The impact of smart technology on the modern tourist and tourism industry

Abstract

The aim of the following material will be to identify the impacts made to the tourism industry in Malta through the developments in Smart Technology. It will showcase the correspondence between the progress of the World Wide Web and the progress of tourism, the tourist and their needs. It will show the correlations between the need for web 3.0 and its availability to the trends of the tourism in Malta. The scope will be to identify how smart technologies have shaped the development of the tourism industry to what it is today. The life of a consumer/tourist has changed significantly over the years. Accessories such as alarms, computers, torches and even cameras, which were once only available to store and transport separately from home are now completely portable and accessible in one small hand held device called the smartphone or android. The tourist now makes a destination choice based on an educated research and decision process and while they are in that destination they also make more educated decisions based on what they find on the web. The tourist also needs to remain connected. This means that the traveller now needs to be able to access the web wherever he or she is. The past traveller didn’t have the choice as emails may not have been so popular and contacting friends and family wasn’t so readily available. Today, the traveller wishes to check Facebook, emails and search for whatever he or she wishes by means of the internet so having such facilities in tourism enterprises is more so needed in the modern tourism destination. The life of the employee has also changed with respect to progress in technology. From an internal process point of view, systems such as reporting, emailing and reservations have become ones of much higher speeds in terms of executing such daily tasks. With that said their expectations from employers and clients has also shifted which is making industries such as tourism so competitive. People are constantly connected and industries and enterprises within the tourism industry now know this and have come to realise that services need to be not only regularly updated but also mobile friendly. It is in these respects that both the business and the consumer have changed.