Abstract
Emerging theories of smart tourism are chiefly concerned with how Internet Communication Technology and Big Data can influence marketing, product and destination development. The risk being that an overt focus on formal outcomes, namely technology, products and services, diverts attention from how things and operations are actually achieved. This paper challenges the notions of smart and value co-creation by introducing tourism co-design as a learning and experiment driven development process. Tourism co-design leverages the communicative interaction between people and enables tourism operators to change their practices. Based on fieldwork in the northern part of Denmark we explore how smart tourism can become smarter through tourism co-design processes. We argue that a shift is needed from: How can we efficiently achieve a more or less known goal? To: How can we effectively explore and give sense to something new and engage in processes that encourage the new to emerge? Tourism co-design enables values to transpire at multiple levels and engenders unknown possibilities that inform how smart tourism may be operationalised.
Highlights
The Internet, dynamic technologies and Web 2.0 platforms have enabled change in the way businesses and consumers interact in tourism, and “the way how and by whom tourism products, services and experiences are designed, created and consumed” (Neuhofer, 2016: 17)
The aim of this paper is to initiate a complementary understanding of smart tourism through tourism co-design that takes into account the fluid, dynamic and ongoing enactments and processes of tourism practice, experience and development
The contribution of this article lies in the complementary understanding of smart tourism through tourism co-design that takes into account the fluid, dynamic and social enactments and processes of tourism practice, experience and development so that values transpire at multiple levels
Summary
The Internet, dynamic technologies and Web 2.0 platforms have enabled change in the way businesses and consumers interact in tourism, and “the way how and by whom tourism products, services and experiences are designed, created and consumed” (Neuhofer, 2016: 17). Recent academic attention has been on emergent theories of smart tourism which, broadly understood, focus on digital opportunities and data-driven developments to enhance destination competitiveness, tourist experiences and support for new forms of collaboration and value creation (Boes et al, 2015; Gretzel et al, 2015a; Gretzel et al, 2015b). An “output view” embedded in technology and data structures is widespread in smart tourism research (Buhalis, Amaranggana, 2013; Wang et al, 2013; Zacarias et al, 2015; Zhu et al, 2014). An overt focus on formal outcomes such as technology, products and services can divert attention from how things and operations are achieved (Sproedt, Heape, 2014). Heape (2017) / European Journal of Tourism Research 17 pp. Heape (2017) / European Journal of Tourism Research 17 pp. 28-42
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