Industry 4.0 in the tourism and hospitality business: Insights and challenges for ‘smart inclusive hotels

In the last decades, especially since 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic acting as accelerator phenomenon, Industry 4.0 has been affecting both businesses management and customer ex-perience in tourism and hospitality. Likewise, these businesses face relevant challenges related to people with disability (PwD) who require suitable accommodation and accessible and usable in practice facilities and services able to meet their needs. This study aims to explore how Indus-try 4.0 has been embraced by the hotel business making customers’ experience unique consid-ering the degree of innovativeness and accessibility and usability of hotel facilities and services for PwD. Industry 4.0 contributes to create the so-called “smart hotels”, but it is still discussed and under investigated how much smart hotels are also accessible, usable in practice and satis-fying for all customers, including PwD or special needs. This exploratory study investigates the concept of “smart hotels” as “inclusive and satisfying hotels” for all customers. It consists of a two-step research process. First, we perform a literature review on the topic for identifying the main features to empirically investigate. Second, we conduct semi-structured interviews/survey to 4- and 5-stars hotels general managers in the Campania region in the Southern Italy. The primary findings, although show a certain degree of innovativeness of the luxury hotels investi-gated in implementing smart technologies, outline the need to still analyze the phenomenon considering also some other specific variables, such as the organizational culture or the size of the hotels. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed