Impact of information technology on hospitality and tourism research

Now what I would like to introduce here is one thing, since the new technology particularly internet introduced in this world, I add information technology as one research content or maybe platform, I called it a new triangle relation. And in the past, we said relationships between customers with employees, employees with organization, and customers with organization. Because of new technology induced, we have more relationships, which means customers with customers, employees with employees, and customers with the local residents. All different relationships among the different units, IT becomes a new platform and everything actually is involved, which means the information technology has the impact on all the different studies which have been done.

This map is from the Trend ONE, they classified the web from 1.0 to 5.0. 5.0 actually is the one I added on. Popularly speaking, right now that people talking about web 1.0 to web 4.0 is associated with marketing 1.0 to marketing 4.0, and also management 1.0 and management 4.0. I added 5.0 because I won’t look at this figure produced by Trend ONE, I added one more phase called the web of sorts, which means in the future, what we are talking about, the web 4.0 actually is the internet of things, which is IOT. Before we called the internet of people, which means all the social media linked people together.

Of course, in the early stage we’re at the very beginning, internet is only for communication, just people send email together. The 4.0 should be IOT right now in the market, but next stage I think it’s not here yet. The people perceive the next stage will be a web of thoughts, which means the internet connected people’s thoughts together. That’s fantastic and I’m excited about what will happen in the future. That’s what we say web 1.0 to web 5.0, and 5.0 is associated with the Trend ONE, which indicates the web of thoughts together. If you’re interested, you can acquire many good books about marketing 4.0 produced by Philip Kotler, who is the father of marketing.

And he wrote two books, marketing 3.0, marketing 4.0, which are associated with the actual, with the digital award, which is the internet 4.0. So if you’re interested you can take a look at it, because the information technology has more and more influence, has more impact on today’s business. Regardless you are studying marketing, you are studying management, finance, accounting or human resources, you always need to think about how the information technology will affect today’s business.

I would like to share some research priorities with you, particularly first part I want to share with you, because information technology and the core concepts are still there. Regardless the marketing, human resource, management or organization behavior, core concepts are still there. But they are all in the new context, the context is what? The context is information technology. For example, the new product development or promotion in online platform, service encounter with the use of technology, unique role of information technology and electronic word of mouth. We use word of mouth right now, we introduced eWOM, because what? Because information technology is there.

And the other is online channels of distribution, when you purchase the ticket, when you book a hotel, you can go through the OTA, that’s the distribution, new distribution channel. Social media also is a new one we called collaborative consumption. I think people always know the sharing economy. I just had a sharing bicycle this morning coming to the studio to make the recording, and this is getting popular. Airbnb is the one, Marriott just introduced a new home villa which is similar to Airbnb, but they use a different concept. The concept is they contract with the real estate development company, real estate management company manages the process.

And also some other platform, such as Uber, in China DiDi is also some kind of sharing economy and some kind of concept. One thing is the new one which we call the gift economy, there is difference between the gift economy and sharing economy. Sharing economy is sharing my house, but we exchange some benefits, for example, we exchange for the money, exchange for some other similar things together. But gift economy, which means that exchange without any benefits, no monetary involved, which means what the company or the platform has is a club, some kind of system is a club system.

I joined a club if I have empty house, if you come to my place you can stay with me, if you want to eat the food you can eat the food at my house, but without any exchange for the benefits. So that gift economy is also becoming quite popular right now, and we all call it collaborative consumption. The collaborative consumption is really based on the information technology, because no information technology, no IT platform, you really cannot do the exchange, cannot share the information. That also is one thing quite important, and if you’re interested, there are quite many studies you can do in that field.

Another one, of course, Big Data, and its building, training data sometimes needs to use certain software, you cannot do it, you have to use special software to analyze. Because most of the data actually is unstructured, for example, the review, comments and so on. That is also one research priority in the field, because why? Because information technology. Another thing I mentioned before is IOP, Internet of People, IOT, Internet of Things, VR, Virtual Reality, AR, Augmented Reality, VAM, actually it is combined with Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality together, and AR, of course, Artificial Intelligence.

These things actually make us together, actually change the operation and management of business, and actually change its customer experience, so these things also have some kind of impact on our field. Another one is called SoLoMo, which means the combination of Social, Local, Mobile together, which means that when you do study, you not only think about yourself, a customer or an employee, but you need to look at the social environment, the local environment, and also mobile environment mixed together. And next one is wearables, I think you all know wearable apple watch, whatever. And then is the last one. Because of information technology, the pair of relationship has been changed.

For example, R2T, which is Residents to Tourists, T2T, Tourists to Tourists, P2P, People to People, B2B, Business to Business. So those kinds of relationships, because of what? Because information technology creates more relationships among different stakeholders, about tourists, about employees, about the company, and local residents, and also local communities here too. These are the research priorities, I introduced these because of the information technology. I think it’s really worthwhile to get more in detail to find out if information technology changes today’s business, changes people’s experience, particularly customer experience, and employees experience.