How Digital Platforms Are Shaping Tourism Culture

Audience: Victorian Tourism, Hospitality and Events Industry Stakeholders

Executive Summary

Reflecting on the changing relationship between technology, society, tourism and hospitality innovation this report draws on theories such as Technological Determinism (TD), the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT), and Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Furthermore it will be explored how technologies such as generative AI are not only tools but social actors that are constituted by, and help to constitute human values, behaviour, and institutional power.

Ultimately, technology should not be seen as inevitable or neutral. It needs to be critically navigated, ethically informed and designed to benefit the many communities that make up Victoria’s tourism and events ecology. Examining these platforms and systems using the case study of AI-enabled applications such as Airbnb’s Online Experiences and AI-powered guest services, this report will illustrate how digital systems can open up new possibilities, raising ethical considerations around bias, inclusion and control.

Introduction

Encapsulating the unit content reading, NETS5007 Technology, Innovation, Societies, technology will be explored and how technology in the form of digital technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and online platforms, mirrors and is mirrored by society. The study has explored the implications of such technologies for Victoria's tourism and hospitality industry. Drawing from three popular paradigms including, namely technological determinism (TD), social construction of technology (SCOT), and actor network theory (ANT), how digital technologies do not merely respond to users needs but act to re-conceptualise business models, cultural myth, and power relation are at the forefront of the study.

It starts by presenting an academic lens, decoding the context exploring first ChatGPT, and then attempting to unpack its application in the world of tourism, such as with Airbnb, through a series of case studies. These instances are also useful to situate digital transformation's social, ethical, and operational nuances. Finally, I take stock of my own thinking and ponder how it may have shifted through the unit by considering interdisciplinary ways of thinking, including the latest readings on Indigenous and feminist critiques.

The most significant message of this report is that technologies are not neutral objects, like hammers and nails, that we pick up and use without bias. If digital innovation is to be truly inclusive and effective, it needs to be informed by theory, filled with ethics, and shaped by dialogue with the people and environments served.

Key Theoretical Insights

In today’s tourism and hospitality environment, particularly after the digital disruption and rise of AI tools, knowing how technology shapes people and is shaped by them is not just a theoretical exercise but a practical necessity. In this unit, we were introduced to three basic theoretical frameworks that allowed time to analyse the interplay between innovation, social structures, and cultural values, including Technological Determinism (TD), the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Each perspective provided a unique frame to see how generative AI, booking platforms, and automation tools are developed, used, and felt.

Technological Determinism was the first step. It is a way of thinking that implies technological change leads directly to social change and is, in many cases, a linear process, if not necessarily inevitable. From this perspective, technology choices such as AI systems or digital check-in processes are the natural evolution in response to market demands or technological developments. At first, that was a reasonable enough explanation for the digital evolutions witnessed in tourism, hospitality and events industries. As found in multiple texts (Dafoe, 2015; Jordan, 2008), there are no vacuums of technology: they are as they are and do what they do because of the priorities of their creators and funders, and, in turn, they are what their users and institutions do with them once they have arrived.

Social Construction of Technology (SCOT), which turns the determinist view on its head and states that technology is shaped by society, not the other way around. As Bijker (2009) argues, artefacts of technology are only meaningful within the social collectives that interpret and use them. For example, during COVID-19, Airbnb’s Online Experiences platform meant different things to different people. For hosts, a financial lifeline, for Airbnb, a business pivot and for guests, an imaginative getaway. These map varied readings of the platform and their consequences on its design, highlighting the feature that has been prioritised. The concept of “interpretive flexibility” of SCOT came to my understanding that technologies do not have inherent meanings, technologies are constructed in the context. However, I also appreciated the limitations of this model, in which everyone is seen to have an equal voice. As Prell (2017) points out, not all actors have equal access to drive outcomes. The more power an actor has within the institution, e.g. corporate actors, the more frequently they play a larger role and have a say.

A third, more radical perspective was provided by Actor-Network Theory (ANT). ANT would see technology as not just something that society negotiates but as a participant in social life. Algorithms, platforms, and even interface design elements are themselves “actors”. In this context, the AI recommendations/booking flows that power tourism websites are not passive systems; they are actants that shape behaviour, support some actions and inhibit others (Latour, 2005). For instance, a recommender algorithm that bumps certain listings based on popularity does not merely reflect user interest; it produces it. This realisation became particularly useful for examining the impact of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT on guest decision-making and hospitality marketing strategies.

