Toward a Consensual Definition for Smart Tourism and Smart Tourism Tools

Abstract

Smart Tourism (ST) stems from the concepts of e-tourism, which is focused on the digitalization of processes within the tourism industry, and digital tourism, which also considers the digitalization of the tourist experience. The earlier ST references found regard ST destinations and emerge from the development of Smart Cities. Our initial literature review on the ST concept and Smart Tourism Tools (STT) revealed significant research uncertainties: ST is poorly defined and frequently linked to the concept of Smart Cities; different authors have different, sometimes contradictory, views on the goals of ST; STT claims are often only based on technological aspects, and their “smartness” is difficult to evaluate; often the term “Smart” describes developments fueled by cutting-edge technologies, which lose that status after a few years. This chapter is part of the ongoing initiative to build an online observatory that provides a comprehensive view of STTs’ offerings in Europe, known as the European STT Observatory. To achieve this, the observatory requires methodologies and tools to evaluate “smartness” based on a sound definition of ST and STT while also being able to adapt to technological advancements. In this chapter, we present the results of a participatory approach where we invited ST experts from around the world to help us achieve this level of soundness. Our goal is to make a valuable contribution to the discussion on the definition of ST and STT.