Improving sustainability in the tourism industry through blockchain technology: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

The tourism industry is extremely important to the world economy; yet, the industry falls short when it comes to economic, social, and environmental issues. Blockchain as an information technology can be utilized to help solve these issues and establish sustainable tourism globally. However, the challenges to blockchain adoption in the tourism industry have not yet been examined systematically. The goal of this study, therefore, is three-fold: we first identify the challenges to blockchain using literature review and expert opinions. Then, we examine them using the proposed rough Interpretive Structural Modeling - Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication based on expert judgments. Finally, we link these challenges to diffusion of innovation theory. The results suggest that "lack of technical maturity" and "lack of interoperability" are the most important challenges of blockchain in the tourism industry. The findings of the study support macro- and micro-level decision-making in tourism industry's prospective applications of blockchain.