Collaborating against COVID-19: bridging travel and travel tech

Abstract

The distinction between “traditional” travel businesses and travel tech companies has remained steady for years due to knowledge, resource and financial reasons, leading them to operate in separate bubbles. The massive damages caused by COVID-19 for both sides of the industry pose a unique opportunity for them to ditch the old transactional working model, and to seek for more strategic collaborations in order to weather the storm. This viewpoint article discusses the business potential behind such collaborations in the short and long runs—from improving immediate safety perceptions to building technological foundations for the travel industry of tomorrow. It argues that local government mediation is needed for it to succeed, in formats such as funded hackathons or incubation programs that are targeted at addressing COVID-19 and its unique challenges.

Innovation in High-End Food Service During COVID-19 Lockdowns

“…However, besides service employees, service organizations have in recent years turned increasingly to information and communication technology (ICT) to increase efficiency, cut costs, and provide service in novel ways [31]. The advent of COVID-19 has exacerbated this trend, with management consultants and researchers noting a significant sectorial restructuring towards digital services, or from "hightouch" to "high-tech" [32,33]. To conceptualize the roles of technology in innovation, extant research has largely agreed on the definition of technology-driven and market-driven innovations [7].…”

Digital well-being in the tourism domain: mapping new roles and responsibilities

“…Since there are different approaches to measuring both individual and national well-being, digital well-being policies in tourism should be adopted at both the state level (Hartwell et al 2013 ), and by the industry (horizontally and vertically). For instance, digital well-being could be understood as an underlying philosophy and could be assessed and tackled in collaboration between tourism and technology providers (Mizrachi and Gretzel 2020 ). In that case, all smaller players in the supply chain (for example, in the context of global distribution systems it would be online travel agencies and destination service providers) would be, by default, sensitized and equipped to participate in enabling digital well-being for consumers, thus, promoting digital well-being through mass customization.…”

Tourism Getting Back to Life after COVID-19: Can Artificial Intelligence Help?

“…While it is argued that a collaboration between the technology and travel and tourism sectors may reduce the COVID-19 difficulties [9,51] and increase the chances for business survival [36], academics also started to question the role of technology in preventing and monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic. In general, technology and AI devices such as robots can contribute to clinical care, logistics, monitoring compliance with prescribed measures, and conducting various socioeconomic functions [10].…”