Transforming to a Sustainable Visitor Economy With Information Systems

Abstract

The global visitor economy sector, which includes tourism, hospitality and events, makes significant economic contributions. In 2023, there were 1.3 billion international tourist arrivals globally, with expenditure of $1.5 trillion (USD) (UN Tourism 2024). The Travel and Tourism sector contributed 9.1% to global GDP, a 23.2% rise from 2022, alongside 27 million new jobs, increased domestic spending surpassing pre-pandemic levels, and a substantial 33.1% boost in international spending, indicating that tourism has rebounded after the pandemic (World Travel and Tourism Council 2024). The global hospitality sector is worth around $4.7 trillion (USD) in 2023, with an annual growth rate of 7% (Hospitality Insights 2024). In the UK, the hospitality sector contributes significantly to the economy, contributing £93 billion (GBP) in 2023, supporting 3.5 million jobs as the third largest employer, and generating £54 billion (GBP) in tax revenue, £20 billion (GBP) in exports, and £7 billion (GBP) in business investment (UK Hospitality 2023).

The global events sector, which primarily consists of sports, music events, conferences and festivals, was valued at $1.4 trillion (USD) (Claight 2024). Mega-events, such as the Olympics, have large economic impacts on the host country (Sato et al. 2024; Wolfe et al. 2022), including job creation and tourism revenues. For instance, the 2024 Paris Olympics is set to generate between €6.7 and €11.1 billion (EUR) net economic benefit to the region (Claight 2024) and create up to 247 000 jobs (CDES 2024). Concerts and world tours also impact economies, society and sustainability. Taylor Swift's Eras tour is estimated to have contributed £1 Billion (GBP) to the UK with spending on tickets, travel, accommodation and hospitality (Masud 2024). ABBA Voyage, a virtual concert in London, features avatars of the original band members created with motion capture technologies (ABBA Voyage 2024), boosted the London economy by £322 million (GBP) (Prynn 2024) and provides event goers with new types of entertainment.

The visitor economy can also contribute to sustainability goals. For example, Cold Play's Music of the Spheres world tour aims to be as sustainable and low-carbon as possible (Cold Play 2024). In addition to the economic impact, the visitor economy also contributes to social and environmental sustainability, such as empowering women and young people in the workforce, transforming perceptions through intercultural encounters, advancing heritage preservations through educating and engaging with stakeholders, improving quality of life and reducing inequality in developing countries through community development.

A sustainable visitor economy is crucial due to its scale, multifaceted benefits and potential impacts. Its importance is particularly evident as a significant economic driver in the destination and benefits the host community (Arnegger and Herz 2016). It has great potential for promoting social stability, cultural preservation and community engagement (Besculides, Lee, and McCormick 2002; Webster and Ivanov 2014). On the one hand, tourism, hospitality and events are a positive force in achieving sustainability goals (Higgins-Desbiolles 2006); on the other hand, there are many unethical and irresponsible environmental and local community issues (Buckley 2012; Milano, Novelli, and Cheer 2019), for example, due to its dependence and entanglement with fragile natural resources (Sisneros-Kidd et al. 2019), and the amount of waste generated (Diaz-Farina, Díaz-Hernández, and Padrón-Fumero 2023). It is, thus, essential to develop and implement sustainable strategies that maximize the positive impacts of the visitor economy while effectively addressing and mitigating its negative consequences, ensuring that the visitor economy supports a sustainability agenda that serves multiple stakeholders.

Visitor economy outlets often refer to information technology (IT) over IS, and has long been extensively used in the visitor economy (Cai, Richter, and McKenna 2019; Navío-Marco, Ruiz-Gómez, and Sevilla-Sevilla 2018). Examples published within tourism, hospitality or events journals are broad. For example, recent research has explored artificial intelligence (AI) service failure (Lv et al. 2021), the impact of AI on tourism firms (Li and Chen 2024) and luxury hospitality (Gonçalves et al. 2024). Robotics has also been of recent interest across the visitor economy, for example, robots in tourism services (Liu et al. 2025), robot service failure in hospitality settings (Liu and Wang 2025), and the use of robots in events (Webster and Ivanov 2022). Other recent interests include virtual tourism (Liu, Moyle, et al. 2024), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality in tourism (Bec et al. 2021) and augmented reality (AR) in science festivals (Olya et al. 2020).

