Are smart tourism destinations developing sustainably?

Abstract

This paper attempts to clarify our understanding of the ability of smart tourism to underpin sustainable destination development and the theoretical and practical challenges that must be faced in this process. Several challenges must be overcome if smart tourism is to associate with progress in achieving sustainable development at the destination level. One challenge involves formulating a clear and consistent conception of what sustainability entails. Another challenge is to reject the growth ethic that drives much of the research effort in smart tourism with its implicit assumption of the role played by technological progress in ‘decoupling’ environmental effects from tourism growth. A third challenge involves accounting for resident well-being and ‘quality of life’ issues that are essential elements of the sustainability concept. A further challenge is to integrate the ideas proposed in a way that progresses smart tourism research providing guidance to researchers and destination managers wishing to take sustainability and well-being issues more seriously. The anticipated outcome is smart tourism development that is much more suitable to deliver valued economic, socio-cultural and environmental outcomes to destinations locally and globally.