Daniel Meyer (Chile)
I. Summary
The history of tourism from the 19th century to 2025 can be understood as a succession of innovations that transformed mobility, accommodation, management, and the traveler’s experience. Railways, steamships, automobiles, aviation, and IT systems have redefined entire stages of development. The internet, smartphones, and collaborative platforms democratized and digitized travel. More recently, artificial intelligence and technological sustainability mark new transitions. Applying the theories of the 2025 Nobel Laureates in Economics—Mokyr, Aghion, and Howitt—it can be determined that tourism evolves through ongoing cycles of “creative destruction” that replace previous models and create new forms of global tourism.
II. Introduction
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Philippe Aghion, Peter Howitt, and Joel Mokyr. The first two described how innovation and “creative destruction” replace obsolete technologies, generating cycles of technological renewal. The third, Mokyr, identified the historical prerequisites that allowed the transition from stagnation to sustained economic growth through technological progress.
From Mokyr’s perspective, technological progress does not arise spontaneously, but results from favorable historical conditions: institutions protecting intellectual property, expanding scientific knowledge, rising literacy rates, networks of idea exchange, and a culture valuing experimentation and learning.
Aghion and Howitt explained that modern economic growth dynamics are based on disruptive innovation emergence of new technologies that replace older ones. This process, known as “creative destruction”, restructures entire productive sectors, alters market structures, and generates cycles of technological renewal.
Tourism, analyzed from historical, economic, social, and cultural perspectives, has been profoundly dependent on these technological transformations: each wave of innovation redefined how tourism services are consumed, how travel and destination experiences are shaped, and how businesses are managed and tourism supply structured.
Following this logic, the present article analyzes “10 innovations and creative destruction processes in tourism,” as defined by the autor of this article, based on a historical sequence in which new technologies, infrastructures, or devices reorganized tourism practices in terms of mobility, hospitality, management, and communications—driving new stages of tourism development while displacing previous models.
III. Development
- Steam Engine and Railways (19th Century)
Steam locomotives and railway expansion marked the first major shift in human mobility. Trains replaced horses and carriages, vastly increasing speed and reliability. Their tourism impact was immediate: modern tourism was born, with Thomas Cook organizing the first paid group tour in 1841. Railways democratized access to resorts, cities, and landscapes formerly reserved for elites—constituting the first historical phase of creative destruction in tourism. - Modern Maritime Navigation and Transatlantic Liners (Mid-19th to Early 20th Century)
The integration of iron, steel, and steam propulsion into ships marked the shift from sailboats to efficient, modern navigation. This enabled mass migration, faster intercontinental travel, and the emergence of the first leisure cruises. Maritime routes ceased to be solely functional and began incorporating leisure and international tourism, consolidating a new global mobility. - Traditional Lodging and Collaborative Platforms (1900)
Modern hotel services emerged as creative destruction, replacing inns, guesthouses, and rural lodging by standardizing services, professionalizing management, and expanding globally during the 20th century. Since 2010, collaborative platforms—especially Airbnb—ushered in a new disruptive cycle, allowing individuals to offer flexible, localized lodging. This disrupted the classic hotel model, altered pricing, transformed residential neighborhoods, and sparked regulatory debates. - Automobile, Highways, and Individual Mobility (1900)
The mass adoption of cars, alongside highway construction and roadside services (gas stations, motels, drive-inn), redefined the scale and independence of travel. Cars displaced trains in many domestic journeys and eliminated traditional rural transport modes. Weekend tourism, family road trips, and domestic and nature tourism expanded. This marked a shift toward flexible, self-managed, and individualized mobility. - Commercial Aviation and Mass Tourism (1930s)
Propeller and jet engines, along with modern airport development, revolutionized tourism. Maritime transport declined as the main mode, and long-distance trains lost prominence. Travel times shrank, enabling the democratization of international tourism. The rise of package tours and major tour operators established mass tourism as a global phenomenon. - Tourism Management IT and Reservation Systems (1960s)
CRS and GDS platforms—like Sabre, Amadeus, Galileo—transformed tourism operations. Manual bookings and telegram confirmations were replaced by global pricing, availability, and payment systems. Travel agencies gained instant access to airline and hotel inventories worldwide. This foreshadowed the industry’s full digital transformation. - Commercial Internet and Digital Tourism (1995)
The internet and early OTAs revolutionized traveler behavior. Traditional travel agencies lost prominence to empowered users planning directly through web platforms, interactive maps, price comparators, and booking engines. This paved the way for contemporary independent tourism and accelerated the shift to digital horizontal markets. - Cellphones and Smartphones as Total Travel Platforms (2007)
The iPhone’s arrival and Android smartphone expansion marked an unprecedented shift. Smartphones merged multiple functions—camera, map, travel guide, browser, digital wallet, e-voucher, translator, phone, and computer. This “technological hyperconvergence” exemplifies Aghion and Howitt’s creative destruction. 4G/5G networks, WhatsApp, and social media transformed travel experiences, provider communication, and content sharing. - Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Analytics (2018)
Generative AI, machine learning, and big data are progressively replacing labor-intensive tasks, from call centers to marketing and product design. Data analytics, predictive capabilities, and mass personalization optimize flows, pricing, and destination planning. AI represents tourism’s new frontier. - Technological Sustainability, Decarbonization, and Electromobility (2020)
The climate crisis is triggering innovations aimed at reducing tourism’s environmental footprint. Hybrid/electric planes, sustainable fuels, hydrogen trains, electromobility, and even potential space tourism signal structural transition. Creative destruction in this phase focuses on reducing fossil fuels and adopting circular tourism models.
IV. Conclusion
The history of tourism in the last 150 years can be viewed as a sequence of innovations that continuously destroy prior models and generate new forms of mobility, management, and tourist experience. According to the2025 Nobel Prizes in Economics, Mokyr, Aghion, and Howitt, tourism progress is simultaneously a technological, institutional, and cultural phenomenon. The future of the tourism industry will continue to be shaped by this dynamic of permanent innovation and “creative destruction.”
