The tourism industry is facing increasing demand for personalized, 24/7 services while simultaneously grappling with a shortage of skilled workers, rising operational costs, and high customer expectations. Digital solutions, particularly in marketing and sales, play a crucial role in increasing online visibility, enhancing customer engagement, and leveraging recommender systems to personalize offerings and improve decision-making. Generative AI Chatbots have emerged as a promising solution to address these challenges by automating processes, enhancing efficiency, and improving customer communication. However, their successful implementation requires a holistic approach that balances technical feasibility, economic sustainability, legal compliance, and social acceptance. At the same time, the role of digitalization extends beyond customer-facing applications; it is becoming increasingly relevant for back-office processes, helping businesses optimize operations and improve overall efficiency in the tourism sector.

Our recently published whitepaper, based on qualitative research, examines the opportunities and challenges associated with integrating Generative AI Chatbots into tourism businesses. Fifteen expert interviews with professionals from tourism, AI development, law, and marketing were conducted and analyzed using systematic content analysis to identify key factors influencing chatbot adoption. The findings highlight the potential of generative AI to streamline operations, provide immediate customer support, and optimize cost structures. Chatbots can automate repetitive tasks, reducing employee workload while ensuring uninterrupted service availability. They also enhance customer interaction by offering personalized recommendations, guiding users through booking processes, and answering inquiries with contextual relevance.

Despite these advantages, several challenges hinder widespread adoption. Technical barriers include ensuring chatbot accuracy, managing real-time data integration, and preventing issues such as hallucinations or inconsistent responses, all of which require continuous monitoring and system updates. Economic constraints present another obstacle, as the high initial investment, ongoing maintenance costs, and unclear return on investment make companies hesitant to commit to chatbot implementation. Legal and compliance issues, such as adherence to AI regulations, GDPR requirements, and liability concerns, further complicate deployment. Additionally, social resistance remains a significant factor, with employees fearing job displacement and customers displaying reluctance to engage with AI-driven services due to skepticism about reliability and usability.

For Generative AI Chatbots to be successfully integrated into tourism businesses, a balanced and strategic approach is essential. Technological readiness must be ensured through high-quality training data, enhanced chatbot response accuracy, and seamless system integration. Organizational change management plays a crucial role in addressing employee concerns through training and transparent communication. Legal and ethical compliance must be prioritized by adhering to regulations, clearly labeling AI-generated content, and ensuring consumer protection. Furthermore, economic viability should be carefully assessed through a thorough cost-benefit analysis and scalable implementation strategies.

While the adoption of Generative AI Chatbots comes with challenges, it also holds substantial potential to improve service efficiency, lower operational costs, and enhance customer experience. By proactively tackling technical, economic, legal, and social obstacles, businesses can fully leverage AI-driven chatbots and strengthen their competitive edge in the rapidly evolving tourism industry.

Current approaches to managing digital identities struggle to meet the demands of ongoing digital transformation. They either create fragmented identities tied to specific online services, making it difficult for users to manage, or they raise concerns about being locked into corporate identity providers and data protection issues. Additionally, they provide limited support for machine-verifiable identity attributes. This reliance on third parties for managing machine identities can put companies at a market disadvantage. Therefore, there is a pressing need for a unified identity management solution that allows for the portable and interoperable use of verifiable identity data across services.

The recently announced European Digital Identity Wallet marks a significant step forward in digital identity management. This initiative aims to provide EU citizens with a unified, secure, and convenient way to access both public and private online services, thereby enhancing the efficiency and security of digital interactions and prioritizing user needs. Self-sovereign identity (SSI) forms the basis for such a wallet-based identity ecosystem that supports electronic market growth. However, as a relatively new concept, SSI still lacks a unified theoretical analysis and a thorough exploration of its value propositions for digital ecosystems and networked businesses.

I am happy that our fundamentals paper “Self-Sovereign Identity and Digital Wallets" has been accepted for publication in Electronic Markets and is now available online (Open Access): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12525-025-00772-0

Machine learning (ML) applications face many new, hardly predictable aspects in their production environments. Detecting new aspects in an ML production environment and understanding their impacts on the ML application is crucial if organizations are to ensure ML applications’ functionality. A monitoring entity is essential if one is to monitor ML applications in their production environments, to both continually minimize risks and improve ML application’s performance. But existing monitoring approaches are struggling to deal with specifics that arise from ML applications.

In our recently published research, we aimed at deriving monitoring practices and providing a holistic view over the required steps in successful ML applications monitoring. Since there has been little research on this topic, we followed a qualitative research approach, i.e., we conducted an interview study combined with a multivocal literature review. Thus, we provide a theoretical framework of an ML-enabled agent in its production environment, five characteristics of ML applications’ production environments and 17 monitoring practices – 14 practices arranged sequentially on a typical quality management cycle and three cross-sectional practices. To outline the ML specifics that arise in monitoring ML applications, we investigate the five ML production environment characteristics’ influences on the ML monitoring practices.

