Tourism and Hospitality for Sustainable Development in the Digital Era: An Assessment of the Impacts on Customers and Employees in Tourism Enterprises

This chapter introduces the book Tourism and Hospitality for Sustainable Development—Volume Three: Implications for Customers and Employees of Tourism Businesses, the third in a series of three volumes. This chapter shows that in recent decades, efforts towards the realisation of sustainable tourism are increasingly being linked to Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), cyber-physical systems (CPS), virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR). However, although these technologies have widely been embraced at policy and academic levels, gaps remain in how stakeholders within tourism and hospitality enterprises perceive their deployment. Drawing from existing literature and conceptualisation, this chapter highlights how digitalisation impacts the welfare of tourism, hospitality customers, and employees as part of the background to the chapters that make up this volume. This volume offers a more refined analysis of the pros and cons of the widespread adoption and integration of digital tools for customers and employees within tourism and hospitality enterprises.