From digitization to the age of acceleration: On information technology and tourism
Introduction
Information technology continues to move our society. While many commentators have characterized the transformative power of technology in various ways, perhaps few has done more eloquently than Nicholas Negroponte and Thomas Friedman. In his book Being Digital, Negroponte (1995) made a compelling argument about the fundamental differences between atoms, which make up tangible stuff, and bits, which constitute digital information. With this, he offered a visionary insight on what being digital means for our future at the dawn of the Internet. Approximately two decades later, with a book titled Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Acceleration, Friedman (2016) presented his view on how we should understand the 21st century. He argued that there were three largest forces, i.e., technology, the market, and Mother Nature, all accelerating at once, creating transformative impact on many important facets of our society. He noted year 2007 was a major turning point in that the release of the iPhone, together with advances in hardware, software, storage, sensors, and networking, created a new reality. These ideas reflect the broad impact of information technology, as well as speed of change, at the global, societal level.
The importance of technology as a strategic tool to tourism has been long recognized (Poon, 1993). With the emergence of the Internet as a commercial tool, Pauline Sheldon (1997) published her pioneer book Tourism Information Technology, wherein she emphasized tourism as an “information intensive” industry and illustrated various IT applications in a number of sectors related to tourism. This book, along with Werthner and Klein's (1999) Information Technology and Tourism: A Challenging Relationship published shortly afterwards, represented the new thinking about the nature of change brought about by IT in general and the Internet in particular, and offered fresh conceptual frameworks to understand structural change. Since then, there has been substantial development of research on IT and tourism spanning over roughly twenty years.
Reflecting upon the past two decades, it is obvious that we cannot separate our understanding of the relationship between IT and tourism from the global, societal view of technology. Borrowing the ideas from Negroponte and Friedman, we can view knowledge development on IT and tourism as consisting of two distinct eras: the first decade can be characterized as “digitization” (1997–2006) and the second represents the “age of acceleration” (2007–2016). While there was continuity in IT development and diffusion of technological innovations, these two eras had their unique technological conditions, research problems, dominant paradigms and research approaches. Importantly, our view of technology in relation to tourism management seems to have shifted through these years. Therefore, looking back at IT and tourism as a field of study could be a useful exercise to highlight our knowledge development and, hopefully, to help us identify clues for future inquiries.
Section snippets
Digitization (1997–2006)
This era was known for the development and maturity of the Internet as a commercial tool. During this era, technical terms such as the World Wide Web, LAN, Netscape Navigator, IE, Web page, email, desktop, laptop, mobile phone and eCommerce became household names. This era can be characterized as digitization because much of online information, especially in the early days, could be considered the digital version of its existing offline content. The business domain on the Internet went through
Age of acceleration (2007–2016)
This era was marked by technologies such as Wi-Fi, search engines, Web 2.0, tablet, the smartphone, wearable computers, sensors, Internet of Things, crowdsourcing, open source, drones, and the emergence of machine learning and artificial intelligence, etc. This era can be characterized as the age of acceleration largely due to the tremendous growth of user-generated contents on the Internet, as well as the widespread diffusion of technologies and devices not only in our homes and offices but
Where do we go from here?
Twenty years is very short in human history and even within the history of modern tourism. However, change caused by the recent development of information technology has been profound and far-reaching. Research on IT and tourism has reflected the general understanding of how technology changes our society and economy. Within this very short period, our view of information technology in its relation to tourism has shifted from a marketing-driven tool to a knowledge creation tool. Technologies
Zheng Xiang, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University {[email protected]}. His research interests include travel information search, social media marketing, and business analytics for the tourism and hospitality industries. He is a recipient of Emerging Scholar of Distinction award by the International Academy for the Study of Tourism. He is a board member of International Federation for IT and
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Zheng Xiang, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University {[email protected]}. His research interests include travel information search, social media marketing, and business analytics for the tourism and hospitality industries. He is a recipient of Emerging Scholar of Distinction award by the International Academy for the Study of Tourism. He is a board member of International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT). He is the chief editor of the Journal of Information Technology & Tourism and serves as editorial board member of several international journals including Journal of Business Research, Journal of Travel Research, and Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research.