However, there are few examples of visitor economy research in information systems (IS). Examples with a sustainability focus include sustainable ICT capability (Gholami et al. 2017), marine animal conservation (Tan 2018) and sustainable tourism in developing countries (Tsokota, von Solms, and van Greunen 2017). We believe that IS research can bring new insights and produce new knowledge for a sustainable digital visitor economy. In some of our previous work in tourism (Cai and McKenna 2021; Cai et al. 2021), we called on ‘information technology and tourism’ researchers to draw more from IS's rich history of theoretical development and methodological approaches. Thus encouraging tourism researchers to enhance their theoretical and methodological development. In this editorial, we call for IS researchers to work with the visitor economy to create a vibrant cross-disciplinary research community and bring to light the opportunities for us to research sustainable visitor economies. We see that opportunities in this field are numerous for impactful research.

The motivation for this special issue was to uncover how IS research can bring new insights and produce new knowledge for a sustainable digital visitor economy, which includes the tourism, hospitality and events sectors. In the next section, we provide an overview of the role that IS can play in the visitor economy and offer illustrative examples of how IS can transform this sector by enhancing efficiency, personalisation and sustainability. IS can drive innovation and sustainable practices, making the visitor economy more responsive to the needs of all stakeholders. Following this, we offer a cross-disciplinary research agenda on transforming to a sustainable visitor economy, introduce the special issue papers and conclude with some remarks about the special issue.

In the tourism sector, IT has been utilized by service providers, decision-makers or designers to provide sustainable solutions for the conservation of cultural heritage and endangered nature-based attractions.

For instance, the role of smart technologies in heritage tourism development (Balakrishnan et al. 2023), machine learning in marine protected areas (Rezapouraghdam, Akhshik, and Ramkissoon 2023) and smart coastal destinations (Foronda-Robles, Galindo-Pérez-de-Azpillaga, and Fernández-Tabales 2023). Other research has showcased that user-generated content on social media has implications for the sustainability of whale-watching (León et al. 2025) and digital exhibitions utilizing VR in museums (Kim et al. 2019). In the hospitality sector, including hotels, restaurants, and health and wellbeing centres, among other service providers, IT-related research has explored using blockchain to mitigate food wastage (de Visser-Amundson, Kleijnen, and Aydinli 2023; Omar et al. 2024), the use of QR code menus as a sustainable solution (Ozturkcan and Kitapci 2023), using big data to understand emotions based on online reviews (Yu, Chen, et al. 2024), or avatar servers to promote healthier dining habits (Hao, Aman, and Zhang 2024). In the hotel industry, smart and sustainable hotels have been promoted as the next step forward (Casais and Ferreira 2023). Smart technology can be used, for example, to decarbonize accommodation services (Coghlan, Becken, and Warren 2023). The events sector, encompassing conferences, sporting events, concerts, mega-events such as the Olympics, and various forms of entertainment, has also significantly benefited from the integration of IT. Research so far has explored the use of mobile applications for event management (Revilla, Moure, and Einsle 2023), virtual music concerts (Sequeira Couto et al. 2023), such as the use of avatars in the ABBA Voyage concert in London (Matthews and Nairn 2023), low carbon ice rink technology for the Winter Olympics (Li et al. 2023), the digitalization of mega-events (Lee Ludvigsen and Petersen-Wagner 2023), virtual LGBTQI+ pride events (McKenna 2020), and the live streaming of sports events (Liu and Tan 2023).