But ANT has its blind spots. Sometimes it can ‘flatten’ the power dynamics between actors as this approach treats all human and non-human agents as if they are on an equal footing. This critique was articulated most forcefully by Todd (2016), who argued that Indigenous knowledge systems and histories of colonisation are regularly rendered incomprehensible on networked innovation models. Her work, as well as the work of Tyson Yunkaporta (2019), provoked me to think about not only how technologies work, but whose values they encode and whose knowledge they exclude.

Delving deeper into the readings, these three frameworks do not need to be pitched against one another. They can be complementary. Dafoe (2015) has a more nuanced definition of determinism: economic and military institutions often direct technological change down specific paths, even when those paths are not strictly “determined.” Jordan (2008) demonstrates how users resist or reinterpret instructions creatively through ‘hacks’ and alternative uses, further illustrating the material co-determinism of the above, where technology and society endlessly co-determine one another. Potts (2008), meanwhile, turns back to medium theory to make the case that the material characteristics of technologies matter and that how a platform is constructed determines its use, regardless of intention or interpretation.

All of these have dramatically shaped my perspectives. It is no longer a question of, “What is this tech capable of?” but “Who has formed this technology? Who benefits from it? Who might be left out?” These issues are critical to our tourism and hospitality industry across Australia. As we increasingly use digital tools to create process efficiencies, customise guest experience, or drive awareness and engagement, we must also use them as lenses through which to examine the assumptions they bring. Adopting a more representative, thoughtful, and context-aware approach will help achieve better results for business and ensure that digital innovation takes into account and behaves responsibly toward the diverse communities we serve.

Case Study Reflections

Looking at real-world cases of creative and generative AI in tourism and hospitality, especially during and after the COVID-19 crisis, allowed me to get away from the abstract and see how digital technology reacts to and moulids human behaviour. Looking at successive platforms like Airbnb’s Online Experiences, or AI-enhanced guest services or AI marketing tools, I didn’t see innovation as being poised to be one way anymore, so much as a verb. I negotiated the redefinition of human relations, business models, and cultural values.

Airbnb's most recent turn to Online Experiences offers a helpful illustration of the technological informedness through social negotiation that the SCOT framework articulates. In lockdowns, it was a lifeline for dispossessed hosts and a new means of escape for housebound customers. These communities interpreted and applied the technology differently, based on economic needs, for cultural immersion. Such views gradually worked back through Airbnb’s corporate decision makers into a polished platform strategy. As Bijker (2009) argues, this process demonstrates “interpretive flexibility” and “closure”, where rival meanings become settled in a dominant design. Yet according to Prell (2017), not every utterance in that negotiation is equal. Corporate interests dominated, and hosts in economically marginalised places were sidelined in the platform’s longer-term digital strategy.

Actor-Network Theory (ANT) was especially useful in deepening this analysis. ANT recognises that non-human actors such as algorithms, interfaces, and recommendation systems also play active roles in shaping outcomes. For example, AI-driven assistants like ChatGPT are increasingly involved in guest decision-making, not only answering queries but subtly directing user attention (Ling et al., 2023). ANT helps us trace how these systems co-produce travel experiences by linking technical design with behavioural influence. The recommender systems behind platforms don’t just reflect demand, they shape it, curating visibility, defining relevance, and mediating trust.

But neither SCOT nor ANT fully explains the broader institutional pressures promoting AI incorporation. Here, technological determinism, and especially its postmodern nature, as analysed by Dafoe (2015), comes into play. Dafoe maintains that the global market imperative, competitive innovation cycles and the logic of public funding streams may lead to technological development being ushered down channels, independent of whether individuals or communities are passive participants or merely facilitate agents. In tourism, we see this in the massive stampede to automation and AI as service enhancers and cost avoidance machines. Ivanov and Webster (2019) demonstrate how automation can create consistency but potentially provide a less human, hence a weakened hospitality-relatedness. It could also displace labour and concentrate control among a few powerful platforms.

When looking at AI-powered personalisation tools in hotels, like those described by Remountakis et al. (2023), ANT again helps unpack how platforms nudge users toward specific experiences. These systems actively shape guest expectations through tailored messaging and offers. However, the critical perspectives of Indigenous thinkers like Yunkaporta (2019) and feminist scholars like Todd (2016) challenged me to go further. They served as a reminder that even the most “smart” technologies harbour built-in assumptions about value, time, efficiency, and identity that do not always support all cultures or communities. Even the most seemingly neutral technologies can perpetuate exclusion if we fail to interrogate their histories or purposes.

