Smart Tourism Capability Maturity Framework : A Design Science Research Approach

Abstract

Many cities in the world have increased initiative to realize smart tourism. There are unexplored challenges for the people which lead and manage smart tourism projects and realize its value in tourism (we call them as ‘Smart tourism initiatives’), such as orchestrating of tourism complexity, developing and sharing tourism strategy, sustaining tourism projects and innovation. Concerning these challenges, we aim to design a holistic capability maturity model for sustainable and smart tourism governance enabling sustainable tourism innovations via tackling the challenges above. We adopted Dynamic capability theory as a theoretical lens and introduced Design science research methodology in order to develop a new capability maturity governance model as a design artifact. As a result of the study, we could synthesize findings from iterations of the design research cycle based on the IT Capability Maturity Model. Our result proposes a potential capability maturity model supporting effective communication and strategic alignment for the initiatives with illuminating future paths with evaluation methods on tourism capabilities for the initiatives. Throughout this study, we contribute to the body of knowledge as well as practice by proposing a new tourism capability governance model.