Digital transformation and hospitality management competencies: Toward an integrative framework

Digital transformation requires hospitality and tourism organizations to build and sustain digital business capabilities such as digital customer engagement, digital customer experience management, digital innovation, digital leadership, and others. These organization digital business capabilities, in turn, require corresponding digital transformation and digital business management competencies. This has important implications for required hospitality management competencies. We identify the specific digital transformation and digital business management competencies required by hospitality managers. Then, given a disconnect between these competencies and previously identified hospitality management digital technology competencies, we propose a framework integrating digital transformation and digital business management competencies with previously identified digital technology competencies required by hospitality managers. The proposed framework has important implications for curricula design and managerial practice. These implications as well as future research ideas are discussed.

Automated summary

Digital transformation has significant implications for the management capabilities of hospitality and tourism organizations, requiring the establishment and development of digital business capabilities and the integration of digital technology competencies. We propose a framework that integrates digital transformation and digital business management competencies to help hospitality managers address the challenges of digital transformation.