[Call for Papers]

Information Systems Frontiers

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).
This special issue aims at identifying and discussing new trends and developments in smart, connected business practices in hospitality and tourism.
We invite researchers to submit original papers that include conceptual, empirical, analytical, design-oriented approaches: Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
· Smart technologies for airlines
· Smart technologies for tour operators, travel agencies
· Smart technologies for destinations
· Smart technologies for hotels and restaurants, theme parks and cruises
· Electronic brokerage and marketplaces for tourists, agencies, and vendors
· Electronic marketplaces through social network services
· IT architectures and models for smart tourism like e-tourism or smart services
· Developments and barriers related to interoperability and standards
· Acceptance, adoption, diffusion, and infusion of smart tourism technologies, products, or devices
· Ensuring privacy and security in smart tourism infrastructures
· Smart tourism solution approaches
· Policy, strategy, management of smart tourism
· Online & Computer-Based Reservation Systems
· Business intelligence for smart tourism technologies and services
· Mobile solutions for the tourism industry
· IS theories for tourism-related issues
· Research methods for the analysis of smart tourism related phenomena

Forms of submission
The editors of this special issue will invite some selected papers at conferences such as:
· PACIS 2015 Conference (IT and Open Innovation) Marina Bay Sands, Singapore 6-9 July
· ICEC 2015 Conference (Application of Big Data in e-Commerce) Seoul, Korea 3-5 August
· ENTER 2015 Conference (eTourism: Transforming Mobility) Lugano, Switzerland 3-6 February

In case the submission originates from a previous published article in a conference proceedings, it is required to be a substantial extension of that publication and the authors will be required to clarify the difference between the conference paper and their new submission. All submitted papers will go through peer review and if the paper does not receive a satisfactory review, it will not be considered for the special issue.
Submission Instruction
Manuscripts must be submitted to the ISF-Springer online submission system at:
http://www.editorialmanager.com/isfi/.
Paper submissions must conform to the format guidelines of Information Systems Frontiers available
at: http://www.springer.com/…/business+informatio…/journal/10796
Submissions should be approximately 32 pages double spaced including references.

Guest Editors
Fevzi Okumus
The University of Central Florida
E-mail: fevzi.okumus@ucf.edu

Cihan Cobanoglu
The University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee
E-mail: cihan@sar.usf.edu

Francesco Ricci
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
Email: fricci@unibz.it

Chulmo Koo
Kyung Hee University
Email: helmetgu@khu.ac.kr

Important Dates
Paper Submission Deadline: 30 December 2015
Publication Issue TBA 2016