Industry 4.0 Technologies in Tourism Education

In this paper, we present a brief on the Industry 4.0 framework and the importance of these technologies for the tourism sector, motivating the reasons why it is crucial to transfer the theoretical, methodological and practical framework of the Fourth Industrial Revolution into tourism education paths. We then present the main topics developed and the critical skills that according to our educational experimentation have been chosen, mostly related to the analysis of textual and image big data on tourists' behaviour. Data were taken from social media and processed with Artificial Intelligence tools, such as Machine Learning and Big Data algorithms, capable to provide a better understanding of tourists' behaviour. The acquired skills and the results of the processes on tourists' behaviour data were then used by the students to create a communication product such as a marketing campaign, a website, a blog or an Instagram site, an advertising video on the touristic offer of their usual residences, typical Italian towns in the South of Italy. The results clearly demonstrated that students enjoyed the experimentation and gained awareness about the importance of the proposed technologies.