Digital amnesia and the future tourist

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the phenomenon of digital amnesia and its influence on the future tourist. Design/methodology/approach – A trend paper based on environmental scanning and speculative future analysis. Findings – The phenomena of digital amnesia are established. The growth of digital platforms and the consumer’s reliance is exponential. The implications for the future tourist in terms of decision making, the influence of marketing messaging and potentially the recall and reimagining of authentic experience will be significant in the future. Practical implications – Subject to the signals of change, should consumer’s reliance on digital platforms for the storing of information and memories continue to grow this has implications on how tourism businesses engage with their customers, influence and inform their marketing and how destinations would be reimagined based on the recall of their visitors. Originality/value – The trend of digital amnesia is an established and well-documented phenomenon. The development of the trend to consider the implications for the future tourism industry based a growing dependence on digital platforms is the focus of this paper