Guest editorial: Challenges and prospects of AIoT application in hospitality and tourism marketing

Abstract

BackgroundThe global tourism industry is growing rapidly and has become one of the most important engines of economic and social development.However, COVID-19 pandemic has hit the global tourism industry, and the performance of hospitality sectors, such as airlines and travel services, has avalanched.As a result, many countries are now relying on domestic demand to support them.The tourism industry is looking forward to the early release of the pandemic to welcome the long-awaited tourism opportunities.But what can we do to prepare for the arrival of tourists during and after the pandemic?Technological developments affect tourism in terms of sustainability and the storage of visitors' data.The technological sustainability of tourism is considered from two perspectives (Gretzel et al., 2020).Firstly, these technologies can provide efficient resource management in all subsectors that make up the travel and hospitality industry (e.g.transportation, accommodation facilities and events).Secondly, the development of information technologies facilitates information sharing on a global scale.The effectiveness and importance of concepts such as cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), data mining and artificial neural networks as the basis for storing and analysing big data will have a substantial impact on the tourism industry (Mariani, 2019).With the popularity and development of internet technologies, big data, virtual reality (VR)/augmented reality (AR), cloud computing and blockchain, smart tourism has gradually changed from a mere rhetorical concept to practical application (Cranmer et al., 2020;Rashideh, 2020;Samara et al., 2020;Yung and Khoo-Lattimore, 2019).The big data platform of smart tourism provides comprehensive, multidimensional analysis of data on tourist attractions, pedestrian flow, traffic, hotels, etc.Through the full integration of various tourism resources, data mining and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies create an intelligent tourism ecosystem to provide tourism applications for governments, enterprises and travellers.For example, some museums are using AR and VR technologies to provide additional information and navigation services to enrich the forms of tour content.On the other hand, there is a growing utilization of AI to enable travel companies to transact orders more quickly, allow consumers to compare prices and content more effectively and provide travellers with more personalized and demand-driven services.As AI technology matures and becomes more widely available, more people are enjoying the convenience and functionality of AI in the tourism industry.AI trained by deep learning can continuously correct errors, offer possible options and provide the users with the desired relevant and highly personalized information within seconds (Goel et al., 2022).Thus, AI can assist the tourism industry in processing and analysing data to provide personalized and tailored services to travellers, simplifying the process of booking trips for travellers and greatly enhancing their travel experience.In addition to translation and price comparisons, this trend applies to many other areas, where AI learning can provide consumers with troubleshooting methods in a short period of time, such as gathering and recommending flight, hotel and restaurant information for consumers to save time and money, where consumers can get immediate answers and no extra staff workload is required.In terms of

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