Stanislav Ivanov (editor) - Robots, Artificial Intelligence and Service Automation in Travel, Tourism and Hospitality

Robots, Artificial Intelligence, and Service Automation in Travel, Tourism and Hospitality

PRAISE FOR ROBOTS, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND SERVICE AUTOMATION IN TRAVEL, TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY

This is the very first book that focuses on robots, artifical intelligence and automation technologies (RAISA) in tourism and does this from a social science perspective. It comprehensively covers the theoretical problems of RAISA adoption in tourism, principles of service automation, attitudes towards robots, impacts of RAISA on business processes and competitiveness, and the use of chatbots. Furthermore, it shows the practical issues that arrise from the application of RAISA technologies in various tourism sectors such as hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, tourist information centres, events and museums. What I find particularly valuable is that the book delves deep into the economic aspects of RAISA technologies in tourism - a problem which has been quite neglected in research. Numerous photographs and figures are used to visualise authors ideas. The book is valuable for practitioners, researchers, and students.

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis
Head of Department of Tourism and Hospitality, Bournemouth University, UK

This book is a welcomed addition to the travel, tourism, and hospitality literature. It discusses a timely and increasingly important issue of robots, artificial intelligence, and service automation and provides the readers with the most comprehensive collection of knowledge on these topics. The book looks at the issue from both theoretical as well as practical perspectives and provides a wide selection of current examples. With contributions from more than 30 authors from all over the world, this book is worth reading not just for tourism students, academics and practitioners, but also for anyone in service industries. Tourism and hospitality will drastically transform as the technologies discussed in this book develops, but so will many other service fields. Other service industries can also learn from the various artificial intelligence, service automation and robotic issues explored in this book.

Juho Pesonen, PhD
Head of e-tourism research, University of Eastern Finland

The book provides theoretical underpinning and practical evidence of the application and impacts of robots, artificial intelligence and service automation (RAISA) in various tourism sectors including hotels, restaurants, museums, events and tourism information centres. The book includes chapters contributed by international scholars, all recognised in their own field. The book chapters discuss the implications of RAISA from both the tourism demand and supply perspective such as technology adoption, tourists reactions and attitude towards RAISE, operators soft and hard benefits and costs. The book is a valuable reading for tourism scholars, students and professionals alike.

Professor Marianna Sigala
Director of the Centre for Tourism and Leisure Management (CTLM),
University of South Australia Business School, Australia

The book embraces the frontiers of robot development in hospitality and tourism, which can deliver useful insights to both academic researchers and university students. This book takes readers on a modern and advanced journey to conceptual frameworks of robot-related technologies and their applications to hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, tourist information centers, and other related fields. It is a must-read primer for anyone who would like to understand the latest changes brought by robots to the hotel and tourism industry. This book indeed does a good job to start the topic with conceptual frameworks, connecting theory with principles and practice.

Rob Law, PhD, CHE
Professor of Technology Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China