Abstract
Smart tourism development has been adopted by destinations around the world to strengthen their long-term competitiveness in light of rapid technological, societal and environmental change. Destination management organizations (DMOs) are generally endowed with smart tourism governance at the destination-level and typically see it as a great opportunity to prove their relevance. However, these organizations also face enormous challenges and often lack the capacities and competencies needed to successfully govern smart destinations. While recent literature highlights the importance of smart destination governance, it does not provide much guidance in terms of the functions and roles of smart DMOs. This paper presents a preliminary conceptualization of six smart DMO functions that support smart governance roles, namely mobilizing, match-making, managing, sensing, shapeshifting and stewardship. As such, it presents practical guidance for DMOs trying to implement smart destination governance and outlines the need for research on smart DMOs.
Highlights
Smart tourism refers to efforts aimed at integrating advanced technologies into the fabric of destinations in order to enhance their innovation capacity, generate value creation opportunities, and mitigate the negative effects of tourism while providing tourists with superior experiences (Gretzel et al, 2015a)
Destinations around the world have eagerly adopted the notion of smart tourism: China’s smart destination initiative was one of the first attempts to strategically implement smart tourism in destinations to address issues faced in the light of new waves of mass tourism (Wang et al, 2013)
Smart tourism development has even reached the farthest corners of Europe, with the Azores developing a number of smart tourism initiatives mostly focused on mobilizing tourism stakeholders and enabling knowledge transfer
Summary
Smart tourism refers to efforts aimed at integrating advanced technologies into the fabric of destinations in order to enhance their innovation capacity, generate value creation opportunities, and mitigate the negative effects of tourism while providing tourists with superior experiences (Gretzel et al, 2015a). Other countries in Asia followed suit, with Vietnam’s National Administration of Tourism organization in partnership with the national telecommunications group rolling out smart tourism projects in multiple localities across the country since 2017 (Vietnamplus, 2019). Another example is Thailand, where smart tourism development so far includes equipping airports with advanced technologies and building data platforms that allow for visitor monitoring at destinations like Phuket (Phocuswire, 2019). Smart tourism development has even reached the farthest corners of Europe, with the Azores developing a number of smart tourism initiatives mostly focused on mobilizing tourism stakeholders and enabling knowledge transfer (see smarttourismhub.com)
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