I am happy that our paper “What Gets Measured Gets Improved: Monitoring Machine Learning Applications in their Production Environments” has been accepted for publication in IEEE Access and is now available online (Open Access): https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10886935

Hot off the press

Corporate bonds are an attractive option for corporate financing. However, current bond markets face many challenges and inefficiencies, resulting in high transaction costs (TAC). In recent years, technological advancements like blockchain technology have enabled the possibility of reducing TAC in bond markets. Even though practice experiments with such solutions, academic literature lacks generic design knowledge under the TAC lens to design blockchain-based bonds.

Thus, in a recent research project, we followed the design science research (DSR) paradigm to design and develop a bond prototype using the Ethereum blockchain protocol. Our results highlight the capability of blockchain-based bond markets to reduce TAC in the three dimensions of asset specificity, uncertainty, and transaction frequency. Further, our research provides design principles to contribute to both practice and the academic discourse on developing blockchain-based bond markets with reduced TAC.

I am happy that our paper “Designing the future of bond markets: Reducing transaction costs through tokenization" has been accepted for publication in Electronic Markets and is now available online (Open Access): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12525-025-00753-3.

I am happy to announce the release of our new book, »Decentralization Technologies: Financial Sector in Change«, edited together with my esteemed colleagues Gilbert Fridgen, Dr. Tobias Guggenberger, and Johannes Sedlmeir. This volume is now part of the Financial Innovation and Technology (FIT) series by Springer Nature. In this edited collection, we look at the transformative role of decentralization technologies in reshaping the financial services industry. We bridge the gap between technological innovation, regulatory requirements, and the evolving expectations of consumers in increasingly competitive and data-driven financial markets.

I am incredibly proud of the insights shared by our contributors and the practical applications this book outlines. Our book is aimed at researchers, practitioners and anyone interested in blockchain, financial markets, data governance and digital transformation. For more details or to get your copy, visit the publisher's website. Many universities have a SpringerLink subscription with which you can access the book free of charge from your university network. A huge thank you to all contributors and supporters who made this project possible. Let’s continue to drive innovation and shape the future of finance together!

AI strategy and human computer interaction (HCI) are mostly independently considered fields in both research and practice, limiting sustainable and scaled value creation. In our Electronic Markets special section “AI-enabled information systems: Teaming up with intelligent agents in networked business”, we shed more light on the permeation of strategic considerations, such as an organization’s AI ambition, to the individual employees and vice versa.

In our editorial paper, we introduce the ecological work systems framework and take a closer look at three permeation issues:

1. Missing architecture perspective
2. Missing operative glue
3. Static transformation steering methods

This special issue is a testament to the value of the exchange between research and practice. By collecting relevant issues from the field, we were able to outline future research paths that actually solve problems for business and society.

Find out in our new white paper.

The introduction of the European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDI-Wallet) is the basis for the creation of a digital identity ecosystem in the European Union. This development is closely linked to the amendment of the Electronic Identification, Authentication and Trust Services (eIDAS) Regulation which facilitates the cross-border recognition of recognition of digital identities and trust services within the EU. The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT) offers with this white paper a comprehensive analysis of the use cases, potential uses and challenges of the challenges of the EUDI wallet for companies.

The eIDAS Regulation aims to create a Europe-wide basis for digital identities, which are particularly essential when using cross-border electronic services. The EUDI wallet is intended to serve as a central digital wallet in which verifiable data is stored securely. The EU member states are obliged to offer a free EUDI wallet solution by 2026. This should ensure broad dissemination of the ecosystem by 2030. To this end, the technical foundations and practical applicability of the wallet are currently being tested in four European pilot projects.

The white paper highlights various areas of application for the EUDI wallet. In the financial sector, the EUDI wallet can facilitate compliance with legal requirements by enabling automated and secure verification of digital identities. This can save effort and costs for the financial institutions using it. In the retail sector, the EUDI Wallet can be used for the purchase of goods that are subject to certain conditions, such as age verification or personalized digital goods. This can improve the efficiency and security of transactions. There are also promising potential applications in the healthcare sector. The integration of e-prescriptions into the wallet can simplify the purchase of prescription drugs. In addition, medical product passports and electronic patient records can be managed efficiently. For public administration, the wallet represents an opportunity to consistently implement the digitalization of processes, which can relieve the burden on companies and individuals in particular who frequently interact with authorities.

Please read here more about the European Digital Identity Wallet in our recently published white paper (in German).