Abstract
This paper contributes to the academic debate on tourism destination development in the COVID-19 crisis, by investigating the role of smart technology tools for managing tourism flows and shaping visitors’ behaviours. Considering tourism in the COVID-19 crisis as an emerging stream of research, the paper assumes a continuity with the overtourism research (pre-COVID-19) and builds on the cross-fertilization between the advances in this field and the smart destination literature. Based on an explorative online news media analysis, the paper provides fresh knowledge on the role of smart technologies in destination management, by proposing the Smart Technology Matrix. This frames the smart-tech tools and provides the conceptual background for opening future paths of inquiry on smart tourism destinations in the Covid-19 context.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic has locked down the world generating human, social, and economic crises
This paper aims to contribute to the academic debate on the potential trajectories of tourism destination development in the COVID-19 time, by investigating the role of smart technology tools for managing tourism flows and shaping visitors’ behaviours
It moved from the emerging opportunity to capitalize on the consolidated literature about smart tourism destinations and to crossfertilise it with the recent academic debate on overtourism
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has locked down the world generating human, social, and economic crises. Venice, which represented the iconic global model of overtourism with the “Venice syndrome” referring to tourism saturation and forms of resident displacement (Milano, 2017), has become the symbol of the dramatic impact of the Covid-19 crisis on tourism. This monoculture economy has been losing income along with the shrinkage of international tourist flows. The New Zealand government defined 2020 the year to inspire locals to explore and deepen knowledge on their own territories It levered on the sentiment of New Zealanders who, right before the current crisis, were complaining about overtourism, expressing a desire to move towards a ‘taste of undertourism’
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