Culinary tourism is a new niche market that is gaining ground in

Abstract

The paper proposes to innovate service strategies following the KLEED model that expands to the attributes for the outstanding guest experience. The study is based on a review of academic literature, business news reports and online resources regarding human touch and technology the hotel industry is using. The suggestions were drawn from the authors' guest journey experience while staying in different hotels. Human touch or personal interaction is an integral part of the hospitality service business, and should never be set aside. In the same way for technology, adopting it contributes to the value creation of the hospitality business resulting in greater guest satisfaction. Thus, a blend of human touch and technology turns out to be the main ingredients for the outstanding guest experience. This paper used the authors' experience as hotel guests and other business reports to draw suggestions on how a blended service will create outstanding guest experience.

The tourism industry is reopening after two years of disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With its re-emergence, new ways of welcoming, receiving, and serving tourists and visitors will be necessary to restore their travel confidence. Governments and destinations should address tourists' health concerns and reassure them to feel at ease, secure, and safe while traveling. This paper argues that technology is an essential strategic partner for redesigning the tourism servicescape. A tourism servicescape combines products, places, services, and activities that contribute to tourists' overall experience. It also includes the interactions between tourists and several organizations at different touchpoints. This study attempts to redesign the tourism servicescape in the Post-Covid-19 by leveraging technology and aligning it with service delivery and interaction. Five technology pillars would facilitate a new service landscape in the travel and tourism industry. For each of these pillars, the author explores how to harness technology and how it can benefit organizations, businesses, and tourists. Technology will likely play an essential role in realigning tourism services and business models in the post-COVID-19 era.

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