Furthermore, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the visitor economy are essential in generating working opportunities and contributing to economic growth. IT adoptions, such as blockchain, facilitate SMEs' sustainable development and competitiveness with cryptocurrency payments (Nuryyev et al. 2020). Digital transformation and disruptive technologies adopted in the sector create new job opportunities for many, such as Uber, Airbnb and online travel agents and impact sustainable ecosystems (Leung, Xue, and Wen 2019). Smart destinations and infrastructure also play an important role in sustainability, with technologies such as the internet of things (IoT) and cloud computing enabling resources to be used more smartly (Cimbaljević, Stankov, and Pavluković 2019). However, significant challenges persist for destinations and attractions that lack the necessary resources and capabilities for digitalization. Additionally, visitors and service providers with limited digital literacy are likely to face considerable difficulties in effectively engaging with smart infrastructure, which could hinder the broader adoption of these technologies.

However, in the context of the visitor economy, IT represents a double-edged sword in terms of its impact on sustainability. From the visitor's perspective, on the one hand, IS applications significantly improve visitors' wellbeing through innovating visitor experiences (Gretzel and Stankov 2021), supporting accessibility for individuals with disabilities (Bazazo and Alananzeh 2016) and enabling alternative forms of engagement through virtual platforms, such as virtual tours in the Faroe Islands during the pandemic and virtual museum experiences offered by Google Arts and Culture (Jarratt 2021; Lu et al. 2021; Zhang et al. 2022). These advancements have fundamentally reshaped how visitors interact with tourism offerings, making them more accessible and engaging. Additionally, virtual event platforms, such as online conferences and festivals, have allowed event organizers to reach a broader audience without the environmental impact associated with travel. However, from the visitor's perspective, questions persist regarding the long-term sustainability of these platforms, such as the environmental impact of increased energy consumption for virtual infrastructure, the economic viability of maintaining these services, and the risk of reduced user engagement over time. The increased reliance on IT has also been linked to various wellbeing issues, particularly in terms of blurring the boundaries between work and leisure, thereby undermining the concept of ‘mental distance’ when physically away (Floros et al. 2021; White and White 2007).

From the perspective of operators and destination management organisations, emerging and disruptive technologies have primarily been applied to enhance operational efficiency, improve revenue management, manage tourism flows and sustain businesses. For example, IT to enhance efficiency in tourism and hospitality operations, contributing to more sustainable business practices (Lin, Shin, and Shin 2024), AI-driven solutions for crowd management in tourism (Vetrivel, Vidhyapriya, and Arun 2025), and immersive experiences afforded by extended reality (XR) and AI to preserve cultural heritage (Pistola et al. 2021). The adoption of green technologies in the hospitality sector has demonstrated potential for reducing environmental impact (Gunduz Songur, Turktarhan, and Cobanoglu 2023). Nevertheless, challenges such as overtourism, exacerbated by peer-to-peer accommodation platforms (Eckert et al. 2019) and the glamorization of certain destinations on social media (Gössling 2017), have led to conflicts between tourists and local residents (Mihalic and Kuščer 2022) and have imposed significant negative impacts on destinations ill-equipped to handle large volumes of visitors (Seraphin, Sheeran, and Pilato 2018).

From an employee perspective, the integration of AI and service automation has provided considerable support by reducing repetitive tasks, thereby enhancing employee wellbeing. However, the implementation of these technologies has also raised concerns regarding job security, particularly within the hospitality sector (Koo, Curtis, and Ryan 2020; Li, Bonn, and Ye 2019). These concerns are especially evident among the female workforce, which constitutes a substantial portion of employment in the visitor economy (Ismail 2018). Women are often concentrated in roles more susceptible to automation, such as front-desk services and housekeeping, rendering them particularly vulnerable to job displacement as AI and automation technologies become more prevalent.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ¹ aim to promote sustainable development globally; however, their implementation has occasionally led to unintended consequences that may undermine sustainability efforts. For instance, badly managed social media induced tourism may lead to overtourism, resulting in negative impacts on destinations such as tourists wearing inappropriate clothing, causing noise or invading local residents' personal space (Siegel, Tussyadiah, and Scarles 2023), ultimately counteracting the intended goals of sustainable development. The increased use of IT to optimise tourism marketing and manage visitor flows can inadvertently lead to overtourism, resulting in data-driven promotion that overwhelms local infrastructure, strains resources and degrades natural environments, ultimately counteracting the intended goals of sustainable development.

