Blockchain acceptance and adoption in the tourism industry

Tourism has always been characterized by extensive innovativeness (from theme parks and cultural&gourmet tours till a deeper service integration). Today, digital solutions represent an opportunity to expand and innovate the range of services offered. Focusing on blockchain as an emerging technological solution, the paper investigates how expert and practitioners perceive the potentialities and limitations of its adoption in tourism. To capture the attitudes expressed in the field, we analyze the ongoing discussions on a major social network: Twitter. Through a social network analysis of the flow of tweets conducted over three months, we map the current perceptions towards blockchain. Specifically, we contribute to the literature on technology acceptance and adoption by intercepting the current perceptions in the tourism industry. This paper shows how experts and practitioners are envisioning the possibilities that blockchain shape future services in the tourism sector. Our study is based on an extensive literature review and a social network analysis of a Twitter-database. This allows us to investigate the current sentiment towards blockchain, and also to envision future directions of a promising and yet under analyzed technology.