The 4IR not only initiated a distinctive shift in the world of business, but also embraced the era of AI, IoT, and blockchain technologies. The scoping review in this paper went through the impact of, and the acceptance of the 4IR technologies in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), being a prominent economic sector in South Africa’s tourism industry that is known for its job creation and community development purposes. Despite the vast prospects of 4IR in revolutionizing organization models and overhauling the quality of delivery, tourism SMEs found it a daunting task in the implementation of these technologies. The barriers included the high costs, the inadequate digital skills, and the cybersecurity risks which were all hard to overcome. Besides these, a digital gap appeared between large firms and SMEs, making SMEs even more vulnerable to a lack of necessary resources. This paper, to a large extent, has investigated the state of 4IR technology adoption by tourism SMEs, identifying which technologies are widely used and the challenges limiting their effective uptake. The survey revealed the potential of the 4IR that propels competitiveness and efficiency, as well as noted the need for policy interventions to close the digital divide.