We argue that the role of IS in shaping the sustainable visitor economy cannot be overstated. The integration of advanced data analytics, AI, immersive communication platforms and digital transparency frameworks offers promising pathways for addressing the SDGs. However, these technological interventions must be implemented with careful attention to ethical implications, data privacy and socio-economic impacts to ensure they contribute meaningfully to the broader research agenda on sustainable visitor economy. The subsequent sections examine how IS (instead of IT) can revolutionise data collection, sustainable operations and stakeholder engagement while emphasizing the importance of ethical and inclusive practices in promoting sustainability within the visitor economy, ultimately fostering a more resilient and inclusive future.

This special issue comprises four papers, each providing insights into tourism and sustainability. All submissions we received had a tourism focus. Therefore, there are no papers in this special issue contributing to hospitality or events.

The paper by Chen, Zhang and Cheng (2024) investigates the spillover effects of online tourism platforms on sustainable economic growth and social welfare. The study draws from literature on smart tourism, online platform operations and economic and environmental prosperity to understand the implications of online tourism platforms on sustainable development. The authors propose an analytical model to guide the marketing and operational management decisions of tourism enterprises, highlighting the importance of collaboration between tourist attractions and tourism-related enterprises through online tourism platforms. The findings suggest that third-party online tourism platforms have reformed partnerships among stakeholders, strengthened the means of implementation and revitalized partnerships for sustainable development. Empirical evidence and numerical simulations support the benefits of dual platforms for tourism enterprises, indicating that the rise of online tourism platforms has improved the visitor economy and social welfare.

The paper by Du et al. (2024) explores the sustainable affordances of IS for cultural tourism from an organizational aesthetics perspective. The study focuses on the case of Taoxichuan, a cultural heritage site, to demonstrate how IS can be utilized to preserve intangible cultural heritage (ICH) while contributing to a sustainable visitor economy. The authors identify the affordances of IS in establishing ICH aesthetics as knowledge tools, such as offering visibility of the entire process of creating ceramics through live streaming and sharing procedures of ceramics making online. The paper emphasizes that IS affordances enable the dissemination and popularization of ICH artefacts, providing visitors and enthusiasts with a solid foundation of knowledge and experiences, ultimately facilitating the sustainable preservation and development of ICH.

The paper by Jiwasiddi et al. (2024) provides a comprehensive analysis of the impact of digital nomadism on local communities and their visitor economies and cultures, with a specific focus on the case study of Chiang Mai, Thailand. The study offers a taxonomic model and comparative analysis of visitor types, shedding light on the unique characteristics of digital nomads and their implications for local communities. The paper emphasizes the need for discourse, theory and regulation to recognize digital nomads as a distinct visitor type, separate from traditional tourists, expats and other visitors. The findings highlight the significant social, cultural, economic and technological impacts of digital nomadism on Chiang Mai while also discussing the transferability of these insights to other local communities around the globe. Overall, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of digital nomadism and its relevance for policy-making and future studies of visitor economies.

The paper by Zhang, Pan, and Guo (2025) investigates the implementation of evolving IS for heritage preservation in the Palace Museum in Beijing, China, using affordance-actualization theory to develop a conceptual model and uncover a hierarchical structure among affordances. The study incorporates input from various museum departments to gain a comprehensive understanding of organizational-level affordances and their actualization, revealing insights into ongoing upgrades and enhancements to the museum's digital platform. The paper emphasizes the evolving process of information systems' implementation and use, integrating various information technologies over time, and introduces an adaptation phase that sheds light on the feedback mechanisms through which museums respond to both achieved and unintended outcomes. The findings underscore the importance of a strategic, phased approach to system implementation, where each stage builds upon the success of the previous one, providing valuable insights into the integration of technology as a critical aspect of organizational innovation for heritage preservation.

