Special issue on smart tourism: convergence of information technologies, experiences, and theories

Abstract

The notion of smart tourism has been gaining currency recently, particularly as a strategic tool for tourism development. For instance, under the general framework of smart city initiatives, the European Commission (2015) has identified travel information and communication as one of the strategic objectives for improving human mobility and transportation. In emerging economies like China smart tourism is becoming an integral part of the national policy for economic development and overall improvement of service quality with the aide of information technology (CNTA 2015). Generally speaking, smart tourism aims to develop information and communication infrastructure and capabilities in order to improve management/ governance, facilitate service/product innovation, enhance the tourist experience, and, ultimately, improve the competitiveness of tourism firms and destinations (Gretzel et al. 2015; Hunter et al. 2015; Koo et al. 2015). Considering tourism is an important, and in many cases even primary, sector in national economies, smart tourism seems to offer a promising direction for sustainable tourism development and has the potential to impact tourist destinations and their representations in electronic markets at different levels. The notion of smart tourism was born against the backdrop of the recent development and diffusion of information technology that offers new modalities of communication, new ways for data collection, analysis and exchanges, and thus, new opportunities for value creation and management (Lazer et al. 2009). In the past decade or so, we have seen incredible growth of search technologies, online travel distribution channels, virtual tourism communities, and numerous forms of social media that allow travelers to make more convenient and smarter decisions (Sigala et al. 2012; Xiang et al. 2014). These technologies and systems are directly or indirectly connected to, or have impact on, various computerized reservation systems, which have long been integrated by the travel and tourism industry (Alt and Klein 2011; Karcher 1995; Mitev 1999). The widespread adoption of mobile technology, especially the smartphone, seems to have further accelerated this trend with the convergence of information search, communication, entertainment, social networking as well as mobility-related functionalities to assist travelers on the go (Wang and Xiang 2012). Furthermore, the growing capabilities of embedding and connecting a variety of RFID tags, sensors and mobile devices into our physical environment seems to lead to a more optimistic view that now is the time for technological innovations in terms of co-creation processes and the management of tourist experiences (Atzori et al. 2010; Taafe 2014). While it is a phenomenon of growing significance, scholarly work on smart tourism is lacking, both conceptually and empirically. In response to this emerging need, the journal of Electronic Markets presents a special issue that disseminates * Chulmo Koo helmetgu@khu.ac.kr