The Effect of Digital Transformation on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Tourism Sector: The Case of Lebanese Tourism Services Providers

摘要

The service industry is one of the early adopters of digitalization which included airlines, travel agencies and hotels. This digitization has created a new sector in the Tourism Industry named: Electronic tourism (hereinafter mentioned as E-Tourism). E-tourism pertains to all tourism services using a single platform. The evolution of E-Tourism has reshaped business practices and strategies and directly affected suppliers approaches and client's consumptions behavior. Major online platforms were introduced to endorse E-tourism and to modernize traditional distribution systems to become E-distribution processes. The adoption of digital platforms has made the tourism services available to all market segments, therefore, a higher consumption of the tourism services has been recorded. In fact, the number of the international tourist's activity accelerated during the past 10 years recording nearly double the number recorded in 2007. This paper discusses the effect of the digital transformation in tourism by boosting the entrepreneurial traits of the suppliers from one hand and affecting the tourists/traveler's culture of consumption from the other hand. A qualitative approach has been adopted by conducting in depth interviews with executives in the tourism sector to link e-tourism to entrepreneur-ship. Moreover, a questionnaire has been distributed to E-tourism consumers to understand their consumption patterns and culture. The purpose of this paper is to acknowledge the importance of tourism digitization in boosting innovation and entrepreneurship in the tourism industry.