When editing this special issue, we made some observations. First, we noticed that all papers in this special issue treated the visitor economy (in this case, tourism) as an applied context, and applied IS theories and contributed to IS knowledge in these contexts. We encourage broadening the scope of viewing tourism, hospitality and events beyond their applied, business-focused contexts. Instead, seeing them as a social phenomenon will enable many more opportunities to engage in broader and more critical discussions (Cai and McKenna 2021; Cai et al. 2021; Ferrer et al. 2021; Tribe and Liburd 2016) and open new avenues to theorize IS and tourism/hospitality/events together. In tourism, hospitality and event studies, we see a ‘critical turn’ in the field (Ateljevic, Morgan, and Pritchard 2007; Robertson et al. 2018), enabling a more reflexive and critical view of the power and norms, giving voices to marginalized communities and indigenous knowledge, and provide platforms to discuss social justice and challenge hegemonic discourses (Pritchard, Morgan, and Ateljevic 2011). Considered as social and human phenomenon, it frees tourism, hospitality and events from being passively perceived as a replaceable context to test hypotheses or consolidate IS theories and, instead, play a more active role in co-conceptualizing knowledge. For instance, Bilgihan et al. (2024) argue that hospitality can be viewed as an independent variable, individual personal traits, and a belief, which provides new opportunities to synthesize with IS.

In addition, tourism, hospitality and events play a very active role in enabling sustainability agendas, particularly in overlooked areas such as decolonization (Zigomo and Hull 2018), LGBTQI+ rights (Ong, Lewis, and Prayag 2025), prisoner rehabilitation (Gebbels, McIntosh, and Harkison 2021), empowering local communities (Higgins-Desbiolles and Bigby 2022) and enhance quality of life of those underprivileged (McCabe and Johnson 2013). This requires a fresh perspective of viewing tourism, hospitality and events as an active agent to transform society for the better rather than simply a context with issues to be solved through technology.

Second, we noticed that although articles in the special issue cover a wide range of geographical contexts, Western theories and literature are still primarily used, and most of the time, theoretical contributions do not engage with the local contexts. In other words, in some cases, there is a mismatch between the theory (Western) and the context (non-Western). Knowledge creation in the realm of IS, tourism, hospitality and events is very much dominated by the European/Western knowledge and theory, (Guba and Lincoln 1994). Although the study sites in the special issue articles are from non-Western countries, classic, prominent Western IS theories are applied. Earlier, Benckendorff and Zehrer (2013) pointed out that Western theories and European literature are encouraged and preferred compared with local theories and indigenous knowledge (Davison 2021) in today's academia. We raise this same issue that the importance of contextual richness and local knowledge will likely be neglected and marginalized in IS research. Furthermore, we need to challenge the dominating sustainability narrative and invite broader discussions around the indigenous knowledge and wisdom, power imbalance and colonial legacy (Chughtai 2023; Masiero 2023) in various contexts. We call for a more reflexive, critical lens in investigating the role IS plays in the sustainable visitor economy, including epistemologically unpacking theories used, highlighting the unique context and local knowledge, and fundamentally how sustainability is viewed and understood.

Third, we call for a more open-minded approach to conceptualizing IS in future visitor economy studies. We should challenge the static view of IS as a theory and tool and tourism, hospitality and events as a context or a problem. Instead, honouring the unique context of tourism, hospitality and events and viewing them as a social and cultural phenomenon with transformative potentials, bringing them on board in the process of theorizing and addressing unique issues of sustainability. Our research agenda offers a cross-disciplinary roadmap to support this. We encourage more collaborations between IS and tourism, hospitality and events scholars collaboratively to push a sustainable agenda in joint force.

To conclude, the papers in this special issue showcase how IS can transform the visitor economy towards sustainability by examining the roles of online tourism platforms, digital affordances for cultural heritage, recognition of emerging visitor types like digital nomads and through strategic IS implementation for heritage preservation. These studies help influence future developments in a sustainable visitor economy, where IS act as critical enablers for economic prosperity, cultural preservation and enhanced social wellbeing in a visitor economy.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.