Developing a new service for the digital traveler satisfaction: The Smart Tourist App

Abstract

The spread of digital technologies offers great potential for both the creative industries in general and for the tourism industry. The overall goal of this research is to evaluate the impact of mobile technology in augmenting and streamlining the tourist experience. To this end, we integrate two existing methodologies, the Kano Model (KM) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which allow categorization and ordering of service attributes according to how they are perceived by customers, and we estimate their impact on customer satisfaction. Our analysis is based on qualitative data collected through questionnaires administered to a panel of Italian tourists visiting the cities of Palermo and Rome, over a period of 3 months (March–May 2014). As results in evaluating the impact of mobile technology we propose the Smart Tourist App (STAPP) which is a mobile travel assistant that integrates the functionalities of a traditional city card with the specificities of mobile devices.