A Methodological Framework for Developing a Smart-Tourism Destination in the Southeastern Adriatic–Ionian Area

Abstract

This paper presents a methodological framework aiming to support the creation of a smart-tourism destination. Specifically, the study is realised in the frame of NEST, a European Union Interreg project aiming to create a smart-tourism destination in the Adriatic–Ionian area. Therefore, the study focuses on the southeastern Adriatic–Ionian area, as a portion of the European macro-region including the Italian regions of Molise and Apulia and the Balkan countries of Albania and Montenegro. This area presents a clear vocation for tourism, with a distinctive cultural heritage, attractive natural landscapes, and old culinary traditions offering a variety of eno-gastronomic and folk craft products. In the frame of the EU neighbour policies and in coherence with the objectives of the EU smart specialization strategy, several initiatives have been promoted for innovating the tourism offering in this area. Despite this, the full achievement of the creation of an Adriatic–Ionian smart destination calls for the adoption of a multidimensional strategy able to leverage knowledge-intensive dynamics of collaboration. This paper, therefore, aims to highlight the opportunities of adoptions and implications of this methodological framework for the cross-border marketing and management of the Adriatic–Ionian smart destination.

Constructing Spanish smart destinations: a new guide for the tourism industry

“…A study carried out by Ndou et al (2023) found that a methodological framework that integrates different areas of analysis at technological, economic, tourism and resident levels facilitates tourist destination transformation into a STD. As stated by Buhalis et al (2023c), a STD enhances the tourism experience, increases the efficiency of tourism companies and cities and increases residents’ quality of life thanks to the interoperability between public and private organisations, researchers and local residents (Florido-Benítez, 2022b).…”

“…Fourth and last, since the six Spanish smart destinations were certified as STDs, we implemented updated data (2015–2022) from INE (2020, 2023a, 2023b), AENA (2023), EU (2020, 2022), SEGITUR (2020, 2023), Spanish Secretary of State for Tourism (2023) and Smart Tourist Destinations (2023a, 2023b) organisations to analyse the most important tourism demand and supply indicators (see Figures 3 and 4) and how these have impacted the territory. We selected in this research the number of passenger arrivals (Florido-Benítez, 2023a, 2023b), hotel and room indicators (Ndou et al, 2023; Perić et al, 2022) and hotel occupancy rate indicators (Benítez-Aurioles, 2022a) because these are the most frequently used measures of tourism demand and supply. Aguirre et al (2023) note that the number of hotel and room, hotel occupancy rate and passenger and tourist arrival indicators are necessary to measure the sustainability in STDs (Gehlot & Singh, 2022; Zamorano et al, 2020).…”

The Role of Smart Automation in Tourism Industry Management using Smart PLS

“…The research method used in this study is a quantitative approach using the Smart Partial Least Square (PLS) method as a data analysis tool [10], [11]. The quantitative approach was chosen to measure the extent of the influence of smart automation in smart tourism industry management on tourist destination loyalty and sustainable development using numerical data generated from questionnaires [12], [13], as shown in Table 1 However, I had a somewhat unpleasant experience in this city. BOTJ4…”

Governmental Strategies and Policies in the Projection of Smart Tourist Destination: An Approach to the Conceptual and Theoretical Qualitative Analysis

“…Additionally, the concept of STDs or SDs has emerged as a principle of innovation and competitiveness in global tourism markets, with the vision of developed countries based on another concept, SCs [9,29].…”