Sustainable Tourism Development through Service Innovation and Design

Dear Colleagues,

Service industries including tourism and hospitality are in the midst of a transformation process. The call for service innovation has been omnipresent, not only since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The most promising way out of the extant dilemma of oppressive cost structures, competitive pressure, and a difficult economic environment is the creation of new products and services.

The pressure to innovate in the tourism industry is growing (Brugger et al, 2017). Increasing global competition, new challenges and opportunities in the field of digitalization, and the dynamic development of society are challenging players in the tourism industry (Deuber et al, 2018). This situation is particularly challenging for service providers that develop new offers, open up new markets with entrepreneurial action, and innovative power. This increases the competitiveness of their own company and the destination.

While service innovation has become a key success factor in contemporary tourism management, stakeholders are often uncertain of how this can be achieved. Service design as a modern methodology includes the planning and design of effective, efficient, and customer-centered service experiences and is understood as a holistic innovation process. The service design process includes aspects of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication, and the material components of a service. Along this guided innovation process, methods and tools are used that support the human-centered approach and are characterized by co-creative features. The goal is to improve the quality of a service as well as the interaction between service provider and clientele. By means of service design, customer requirements can be connected to the objectives of the organization.

With the tourism industry facing challenges such as COVID-19, overtourism, global warming, and terrorism, the service innovation and design paradigm can contribute to a sustainable and positive development, as pointed out by the UNWTO with regard to achievement of the global Sustainable Development Goals.

It is with this service innovation and design paradigm in mind that we invite scholars to contribute to our Special Issue by pointing out solutions in order to master the challenges that will continue to present themselves.

Prof. Dr. Thorsten Merkle
Prof. Dr. Kayhan Tajeddini
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• service innovation
• service design
• innovation management
• tourism management