IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/prbchp/978-3-032-23925-9_17.html

Reflection on Technology-Enabled Human Touch

In: Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2026

Author

Listed:
  • Meng-Mei Chen

    (HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, EHL Hospitality Business School)

  • Alessandro Inversini

    (HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, EHL Hospitality Business School)

  • Amélie Keller

    (HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, EHL Hospitality Business School)

  • Geraldine Assen

    (HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, EHL Hospitality Business School)

Abstract

Rapid technological developments only make the debate of “high-tech, high-touch” more relevant than ever. Yet, in the travel sector, existing research addressing both high-tech and high-touch is scarce. The authors conducted 14 interviews to gather opinions from thought leaders and analyzed the data through inductive coding analysis. The investigation showed that “high tech”, “technology and customers”, “hospitality industry” and “human touch” are the most prominent topics discussed by thought leaders. The study concluded that technology is an enabler for human touch, relational time is more precious now than ever before, and human touch is the soul of the hospitality industry. Increasingly, employees will be assisted by technology and free from repetitive and transactional activities to engage with customers. High-tech and high-touch are not mutually exclusive, and every organization should aim to find the right balance of high-tech and high-touch.

Suggested Citation

  • Meng-Mei Chen & Alessandro Inversini & Amélie Keller & Geraldine Assen, 2026. "Reflection on Technology-Enabled Human Touch," Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics, in: Peter O'Connor & Mattia Rainoldi & Julia Neidhardt (ed.), Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2026, chapter 17, pages 247-258, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:prbchp:978-3-032-23925-9_17
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-23925-9_17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:prbchp:978-3-032-23925-9_17. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.