Abstract
This research paper provides an overview of how technology is shaping the pathway for Mauritius to become a Smart Tourism destination. Mauritius a small island economy recently hosted an international conference entitled ‘Digitalisation and Sustainability’ in the tourism sector. The conference emphasised on the need for enhancing competitiveness of Mauritius as a tourism destination through technology and innovation. Mauritius has also invested in Smart Cities to provide technology-driven facilities to businesses and customers. A qualitative research approach is adopted based on content analysis, literature review and reference will be made to the challenges for the country to emerge as a Smart tourist destination. The research analyses the megatrends in digitalisation that emerged from the conference and further analyses different indexes for ICT to assess the readiness of Mauritius as Smart Tourism destination. Different Mauritian tourism websites and metrics are used to gather data for purposes of analysis. The research shows that the hospitality industry is investing in new technological tools due to increasing customer sophistication. The Hospitality.mu and Mari Deal.mu portals are clear examples of the digitalisation trend in the tourism industry with the increasing use of the internet by consumers at all levels of the value chain. The research will also showcase some examples of real applications of technology in the tourism sector being adopted at the national and international level.
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Roopchund, R. (2020). Mauritius as a Smart Tourism Destination: Technology for Enhancing Tourism Experience. In: Pati, B., Panigrahi, C., Buyya, R., Li, KC. (eds) Advanced Computing and Intelligent Engineering. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1089. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1483-8_44
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1483-8_44
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