al, 2020a , b ) because the virus spreads easier than previous pandemics due to its less distinguishable symptoms and longer incubation period ( Chinazzi et al, 2020 ).…”

COVID-19 and African tourism research agendas

“…Perhaps one of the most striking areas of impact of COVID-19 on tourism operations, going forward, relates to how businesses, across all sub-sectors of the industry, will be able to maintain the confidence and physical security of both customers and employees. Technological and medical solutions have started to emerge as a pathway to enabling tourism to re-start, even in a tentative manner (Ivanov et al, 2020). Already accelerating moves to automate service delivery in sectors that range from airlines to hotels and restaurants (Berezina et al, 2019) are likely to become even more widespread in response to biosecurity and medical concerns in tourism.…”

Understanding travellers’ reactions to robotic services: a multiple case study approach of robotic hotels

“…With the emergence of the COVID-19 health crisis, awareness of using robots in hospitality and tourism has become crucial and necessary in different spheres of life such as hospitals, airports, transportation, recreation and scenic areas including hotels and communities to effectively manage the COVID-19 pandemic as well as ensuring social distancing (Zeng et al, 2020). From this perspective, the transformative role of using robots has become more apparent (Brouder, 2020), which will most likely continue to affect the entire tourism system including companies in travel, tourism and hospitality to cope with the pandemic (Ivanov et al, 2020). As the virus can transmit from human to human, social distancing must be enforced to ensure avoiding infection (Wen et al, 2020a).…”