Chapter 23: The Effects of Industry 4.0 in Tourism and Hospitality and Future Trends in Portugal

It is no longer enough to have a technology base to meet customer needs. The competitiveness of the tourism sector is ensured through the innovation capacity that companies can achieve, either through innovation associated with services or through services. The relationship between tourism innovation and business competitiveness in the tourism sector must consider emerging and innovative technologies that appear daily in society. In this context, the information systems applied to tourism must take into consideration the various sectors of activity: accommodation, travel agencies, restaurants and gastronomy, tourist entertainment, transport, among others. In addition to tourism management information system, it must integrate an innovation mechanism, which should be based on the definition of an appropriate business model. The business model that ensures innovation has to integrate design, production, service, and marketing through a new customer relationship, therefore technology must be able to meet the demands inherent in this new model. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate how the concept of Industry 4.0 can affect the development of tourism in Portugal. In this context, it is relevant for tourism that all companies consider the technological drivers of change associated with the concept of Industry 4.0, constituting a technological basis for leveraging tourism companies to a technological environment called ‘Tourism 4.0’.