Smart Destinations (SDs) have gained momentum in tourism research, but despite the growing body of literature devoted to the topic, some critical dimensions continue to be under-researched. Real ...fulfilment of two of the main objectives of SDs, namely enhancing tourists' experiences and improving destinations management, remains largely unknown. By taking as a relevant case the destination of Benidorm, its smart destination strategy and solutions, this paper investigates whether and how these smart destination efforts are actually transforming destination management, marketing processes and tourists' experiences. Through a sequence of qualitative methods including (i) documentary and other secondary data analysis, (ii) in-depth interviews with DMO representatives and key informants and (iii) in-depth interviews with tourists visiting the destination, rich data was obtained, systematically analysed and triangulated. The findings pose critical lessons for destinations in their transition towards smartness, especially for policy-makers, and shed light on the effects of smart solutions on tourist experiences.
The crisis arising from the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the entire tourism system, including communication and marketing practices. Of these practices, in recent years influencer marketing has ...been one of the more successful strategies for both destinations and tourism businesses. This research investigates the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on travel content creators, their communicative practices, and their engagement with audiences, brands and health authorities. The study uses netnography based on immersion, interviews and social media content analysis. The results obtained show that the pandemic has transformed influencer marketing and has driven influencers to change their business strategies, content creation tactics and engagement mechanisms. The findings contribute to the crisis communication literature by illustrating that influencers constitute important allies for organisations when communicating during a crisis and have played a critical role in tourism recovery.
'Smart tourism' and 'smart destinations' have been gaining attention as new frameworks within which to understand the impact the latest information and communication technologies (ICTs) have on the ...relationship between businesses, destinations and tourists. However, there is a crucial element of the smart tourism ecosystem that has been rather neglected in research hitherto: the tourists themselves. By acknowledging a shift in tourists' behaviour due to the advent of disruptive factors, this paper conceptualises the recently emerged notion of 'the smart tourist'. This new type of tourist is profiled through a description of their attitudes and behaviours, and their role within the smart destination scenario is depicted. By taking a consumer-centric perspective and framing the conceptualisation within the relevant theories, this paper contributes to the current body of knowledge on tourism in a highly technological context and facilitates bridging smart tourism theoretical foundations with empirical research. The observed transformation in tourists' behaviour and its encapsulation in the smart tourist conceptualisation reveal critical managerial implications for both destination management organisations and businesses in the rapidly changing smart tourism ecosystem.
Indicators are a fundamental tool for destinations in their progress towards a more sustainable tourism development. However, the lack of real progress and the accelerated technological change are ...obliging policy makers to rethink the existing indicator systems. This paper examines the relationship between smart cities and destinations and sustainable tourism indicators by analyzing proposals at different scales. It provides a critical review of international smart city standards and the role that sustainability indicators play within them. Then, it conducts a content analysis of planning instruments applied in smart strategies in Spain, focusing on how sustainability indicators are considered under the smart paradigm. At the regional-local scale, this research compares two sets of indicators and tests the scientific validity of one of them for addressing the imbalance suffered by many indicators between their usefulness for policy makers and their academic rigor. The results show that little progress has been achieved despite the appropriation of the sustainability discourse by smart city and smart destination promoters. These findings reveal the (limited) real contribution made by smart cities/destinations to sustainable tourism development and contribute to identifying weaknesses and opportunities so as to redirect smart policies and projects. A final discussion contextualizes the findings within the novel framework of smart sustainability and highlights the need to reinforce public governance of urban and tourist spaces.
This paper investigates privacy concerns in smart tourism, in which personal data fuels systems and services developed to enhance tourists' experiences. A mixed-methods approach, involving ...semi-structured interviews (N = 34) and a survey among travellers from the UK and Spain (N = 1,019), was adopted. Findings from the qualitative study suggest that privacy concerns in smart tourism are built on preceding factors, including risk associated with use of different types of technology, past experiences with data misuse, and unawareness of data management practices. To cope with these, tourists adopt different strategies to protect their data. Results from the quantitative study reveal that privacy concerns influence actual behaviours and limit data disclosure. Different agents managing tourists' personal data generate varying levels of privacy concerns. These findings have critical implications for tourism organizations and policy makers, posing the need to rethink the ramifications of smart tourism development for tourists and to devise appropriate strategies to address them.
Purpose
This paper aims to contrast the expectations placed on the smart destination as a theoretical management approach with the reality of emergent tech-savvy tourism demand by examining the ...response of this segment to three critical dimensions of technology use in the context of smart destinations. Tech-savvy tourists are here represented by highly educated Spanish millennial tourists.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were obtained through an online survey and analysed through descriptive techniques and exploratory factor analysis using SPSS. Literature review was critical for setting the foundations of the research in this novel context.
Findings
Results suggest the existence of a gap between the smart destination theoretical expectations and created hype and the real response of the examined demand in the three main scopes for this tourist-smart destination technology-based relationship, namely, mobile technology use, data sharing for personalised experiences and smart technologies for enhanced experiences.
Research limitations/implications
Convenience sampling was used, and the results of the study cannot be generalised to all millennial tourists. The research is a first approximation to the interrelationship between tourists and smart destinations.
Practical/implications
Tourists’ role and experiences mediated by information and communication technologies (ICTs) are decisive in smart destinations. Destination Management Organisations (DMOs), through their policies and actions, ought to take into account the limited predisposition of tourists in using mobile devices, sharing data and using smart technologies for their experiences. Privacy concerns appear to have special relevance for tourists and, therefore, for the future of smart destinations.
