Digitalisation of the Tourism Industry and Self-Employment: Challenges of the Gig-Economy

Abstract

The study focuses on the challenges that the gig-economy brings to the labour market. Digitalisation is transforming the nature of labour relations, and the ratio of the employed to the self-employed is changing. By expanding the scope of digital technology and the use of digital platforms, changes are affecting all areas, including the tourism industry. The article assesses the relationship between tourism development, digitalisation, and self-employment indicators. The study covers 112 countries for 2021. The paper uses the Travel & Tourism Development Index, Network Readiness Index and the World Bank’s self-employment indicator. The analysis showed that the features of the relationship between tourism development, digitalisation and self-employment vary across the three groups of countries identified as a result of cluster analysis. The study found that there is a positive relationship between the level of tourism sector development and the level of the country’s digitalisation. The relationship between the level of self-employment and tourism development is variable across groups. The relationship between self-employment and digitalisation was con-firmed only for the sample as a whole.