Technology and Tourism
Technology and tourism
Anna Baines
The author Anna Baines is a freelance journalist. Abstract The travel and tourism industry is starting to exploit technology. This is going to change the nature of the services offered, and the nature of work within the industry. Employers and employees may have different perceptions about the likely benefits of technology. Discusses the changes at the “higher” and “lower” organisational levels and suggests that the industry is only partially prepared for the changes ahead.
Work Study Volume 47 · Number 5 · 1998 · pp. 160–163 © MCB University Press · ISSN 0043-8022
The hotel and tourism industry is labour intensive – and proud of its ability to offer “personal service”. However, it is apparent that technology has moved into a number of support areas: the “back office” reservation systems used in almost all hotels are a prime example. Other, perhaps less visible applications of technology include the catering industry’s use of such methods as “cook-chill” and microwave cooking. Will the travel industry continue to exploit technology for back office and backroom tasks, taking the more mundane and repetitive tasks off the front-of-house staff so that they can pamper us even more? Or will the travel industry of the future move technology into the front-of-house and the frontline? Will we all take for granted, ubiquitous computers, techno-beds with remote controls, pre-packed and cooked meals and guest-room telephones with inbuilt world wide web access? The answer may be important to us all. The hotel and travel industry is very large and still growing. It makes a significant, and in some cases enormous, contribution to the gross domestic product of many countries and now provides employment for one out of ten workers around the world, or some 212 million people. By the year 2010, tourism, measured in terms of international arrivals, is expected to double to more than 1,000 million (one billion), while the number of jobs in the
Anna Baines
The author Anna Baines is a freelance journalist. Abstract The travel and tourism industry is starting to exploit technology. This is going to change the nature of the services offered, and the nature of work within the industry. Employers and employees may have different perceptions about the likely benefits of technology. Discusses the changes at the “higher” and “lower” organisational levels and suggests that the industry is only partially prepared for the changes ahead.
Work Study Volume 47 · Number 5 · 1998 · pp. 160–163 © MCB University Press · ISSN 0043-8022
The hotel and tourism industry is labour intensive – and proud of its ability to offer “personal service”. However, it is apparent that technology has moved into a number of support areas: the “back office” reservation systems used in almost all hotels are a prime example. Other, perhaps less visible applications of technology include the catering industry’s use of such methods as “cook-chill” and microwave cooking. Will the travel industry continue to exploit technology for back office and backroom tasks, taking the more mundane and repetitive tasks off the front-of-house staff so that they can pamper us even more? Or will the travel industry of the future move technology into the front-of-house and the frontline? Will we all take for granted, ubiquitous computers, techno-beds with remote controls, pre-packed and cooked meals and guest-room telephones with inbuilt world wide web access? The answer may be important to us all. The hotel and travel industry is very large and still growing. It makes a significant, and in some cases enormous, contribution to the gross domestic product of many countries and now provides employment for one out of ten workers around the world, or some 212 million people. By the year 2010, tourism, measured in terms of international arrivals, is expected to double to more than 1,000 million (one billion), while the number of jobs in the