IoT Enabled Smart Tourism (IoTeST): Tourism Service Dimensions

Abstract

Smart tourism is a social, cultural, and economic phenomenon where people are displaced to tourist destinations for personal or professional reasons. The main purpose of travel and tourism is cultural immersion. In the early 1990s, cultural tourism became one of the alternative forms of tourism to mass tourism. Tourists take a proactive approach and actively create experiences while traveling. Hence, the heterogeneous preferences of the tourists have drawn the attention of the travel destinations, and the destination cities are striving to provide high-quality and personalized travel experiences. The tourism industry is pursuing successful etourism strategies through website development, e-commerce, and related governance. The convergence of ICT and tourism describes the transformation of tourism through technology. Smart tourism means tourism using advanced information technologies to make travel experiences more enriching, efficient, and sustainable. In this sense, smart tourism is a social phenomenon that arises from integrating ICT into the tourist experience. In addition, smart technology like IoT has significantly changed the way tourists make various travel decisions, such as transportation, accommodation, and available activities in the desired tourist destination. It changes the expectations and behavior of tourists. This change in the IT-enabled tourism segment has been termed as “IoT enabled smart tourism” (IoTeST). It is streamlining all procedures and processes of hotels booking, airline reservations, train booking, and other tour & travel firms by connecting smart gadgets. In the current scenario, along with wi-fi, NFC, smartphones with internet connectivity, RFID, and clouds, IoT has become the core heart of smart tourism. As soon as tourists start exploring the tourist destination’s places, IoT technology starts streamlining the entire tourism process and optimizing the entire travel experience.