Introduction: RAISA in Future Travel-related Industries

A zeitgeist was the instigator of this book. While humans seem to have a fascination with robots, the incorporation of robots, artificial intelligence, and service automation (RAISA) into the economy in recent years has accelerated. In just a few years, technologies have increased their effectiveness and the technologies have entered into the economy in effective ways. While robots have been used extensively in manufacturing for decades, it has only been in the past few years that the service industries have seen a massive incursion of new technologies, changing the ways in which many of us do business or interact with businesses. Robots and artificial intelligence fascinate humans and are now advanced enough to replace human labor or augment human labor in the service sector, namely the travel, tourism, and hospitality sectors.