Abstract—Artificial intelligence, Robotics and service automation are already visible in the tourism and hospitality industry, in addition to providing a typology for R-tourism applications, this paper aims to make a comprehensive literature review for the incorporation of this interdisciplinary area into mainstream tourism research. This paper reviews literatures which include robotic service (R-Service) research, Robots Service Automation, Autonomy and Human Robot Interaction (HRI), Robot Autonomy, Capabilities and Design, and the Uncanny Valley Theory to emphasize the importance of autonomy and human robot interaction, and provides tourism and hospitality examples and then to explore the anthropomorphic features in service robots. Furthermore, this paper explores the current state and the potential adoption of service automation and robots in tourism and hospitality industry, incorporates tourism and hospitality literature and examples. Finally, this paper constructs an integrated model of R-Tourism. This paper gives academics and practitioners a foundation for envisioning the current and future state of robots in tourism and hospitality.

Index Terms—R-tourism, robotics, service, automation, tourism and hospitality.

Te Fu Chen is with Department of Business Administration, Lunghwa University of Science and Technology, Taiwan(email: phd2003@gmail.com).
Tsai-Fong Tan is with Department of Cosmetology and Fashion Design, CHING KUO Institute of Management and Health.
Li-Cheng Chen is with Department of Hospitality Management, Tajen University of Technology.
Pin-Chen Lai is with Graduate School of Technological and Vocational Education, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Lecturer, Department of Hotel and MICE Management, Overseas Chinese University.
Pei-Ling Chung is with Department of Food Science, National Pingtung university of Science and Technology, Taiwan.

Cite: Te Fu Chen, Tsai-Fong Tan, Li-Cheng Chen, Pin-Chen Lai, Pei-Ling Chung, "R-Tourism: Applications and Incorporation of Robotics and Service Automation in Tourism and Hospitality," International Journal of e-Education, e-Business, e-Management and e-Learning vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 138-145, 2019.