Digital Innovation Barriers: Egyptian Travel Agencies' Perspective

In light of developments that the world has been witnessing recently, such as technological advancement, cognitive acceleration, demographic changes, and a global economic recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, tourism businesses attempted to adopt new methods to stay up with these changes. One of these methods is digital innovation, which has become a crucial competitive factor due to its ability to enhance the performance of tourism businesses. The study's significance derives from the scarcity of studies that have focused on the obstacles of digital innovation in the tourism sector. Due to the majority of previous studies concentrated on how to apply digital innovation in the tourism business without examining the challenges that are facing the implementation. Therefore, the current study aims to examine the digital innovation barriers (technological, management, psychological, process, financial, cultural, and environmental) that may prevent tourism businesses from innovating. A quantitative approach was used to examine the most influential barriers when a travel agency intends to adopt digital innovation. This research has been based on a survey approach. This survey was conducted with Egyptian travel agencies. The data were analyzed using the Smart PLS to examine the causal relationship between digital innovation barriers and adopting innovation in travel agencies in the presence of moderator variables (business' experience and size). The findings have shown that technological, managerial, and cultural barriers are the most significant obstacles to the application of innovation in travel agencies, as well as that the size of the travel agency is the most influential moderator.