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The study attempts to understand students' apprehensions, satisfaction, and experience concerning online hospitality and tourism education (HTE) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Focused group discussions were conducted to gather student experiences implementing ICT in hospitality and tourism education. The group discussions were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed in search of themes to identify and validate the constructs to develop the questionnaire for the study. The questionnaire was then presented before the subject experts to cross-check the validity of constructs. Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) was used to determine students' satisfaction by comparing students' perceptions to students' expectations. The study's findings show the importance of practical classes and labs and on-site instructor comments on students' overall satisfaction. Online teaching can complement traditional classroom teaching but cannot fully replace lab sessions with instructor feedback. Transitioning to an online platform requires effective tools and curriculum modifications to fill the gap in industry expectations regarding student employability. Online teaching has immense capability, but it cannot be generalized and requires subject-specific attention and feedback. Online education needs to keep evolving alongside contemporary classroom teaching to meet student expectations. Future research would concentrate on communication, interpersonal, and technology skills and their effect on the study's results.

Rural tourism continues to evolve toward an experience economy. Along with rural tourism activities, travelers often enjoy intangible heritage as part of their cultural tourism experience. Digital technologies could aid in the development of online preservation, learning tool, and a set of guidelines based on intangible cultural heritage to assist small rural businesses in designing and promoting sustainable tourist products. The digital revolution has the potential to foster mutual learning among tour operators, tourists, and host communities, in addition to boosting access to cultural material and making it publicly available. However, there is a lack of digital technology in creating a favorable environment to promote the inheritance and enhancement of the value of intangible cultural heritage through rural tourism development. Moreover, the digital optimization of intangible cultural heritage and rural tourism development needs special attention. The chapter provides insights on digitalizing intangible cultural heritage and rural tourism for sustainable destination development.

Conservation of intangible cultural heritage is important for any rural tourism destination. The rich intangible cultural heritage can be preserved using advanced digital technologies for future generations. Digital technologies provide the means of documenting, recovering, and presenting different components of the intangible cultural heritage of a rural destination. However, one of the challenges is finding appropriate forms, together with efficient methods, to document the ephemeral aspects of rural intangible heritage. Another barrier is finding effective ways to communicate the knowledge inextricably linked to people or communities. This chapter outlines state-of-the-art models, projects, and technical practices that have advanced the digitization lifecycle for intangible cultural heritage resources. The chapter further aims to identify the advancements and gaps in the existing conventions and to envision opportunities for transmitting embodied knowledge in intangible heritage.

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