Mahender Reddy Gavinolla

The COVID-19 pandemic hastened the distant work revolution and gave rise to a distinct consumer group called ‘digital nomads.’ Digital nomads, which include independent contractors, self-employed people, and people who have escaped the confines of the office, have the ability to work from home while travelling both domestically and abroad. However, there are worries that the rise of the digital nomad could worsen already problematic travel issues like overtourism. The purpose of this study is to conceptually analyse the effects of digital nomads on tourist locations by reviewing existing literature and recent reports. Understanding the effects of digital nomadism is essential in a world where popular places battle overtourism. With its main arguments nestled within the critical literature review, the study can be categorized as a viewpoint paper. The study also draws important inspiration from the grey literature because the subject is current.

Tourism for its intrinsic character of people, planet and profit has been an enduring area of research for sustainable policy and practices. Planning and implementing sustainable tourism in India are largely shaped and groomed in the classrooms. Currently, over two hundred universities across the country offer tourism programs. The current study involves a two-stage process. Available literature was first summarized into items of sustainability components required of a program structure such as sustainability aspects; viz. socio-economic, environmental, and business, case study approach, interaction with stakeholders, research & practices in local settings and timely update of the syllabus. Such components in the second stage of the research formed the basis of the questionnaire used for qualitative research involving senior academics responsible for designing the syllabi. Findings present a model on the effective integration of sustainable tourism theories and practices into tourism curricula.

Purpose: With an industry 5.0 revolution taking place in the hospitality industry, a shift from manual to cognitive labor is anticipated, characterized by greater sustainability, resilience and a human-centric approach. In this regard, hospitality educators' ability and willingness to teach novel topics such as automation at work, upskilling of employees, man-machine interaction and service robots have become more important than ever. This study aims to interpret the perspectives of hospitality educators about bridging the gap in the employability skills of (next-gen) hospitality graduates and the concerns relating to career sustainability in times of transition.Design/methodology/approach: A case study method was used given the novelty of the topic in a developing country like India. A qualitative survey with open-ended questions, is employed to understand the viewpoints of Indian hospitality educators, including those with more than 15 years of teaching experience. In-depth interviews were conducted with 23 hospitality educators to reach the theoretical saturation point. MAXQDA software was used to analyze the qualitative data collected in the study.Findings: The findings reveal the challenges and motivations of hospitality educators in adapting to frequently changing business environments. In doing so, it sheds light on the methods employed to create a generation of hospitality graduates aligned with the changing dynamics of the industry.Originality/value: The paper presents the viewpoints of hospitality educators in India in relation to a futuristic approach to next-gen employability and career sustainability. Whilst numerous studies have focused on the role of robots and artificial intelligence in replacing the human component of the service environment, the concept of people working alongside advanced technologies is fairly new and needs to be fully explored.

The Indian Food and Beverage (F&B) sector is going through massive turmoil in the face of COVID-19. With speculations of huge revenue losses and manpower layoffs, the stakeholders of the industry are relying on innovative and adaptable solutions to mitigate the current crisis. Since the emergence of the pandemic, very few academic works have highlighted the chefs’ perspectives on the changing realities in the F&B sector, especially in developing countries. Thereby, this chapter is an attempt to understand chefs’ perspectives on the changing realities of the Indian F&B sector. Data for this study was collected through unstructured telephone and online interviews with 15 chefs from nine popular five-star establishments serving in India. The interviews were transcribed and coded, following which thematic content analysis was employed to identify the major constructs. Apart from its academic contribution, the findings of the current study are expected to be of significant value to chefs, managers and other stakeholders in the food industry.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been disastrous and has affected the hospitality industry worldwide, and the people working in the sector were impacted immensely. The purpose of this study is to understand the viewpoints of hospitality workers in Australia on how lockdowns have impacted professional and personal well-being. The case study methodology is adopted for this study. Viewpoints from Australian hospitality workers were collected through semi-structured interviews. With the pandemic taking surprising turns with the rise of new infections and in turn new pandemic waves, the industry is facing a constant lurking fear of lockdowns. Changing variants of COVID-19 creates a profound effect on the psychological and personal well-being of the people employed in the hospitality sector. This chapter would reflect upon the viewpoints of hospitality workers in Australia after two years of the COVID-19 crisis. A ‘real-time’ assessment is required to understand the vulnerability of hospitality industry workers in a developed country.

Museums play a significant role in society to educate and create awareness of history and heritage. For the past several years, due to the development of information and communication technologies and digital technologies, museums are widely adopting these technologies for the digitisation and promotion of museums. Telangana is a newly formed state of India that consists of rich history and heritage. In this regard, museums can play a major role in educating and creating awareness of their rich heritage. However, it is observed that the museums are not actively involved in the digitisation of museum artefacts and have no promotion through digital or social media. In this background, the objective of the study is to know the present state of digitisation and promotion of artefacts of Telangana state museums; understand the issues and challenges involved in the digitisation and promotion of museum artefacts; and provide suggestions for better promotion and digitisation. In doing so, the authors used multiple methods such as content analysis, semi-structured interviews and case discussion. Results show that the museums are not actively involved in digitisation and digital promotion, due to a lack of awareness, concern, concentration, budget and unstable management practices.

Several initiatives were taken to preserve the cultural heritage over the years by various institutions and individuals. But in the contemporary times, digital technologies and several other information and communication technologies are used for the conservation and preservation of cultural heritage through digitisation. In this regard, several studies examined the various aspects of digitisation of cultural heritage (DCH). However, the studies providing a detailed overview of DCH are scant. With this background, the purpose of this study is to examine the progress, performance, research constituents and trending tics of the research on DCH. The authors used the publications indexed in the Scopus to provide a detailed overview of the DCH, and the data ae visualised using VOSviewer and Tableau. Result shows that there is a significant growth of number of publications and citations. There is an increased importance of use of various tools and techniques for the DCH. The major trending topics of the research include artificial intelligence, virtual reality, big data, 3D technologies, sustainability and conservation.