Abstract
The tourism industry is currently facing many challenges; one of the main challenges is the lack of having smart tourism systems that make use of the recent advances in information and communication technology. Another challenge is designing such smart tourism systems while embracing diversified tourists’ sustainable values of experience (functional values, social values, emotional values, and epistemic values). In light of these challenges, the overall objective of this work is to design a smart tourism experience-centered system that considers social and technical perspectives. The Socio-Technical Systems theory was adopted as a theoretical foundation, and the Design Science Research methodology was used to develop a smart tourism system and a practical design artifact. A case study from the Japanese tourism context was studied by exploring tourists’ sustainable values of experiences and local staffs’ behaviors. The main problem was the dysfunctional communication between local service staffs and foreign tourists during the service process. After identifying the problem and the objectives, a relevant smart tourism system was synthesized and tested as a design artifact. The results of the utility test of the proposed artifact showed its effectiveness and efficiency in facilitating the service process and in creating multi-dimensional values of experience.
Highlights
Over the decades, Information Technology (IT) has been served as a catalyst for innovations in tourism
Smart tourism studies have attracted the interest of many scholars [2,3], and they have addressed the importance of big data-driven approaches for user-friendly, customized, and intelligent tourism systems [4,5]
The design science research methodology is explained and a discussion is given on the application of the Smart Tourism Design (STD) model can be achieved into our smart tourism design project
Summary
Information Technology (IT) has been served as a catalyst for innovations in tourism. A perspective of the Socio-Technical Systems (STS) theory [11,12] can provide considerable ideas for designing experience-centered tourism systems by: (1) embracing multiple stakeholders and subsystems (i.e., social subsystems, technical subsystems, and environmental subsystems); and (2) empowering responsible autonomy of information systems to establish and operate successful, sustainable, and smart tourism systems In light of these endeavors and limitations, this work puts forward two research questions:. It proposes an effective tourism design framework and artifact that empowers local culture, by jointly optimizing technical, social, and environmental subsystems It highlights the potential employment of IS in tourism by developing tourist-friendly application that supports communication, decisions, and cultural aspects.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have