ABSTRACT
Technology is a form of codified knowledge which has had substantial long-term impacts on the structure and operations of tourism, as exemplified by the conceptualisation of long wave of technological shifts in the global economy. The rate of technological change has accelerated in recent decades, although this should not lead us to underestimate the significance for tourism of earlier technological changes such as the railway, the internal combustion engine, and jet engines. Nevertheless, computer technologies, and especially the internet, have transformed the conditions for the production and consumption of tourism. Internet platforms, social media, smart phones, and AI have radically transformed the relationships between producers and consumers, amongst consumers, and between consumers. This has not only created immense opportunities for innovation but also changed the balance of power between consumers and producers, while allowing even the smallest of firms to be born global via its web pages. It is important, however, not to reify the role of technology, because its impacts are not realised in the abstract. Instead, there is a process of structure and agency, and individual actors (whether firms, entrepreneurs, or increasingly consumers) play a key role in implementing technological innovations. Moreover, technological innovations are only as effective as the marketing, organisational, process, and product innovations which accompany them. Even the most radical of technological innovations, are ultimately shaped, at ground level, by multiple and variable processes of implementation, that is by associated, mostly incremental, innovations.
