Smart tourism destinations really make sustainable cities: Benidorm as a case study

Abstract

Purpose Tourism sustainability is a challenge for 21st-century destinations – this paper aims to analyse smart destinations' sustainability through a case study of Benidorm, the first world destination to be certified under the UNE 178501 standard as smart tourism destination (STD). Design/methodology/approach The methodological component has been divided into developing a framework for measuring sustainability through economic, social and environmental open data. Moreover, studying the plan's contribution “Benidorm, Destino Turístico Inteligente y Sostenible” to the city's sustainability through a time series analysis. Findings The main contribution shows that Benidorm's transformation into an STD leads to more sustainable cities. Thus, the conversion of Benidorm into an STD has a sustained effect in the medium and long term, contributing to the sustainability of the city. Research limitations/implications An open question as a limitation is the subjectivity of the distribution of the relative weight of each indicator. However, statistical analyses are developed to explore the relationship between indicators and global sustainability. Practical implications The debate to contextualise this paper is bridging the gap between sustainability and tourism intelligence, giving an original framework for measuring destination sustainability that provides a reasonable starting point for comparing tourism sustainability in different destinations. Social implications Tourists in the 21st century prefer environmentally friendly tourism. Marketing campaigns based on destination sustainability must be based on data rather than mere slogans. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the originality of this paper provides a flexible framework for measuring sustainability from open data sources, being one of the first empirical analyses to study the effects on the sustainability of converting a mature destination into an STD.

An intercultural analysis of the websites and tourist destinations profiles on social networks, from the perspective of digital accessibility and inclusive communication. Case study for Andalusia and Northern Morocco.

“…Finally, accessible tourism in general and digital accessibility and inclusive communication, as part of social sustainability, are fundamental for transforming tourism destinations. Future work should include indicators to measure these variables in the framework of recent studies on measuring the sustainability of tourism destinations [45]. Good practices correspondence analysis Figure 7 Total good practices correspondence analysis Figure 8 Social networks correspondence analysis…”

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

“…In the same Valencian Community, the city of Benidorm is localised in Alicante, and it was the first Spanish smart tourist destination in 2017. Benidorm smart destination is having a positive and sustained effect on the global sustainability of the city thanks to its efficient urban-tourist model (Aguirre et al, 2023). Benidorm smart destination was tested by the UNE 178501 [1] of Intelligent Tourist Destinations Management System, this city certified its tourist intelligence system according to the regulation UNE 166006 R&D [2] System and it is actively participating in the new definition of the UNE 178502 [3] regulation: indicators and tools for the smart destinations (Benidorm.org, 2023).…”

“…Benidorm smart destination is the fourth by number of hotels due to the fact that its hotels are bigger than San Sebasti an's hotels and therefore have a larger number of rooms (see the graph B in Figure 5). Aguirre et al (2023) note that Benidorm continues to work to remain a pioneering city of sustainable tourism development, which enables this to build higher skyscrapers with a low habitat density in the town. Gij on and Santander smart destinations occupy fifth and sixth places, respectively, with an annual average of 68 hotels and 4,711 rooms, and 56 hotels and 4,601 rooms, respectively.…”

“…Fourth and last, since the six Spanish smart destinations were certified as STDs, we implemented updated data (2015-2022) fromINE (2020INE ( , 2023aINE ( , 2023b, AENA (2023),EU (2020EU ( , 2022,SEGITUR (2020, 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 Figures3 and 4) and how these have impacted the territory. We selected in this research the number of passenger arrivals (Florido-Benı ´tez, 2023a, 2023b), hotel and room indicators(Ndou et al, 2023;Peri c et al, 2022) and hotel occupancy rate indicators (Benı ´tez-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…”

Enhancing smart tourism and smart city development: evidence from Taoyuan smart aviation city in Taiwan

“…The gaps between prior academic research on smart cities have primarily focused on how to design smart destination services (Aguirre, Zayas, Gomez-Carmona, & Sanchez, 2023), the challenges and development framework of smart destinations (Aidi & Fabry, 2022) or provide case studies of smart destinations (Snow, Hakonsson, & Obel, 2016); today's most modern airports are more than gateways to the world's oldest destinations (Abu Salim, El Barachi, Onyia, & Mathew, 2021); increasingly, they are becoming focal points of human activity, attracting aviation-oriented business parks, entertainment and sightseeing hubs and the nucleus of smart destinations.…”