These case studies have reinforced the idea that generative AI is not merely a digital tool, it is a social agent. Its integration into tourism affects not just transactions, but relationships: between hosts and guests, platforms and providers, and technologies and communities. For the Victorian tourism and events industry, this looks like not buying a digital product off the shelf and instead investing in digital systems to be designed, evolved and governed. Responsible, inclusive, and locally informed digital strategies are not only best practice, they are critical to ensuring that innovation can truly meet the diverse needs of our industry and the communities they support.

Personal Learning and Critical Reflection

Reflecting on this unit, I can confidently say that my perception of technology and social change has changed more than I thought it would at the beginning of this journey. I had a largely opportunity-based frame for digital technologies, AI and automation, in particular, at the beginning of this unit. For me, they were instruments to streamline running a business, smoothing customer experience and a door to new market opportunities such as regional and recovery tourism settings.

After working through the material and assessments, the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) caused me to reflect. Those paradigms forced me to question my assumption that technology is "neutral" or even "just" the next step in doing better. I can now appreciate that technology is never simply about a particular piece of software or hardware, it’s about people, power, context and significance. Technologies are invented, interpreted, resisted, and reimagined by multiple parties, and that tug-of-war determines what they turn into in practice.

Module two brought all this learning into life. When examining the power of generative AI in the hospitality industry, including how tools such as ChatGPT are becoming part of customer service, booking, and experience delivery, the concrete human and ethical challenges that surfaced couldn’t be ignored. These systems are changing the relationship between guests, staff and platforms. They can improve service, displace workers, encode bias and solidify inequalities when not thoughtfully deployed.

By Module three, my perspective was clearer. Indigenous critiques by scholars like Todd (2016) and Yunkaporta (2019), alongside more subtle re-thinkings of the history of technological determinism, made me realise how deep the roots of our technologies extend into cultural worldviews. I’d never thought about how Western models of time, value and knowledge shape the platforms we develop.

Today, I would characterise my theoretical approach as hybrid: I see the benefits of SCOT’s attention to social negotiation and ANT’s relational grounding, but I now locate that analysis within a much deeper context. I am particularly interested in how local visitor operators (particularly those operating in indigenous and community-led contexts) can utilise AI in an ethical, culturally embedded, and locally empowering manner.

Conclusion

This report has explored the intricate and dynamic relationship between technology, society and innovation in the context of Victoria's tourism and hospitality industry. Through the examination of three theoretical tenants, Technological Determinism, the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) and Actor Network Theory (ANT), I have developed a more fine-grained understanding of how digital technologies such as Generative AI are co-created through social, cultural and institutional means.

Recent case studies showcased how these theories were practised in response to the COVID-19-induced digital accelerated change. Because technologies such as AI present opportunities for improving efficiency and a more personalised guest experience, but at the same time, they pose ethical, social and cultural implications that we must continue to consider. Most critically, this unit has demonstrated that digital transformation is not a technical process but a fundamentally human one.

References

Bijker, W. E. (2009). The social construction of technology. In J. Olsen, S. A. Pedersen, & V. F. Hendricks (Eds.), A companion to the philosophy of technology (pp. 88–94). Wiley-Blackwell.

Dafoe, A. (2015). On technological determinism: A typology, scope conditions, and a mechanism. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 40(6), 1047–1076. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243915579283

Jordan, T. (2008). Hacking and power: Social and technological determinism in the digital age. First Monday, 13(7). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v13i7.2145

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford University Press.

Potts, J. (2008). Who’s afraid of technological determinism? Another look at medium theory. The Fibreculture Journal, 12.

Prell, C. (2017). Rethinking the social construction of technology through ‘following the actors’: A reappraisal of technological frames. Science, Technology & Human Values, 42(3), 471–493. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243916661633

Todd, Z. (2016). An Indigenous feminist’s take on the ontological turn: ‘Ontology’ is just another word for colonialism. Journal of Historical Sociology, 29(1), 4–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12124

Yunkaporta, T. (2019). Sand talk: How Indigenous thinking can save the world. Text Publishing.

Ivanov, S., & Webster, C. (2019). Economic fundamentals of the use of robots, artificial intelligence and service automation in travel, tourism, and hospitality. Tourism Economics, 25(1), 85–104. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354816618800640

Ling, K. C., Tan, G. W. H., & Teh, P. L. (2023). Perceived intelligence of artificially intelligent assistants for travel: Scale development and validation. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHTT-03-2023-0098

Remountakis, M., Kotis, K., Kourtzis, B., & Tsekouras, G. E. (2023). ChatGPT and persuasive technologies for the management and delivery of personalized recommendations in hotel hospitality. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-02-2023-0059