Building Sustainable Smart Destinations: An Approach Based on the Development of Spanish Smart Tourism Plans

Abstract

The aim of this research is to assess the real effects of developing smart tourism destinations on urban sustainability. A content analysis method is used to analyze 994 initiatives contained in action-plan and strategy documents from different smart tourism pilot projects funded by Spanish tourism administration. The results indicate that, despite the noteworthy effort to develop smart initiatives, sustainability solutions based on the use of technology are scarcely proposed, suggesting that cultural, managerial and technological barriers do exist. Overall, smart tourism plans are mainly conceived as instruments designed to create new tourism products in a tourism-driven approach. Despite the institutional narrative promoting smart tourism destinations as a guarantee to transform destinations responding to residents’ needs and improve sustainability, pilot projects undergo little interest in holistic sustainable initiatives, suggesting that destination management is focused on a rhetorical approach to sustainability.

Systematic Review of Smart Tourism Research

“…Extant smart tourism research ranges from case study [9], conceptual paper [2], to methodology/ technology-driven research [10,11] and behavioral model building study [12]. Prior studies have established a comprehensive knowledge of smart tourism by taking the perspectives of tourists [13], industry practitioners [14], and destination governments [15]. The idea of smart tourism destinations was initially proposed by tourism scholars [16][17][18] and enriched by further elaborating the idea of a smart tourism ecosystem in connection with conceptualizations of smart technologies, smart cities and smart tourism [1].…”

Sostenibilidad y resiliencia de los destinos turísticos litorales: apuntes desde el enfoque de los destinos inteligentes / / / \ \ \ Sustainability and resilience of coastal tourist destinations: notes from the smart destinations approach

“…Los indicadores analizados muestran avances interesantes en aspectos de la gobernanza de los destinos como la coordinación interdepartamental y la colaboración públicoprivada, pero, en la línea con los resultados de otros trabajos (González-Reverté, 2019;Gomis-López y González-Reverté, 2020;Ivars et al, 2018) las soluciones aplicadas tienen un sesgo sectorial y se corresponden con un tipo de sostenibilidad débil que no cuestiona los modelos urbano-turísticos preexistentes. La gestión del cambio climático supone un déficit manifiesto que afecta tanto a la sostenibilidad como la resiliencia de los destinos y que debería resolverse de manera urgente mediante la elaboración y ejecución de planes locales de adaptación al cambio climático.…”

Destinacijski menadžment u funkciji razvoja kulturnog turizma kontinentalne Hrvatske - primjer destinacije Križevci

“…Društvene promjene, digitalizacija i transformacija turizma nameću potrebu za drugačijim upravljanjem razvojem turizma, ali i načinom kreiranja turističkih proizvoda i doživljaja u turističkoj destinaciji (Hristov, 2015;Dredge, et. al., 2018;González-Reverté, 2019;UNWTO, 2019). Zasigurno jedan od bitnih elemenata osiguravanja atraktivnosti i konkurentnosti turističke destinacije leži u destinacijskom menadžmentu koji, ne samo da (ko)kreira turističke doživljaje i proizvode koji će dodati vrijednost turističkoj destinaciji na odgovoran način, već i strateški planira te razvija turizam u destinaciji u suradnji i koordinacijom različitih interesnih dionika (Binkhorst i Den Dekker, 2009;Selen i Ogulin, 2015;Slivar, 2018).…”