Unveiling technological innovation in hospitality and tourism through patent data: Development perspective and competition landscaping

Abstract

This study fills a gap in the literature by focusing on hospitality and tourism technology development (supply-side perspective) rather than technological adoption (demand-side perspective). Drawing on US patent data, we focus on three main technology areas: travel agencies, hotels and restaurants, and online reservations. With a dataset of 88,344 patents granted to 13,696 assignees since 1966, we study hospitality and tourism-related technologies under the three fields. Using the machine learning-based text analytics, we analyze the classes of patents invented in each sector. We also map technological competition landscapes in the three domains in terms of innovation quality (PageRank centrality) and quantity (patent volume) and discover leading/following firms.