Towards a smart destination development model: Promoting environmental, economic, socio-cultural and political values

Abstract

The rapid increase in urban population poses significant challenges to the administration of cities throughout the world. However, with the widespread adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT), a growing number of initiatives are being implemented to alleviate such strain by attempting to transform urban centers into Smart Cities. Parallel to the concept of Smart City, a specific variation of this concept is emerging in the Tourism sector, which regards the idea of Smart Tourism Destinations (STD). In fact, mainstream tourism destinations are increasingly implementing ICTs to enrich tourists' experiences and, as a result, improve the competitiveness of the tourism destination. Despite the growing number of STD initiatives in different countries, the extant literature remains silent on this growing phenomenon. As such, the objective of this chapter is to propose a model—The Smart Destination Development Model—aimed at indicating a strategic path that a tourism destination should follow to become a smart one. As such, this chapter discusses the idea of STD, and argues that besides enhancing the destination competitiveness, an STD project should be grounded on a stainable paradigm in order to create public value for the hosting community.