Originality/value
The findings offer relevant insights for smart destinations from a neglected angle hitherto, as they introduce several interesting nuances which do not match entirely the fast track taken by institutions, media and academia. This is critical for better understanding tourists in the current panorama, for DMOs and for the theoretical foundations of smart tourism. Besides, the exploratory data analysis reveals potential dimensions of millennials’ behaviour, which can be useful for further investigations.
The impact of technology on tourist cities and destinations has led to the emergence of renewed management approaches that seek to adapt the planning processes to new challenges and opportunities ...derived from the smart scenario. The smart city and smart tourist destination approaches are aimed at improving efficiency in management, the quality of life of the residents and the tourist experiences. However, little is known about how these ideas are being translated into real policies and whether they are having a real impact. The objective of this paper is to understand how the smart approach is being deployed in the planning processes of Spanish tourist cities and destinations, and its implications in terms of the governance, sustainability and data-driven public management. The planning instruments that guide the smart strategies of different Spanish cities are identified and analysed. This is complemented with a questionnaire administered among managers of the smart city and smart destination initiatives. The findings reveal the diversity of smart initiatives, their benefits and limitations. The results contribute to generating a necessary debate on the implications of the smart discourse for urban and tourism planning and enrich the international debate around this approach.
•Contrasts the theoretical and international smart discourse with practical application in Spanish cities•Critically analyses smart city and smart destination plans, identifying categories•Surveys smart city and destination managers to unveil their perception of impacts•Contributes to overcome the insufficient consideration of tourism within the analysis and development of smart cities•Identifies implications for global urban and tourism planning of the uneven development of the smart approach
This paper aims at developing and applying an indicators system for smart tourism destinations in order to better understand the current situation of a set of destinations which are developing smart ...tourism policies. The indicators were developed by adapting existing indicators in tourism destination management and smart cities literature, creating a new system based on a smart destination theoretical model that establishes three interrelated levels in which smart destinations are grounded: strategic-relational, instrumental and applied levels. Within these levels, nine different dimensions to be measured were identified. The indicators were constructed in collaboration with a public organisation (INVAT.TUR) devoted to providing technical assistance to smart destinations and were pre-tested, readjusted and then applied to a set of destinations of the Region of Valencia (Spain). Obtained findings reveal an uneven performance of destinations in the different dimensions of the three levels. A notable performance is observed in indicators for connectivity and online marketing, while more efforts need to be done in accessibility and sustainability initiatives. However, disparities are evident between different indicators and destinations. These results are discussed and framed within the relevant literature on smart destinations while providing information for destination managers and policy makers to adapt and replicate these indicators in their own territories. This paper is a first attempt to develop and apply indicators to measure smart destinations progress in literature and therefore constitutes an important precedent for future studies.
•Develops an indicator system to measure the progress of smart tourism destinations.•Applies the indicators to a set of smart destinations.•Uneven performance and high dispersion observed in different dimensions.•Higher scores in technological initiatives than sustainability and accessibility.•Indicators replicable in other destinations. Useful for DMOs and policy makers.
Tesis por compendio de publicaciones.
El interés por el llamado turismo inteligente (smart tourism), y en particular por los destinos turísticos inteligentes (DTIs), ha florecido durante los últimos ...años debido a la irrupción de una nueva generación de innovaciones tecnológicas con capacidad suficiente para transformar completamente el sistema turístico. Los destinos inteligentes como enfoque teórico, pero también aplicado, han atraído la atención de gobiernos, empresas y destinos a escala mundial, convirtiéndose en el objeto de estudio de una creciente corriente de investigación. No obstante, hasta el momento ha habido una falta notable de consideración e investigación en torno a la demanda turística como principal fuerza motriz y stakeholder de los DTIs. Partiendo de este hecho, el objetivo de esta investigación es generar un entendimiento mayor y distinto del destino inteligente como un enfoque de gestión local del turismo a partir del desarrollo e introducción de una perspectiva basada en la demanda, en el propio turista dentro del enfoque smart. Adicionalmente, esta tesis doctoral espera ampliar la comprensión existente en cuanto a los efectos de los destinos inteligentes sobre los propios turistas y sus experiencias, así como sobre los procesos de gestión de los destinos. El cumplimiento de dicho objetivo ha dado lugar a una serie de implicaciones y recomendaciones para los destinos turísticos que tienen la intención de contribuir a mejorar la toma de decisiones. Esta tesis ha adoptado un diseño basado en múltiples fases interrelacionadas y una metodología de carácter mixto, que incluye la investigación a nivel teórico-conceptual, una encuesta, datos secundarios y entrevistas en profundidad como principales técnicas investigativas. El proceso metodológico ha seguido el objetivo general, así como los específicos recogidos en cada uno de los artículos que conforman esta tesis por compendio de publicaciones. Los resultados obtenidos arrojan luz sobre nuestro entendimiento acerca de las actitudes y los comportamientos de los turistas en cuanto mecanismos básicos de funcionamiento de los DTIs, incluyendo el uso de soluciones tecnológicas, procesos de interacción y co-creación o compartición de datos personales. Asimismo, los resultados demuestran los efectos de las iniciativas smart en las experiencias turísticas y en la gestión de destinos, tomando como estudio de caso Benidorm, un referente internacional de DTI. En resumidas cuentas, los resultados contribuyen a ampliar el todavía escaso conjunto de conocimientos sobre el turismo inteligente y DTIs, y brindan valiosas recomendaciones para los gestores de destino y otros responsables turísticos.
Financiada por Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad – Gobierno de España (Beca BES-2015-073909; Proyecto CSO2014-59193-R).
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