Driving hospitality and tourism to foster sustainable innovation: A systematic review of COVID-19-related studies and practical implications in the digital era

Abstract

Sustainable innovation is a solution for the hospitality and tourism (H&T) industries to cope with the COVID-19 crisis, build resilience, and ensure survival post-pandemic. The primary aim of our review is to systematically identify and critically review the literature on sustainable innovation in H&T amid COVID-19 (conducted in 2020 and 2021), in order to synthesize and classify prevalent types, antecedents, and outcomes of sustainable innovation. The authors present a comprehensive review of the 58 articles on sustainable innovation in H&T through the Web of Science (WoS) database, spanning over 2 years (2020–2021). This review demonstrates that since the beginning of COVID-19, H&T have strongly mobilized network technologies (especially social media and digital platforms) and data-processing technologies (especially Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)) in comparison with physical-digital interface technologies (especially Virtual Reality (VR)), while physical-digital process technologies remain very limited in these industries. Several relevant antecedents of the adoption of sustainable innovation, more specifically digital technologies, have been identified at multiple levels of analysis, including the organizational, managerial, and stakeholder levels. Our research also reveals several consequences of the adoption of sustainable innovation in H&T. These consequences were congregated according to the three main dimensions related to sustainability in economic, social, and environmental outcomes. This study provides important practical implications for the H&T sectors in the digital era and post-pandemic. The current research is the first study to systematically and critically review sustainable innovation in an H&T context.

Digital innovations in tourism: the perceptions of stakeholders

“…Çınar (2020) points out that the use of smartphones, tablets and mobile devices have given tourists more opportunities, options and freedom to explore tourist destinations than ever before. For example, videos and photos from a destination reach a wider and more accurately targeted audience than any other marketing tool (Elkhwesky et al ., 2022). Additionally, some advocate the use of digital technologies in tourism planning, e.g.…”

“…Some researchers recommend that tourism companies improve their digital capabilities and skills by initially using accessible and affordable technologies (such as social media, e-commerce platforms and smartphone application programs), later investing in more sophisticated technologies (Elkhwesky et al ., 2022). Although mobile technologies and Internet availability (91%) were very important in the field “Rural tourism”, a tourism visitor map was given the highest rating by 55% of the experts.…”

Looking at the tourism industry through the lenses of industry 4.0: a bibliometric review of concerns and challenges

“…A bibliometric analysis is performed to study the state of knowledge and literature trends (Echchakoui, 2020). We selected the Web of Science (WoS) database for this study as it is the largest database, with 171 million records, more than 34,000 articles indexed and 1.9 billion cited references (Elkhwesky and Elkhwesky, 2023; Elkhwesky et al ., 2022a; Clarivate, 2022). Academics generally consider the WoS as one of the most prestigious scientific databases, including the most relevant studies in several fields (Lopes et al ., 2021b), and is a more selective database as it allows several options of essential content filters for carrying out bibliographic reviews of literature and, therefore, the most used database for these studies (Elkhwesky et al ., 2022a; Elkhwesky and Elkhwesky, 2023).…”

Contemporary sustainability themes in tourism and hospitality during and post COVID‐19: Critical review and a step strategies forward for post the pandemic

“…People became more conscious about their production, consumption, health, and well‐being. Managers and policymakers started looking for innovative solutions (Elkhwesky, El Manzani, & Elbayoumi Salem, 2022). Governments started noticing visible environmental gains, which bolstered their initiatives related to the development of sustainable cities and communities.…”

“…There were several studies related to the impact of COVID-19 on the sustainability of the tourism and hospitality industry. Some of the main studies include the impacts and aftermaths of COVID-19 on global hospitality firms (Alonso et al, 2020), the tourism and hospitality sector under COVID-19 from the perspective of human rights (Baum & Hai, 2020), how COVID-19 lockdown measures revealed the human impact on water world (Braga et al, 2020), the financial impact of COVID-19 in the context of global hospitality firms (Clark et al, 2021), the impact of COVID-19 on hotel marketing (Jiang & Wen, 2020), sustainable practices in hospitality pre and amid COVID-19 pandemic (Elkhwesky, El Manzani, & Elbayoumi Salem, 2022), prospects of waste management in the hospitality sector post-COVID-19 (Filimonau, 2021), protected areas of Hong Kong as a space for pandemic disease adaptation (Ma et al, 2021), coronavirus pandemic and emerging issues and challenges for Indian hospitality and tourism businesses (Sanjeev & Tiwari, 2021) (Camilleri, 2022). Based on our observations, we call on the research community to explore how various corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies, deliberations, decisions, and actions may bring significant sustainable outcomes to the tourism and hospitality industry during and post-Covid-19.…”