ABSTRACT
What will hotels look like in say, two decades hence? In a world where it might be said that change is the only constant, answers to such a question can at best be only speculative, regardless of the statisticians’ attempts to establish trends, introduce dummy variables to account for exogenous factors, or to adopt alternative probability-based methods such as Bayesian theorems. This chapter aims to simply consider some possible trends and introduce some ideas that the reader may reject, but even such a rejection would serve the purpose of initiating thinking about the challenges that face the industry. It is a chapter based on the author’s experiences, and thus is anecdotal and speculative. In its defence, it might be said that the author is someoone who has spent almost four decades in tourism research, and has travelled to many countries, and taught in four, and given talks and presentations in many more. So, while not meeting the conventional standards of ‘research science’ it is offered as an ‘informed piece of writing’ that seeks to set the tone for much that will follow in this book, while additionally, it seeks to be future focused.
