Digital technology, tourism and geographies of inequality

Tourism is undergoing major changes in the advent of social media networks and other new forms of digital technology. This has affected a number of tourism related processes including marketing, destination making, travel experiences and visitor feedback but also various tourism subsectors, like hospitality, transportation and tour operators. More radical than the change in technology itself, the COVID-19 pandemic has hastened questions of digitality and virtuality to the fore in tourism (and not just there). An already substantial and growing body of research has investigated these developments, both regarding tourism processes and industry subsectors and it has grown substantially since the pandemic. Still, largely overlooked are the effects of these changes on questions concerning inequality. This paper provides an overview of recent discussions on this topic, presenting an analysis of extant material and provides ideas of where to take the research further.