Transforming The Tourism Businesses And Agri-Food Supply Chains With Blockchain: Highlighting Its Power To Achieve Sustainability

Abstract

Purpose: The thesis project focuses on analysing what impact blockchain can have on tourism companies and agri-food supply chains. Blockchain is a disruptive technology capable of transforming the tourism industry by improving processes through its applications, integrating with other technologies such as Big Data, the Internet of Things (IoT), or Artificial Intelligence (AI), adapting to new pandemic situations after the COVID-19 and supporting economic, social and environmental sustainability. Additionally, blockchain can benefit agri-food supply chains by increasing transparency, traceability, and food safety, creating more sustainable supply chains. Previous research related to the application of blockchain in the tourism industry was focused on studying the role of blockchain after the COVID-19 pandemic or concentrate on analysing the role of digitalization in a general way in the tourism sector. In addition, other research aimed to explore blockchain's role in supply chains in general. However, this thesis seeks to identify the main advantages of implementing blockchain in the tourism industry and, in addition, detect the main trends by examining the role of this technology in supply chains including the role of decentralised accounting ledgers and smart contracts. Likewise, research agendas were created so that future research is aimed at closing potential research gaps. The relationship of blockchain with sustainability was also analysed by examining research trends. In this way, a potential field of research was identified to investigate the role of blockchain in the tourism sector supporting the three dimensions of sustainability -social, economic and environmental-. The latter will be discussed in the discussion of this thesis...