Abstract
The concept of Smart Tourism is rapidly developing alongside Smart Cities, with increasing numbers of ICT solutions being applied for the convenience of travelers as well as for gathering information, which has become a valuable resource. The vast progress in the development of Information Technologies has also impacted the needs and expectations of tourists. However, various branches of tourism are adopting this concept at a different pace, and thus a growing development gap might emerge. Cases from all over the world show that museums are not immune to this, and it is important for their future to meet these expectations. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to investigate the use of modern technologies in Polish museums and assess their readiness for adopting Smart Tourism. For this purpose, a nationwide online survey was conducted with a sample size of 218 museums (from 500 unique entities in total). The results show that the issue of Smart Tourism in Polish museums is ambiguous. The results reveal that, currently, the status of Smart Tourism adoption in museums is quite low, and significant gaps in some areas are shown; at the same time, other areas revealed a high potential for the future application of Smart Tourism.
Highlights
The world that we live in is constantly changing, and as time passes, societies are having to face new challenges
This need can be seen as the origin of the Smart City paradigm, which has emerged at the turn of the millennium in various sciences
He named two main dangers that come from this concept, which are shared by other researchers as well [34,38,39]: the first one is that, as with any other new urban vision, the concept requires some degree of restructuring, which eventually leads to the exclusion of some current subjects in favor of others—the same is true for people, where some will benefit at the price of the marginalization of others; the second one is that the Smart City (SC) concept is heavily technologically orientated, reducing the vision of a future city into a technology-centric idea, which may limit the opportunities for possible alternatives that might emerge
Summary
The world that we live in is constantly changing, and as time passes, societies are having to face new challenges. While tourists benefit from conveniences provided by technological solutions (by offering fast services, more means of reliable communication and streamlined connectivity, trips can be planned more and quickly and on more transparent conditions, which increases tourists’ satisfaction and allows the providers to better meet the needs and expectations of customers), the same study revealed that stakeholders still do not fully recognize and appreciate the importance of ICTs (foremost, mobile technologies) and the benefits they can provide This reveals an interesting gap in the field of Smart Tourism research concerning comprehensive studies on entire branches of tourist service providers and their experiences, use histories and attitudes towards technology. This allows us to determine if the previously mentioned statement that stakeholders do not fully recognize and appreciate the potential of ICTs applies to museums
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