Special issue on smart, connected hospitality and tourism

Information technology is transforming travel behaviors and business in the hospitality and tourism industry by making all the actors more connected and creating " a smart, connected business " , i.e., " intelligently optimized for a specific need ". This is achieved by leveraging the information and communication infrastructure, and a range of new mobile and wearable user's devices. All of them can change the tourist experience as well as enhance tourism organizations' (i.e., destinations) competitiveness. Smartness also refers to the networking layer, which supports the cooperation of actors, either humans or businesses. This smart and connected business in the hospitality and tourism industry involves many parties (transport, accommodation, restaurants, cultural activities, central & local governments, and leisure & heritage sites) and enables them working together to gain additional competitiveness. In recent years, industry practitioners and scholars started viewing smart & connected tourism from a more holistic perspective. This is because it has become evident that smart and connected tourism businesses alter the stakeholders and tourism systems, which must integrate many more information technology applications and platforms. Likewise, with its inexpensive and ubiquitous connectivity they provide unexpected benefits for related parties such as travelers, and travel companies and partners, and individual business owners among others. Smart components, combined with physical products and associated services, have generated valuable products and services, ensuring growth in the hospitality and tourism industry. For instance, AirBnB (Air Bed and Breakfast) is a new kind of short-term rental service, which has emerged in the last a few years. This site relies on social networking and involves electronic brokerage. What is unique is that the renters review their visitors, while in expedia.com or other traditional hotel booking services only feedback on the accommodation is provided. Recently, mobile apps connected with social network services as well as with traditional websites allow such exchanges to be informed by social information and feedback to be instantaneous. Travelers' reviews and ratings for restaurants, hotels, historic and tourism sites, which are written in Tripadvisor, can be used by tourism stakeholders in order to identify service quality issues and provoke immediate service recovery. Smart, connected business need to highlight how travel agents, general companies, and individuals travelers create symbiotic relationships through information technology (IT).