Smart tourism destinationsA demand-based approach for improving local tourism management

Resumen

Smart destinations (SDs) are argued to be a destination management approach applicable and scalable to different realities (Ivars-Baidal, Celdrán-Bernabeu, Mazón, & Perles-Ivars, 2017). SD concept is basically built upon the hypothesis that an intensive use of ICTs to interact among stakeholders and the use of big data resulting from these interactions will provide an improved decision making, a better management and marketing of destinations (Xiang & Fesenmaier, 2017). Moreover, the availability of data, use of technological solutions and intelligent decision making are supposed to render a better, enhanced tourist experience (Boes et al., 2015; Buhalis & Amaranggana, 2014). However, despite the emphasis put on tourists and their experiences as a central piece of smart tourism destinations, academic works have hitherto partly ignored how tourists perceive their role in this scenario and how actually their experiences are being affected, beyond some exceptions (e.g. Buonincontri & Micera, 2016; Liberato, Alen, & Liberato, 2018). The growing body of literature has neglected the voice of tourists and to what extent they accept the expectations set on them, or how their actual behaviour fits the requirements of smart destinations functioning, constituting one of the major research gaps in the field (Gretzel, Reino, Kopera, & Koo, 2015; Gretzel, Sigala, Xiang, & Koo, 2015; Gretzel, Werthner, Koo, & Lamsfus, 2015; X. Wang, Li, Zhen, & Zhang, 2016). Similarly, local SD projects and plans have for the moment failed in incorporating the tourist as a major stakeholder in their design. The development and planning of smart destinations is decided based on political agendas and availability of resources of many types (financial, technical, human), which leaves the tourist in a lower level of priority, while the analysis of their needs, preferences and experiences is virtually non-existent in plans and projects (Femenia-Serra & Ivars-Baidal, 2018). Drawing on this research context, gaps and needs, the main objective of this dissertation is to generate a better and different understanding of the smart destination as a local tourism management approach by developing and introducing a tourist-centric perspective as well as comprehending how smart destinations might affect tourists and destinations management processes. To fulfil this objective, this dissertation relies on a sequential mixed methods approach that encompasses both qualitative and quantitative analysis and data of diverse nature to allow sufficient adaptability to the established objectives. This doctoral thesis has been conducted by publication, and therefore includes three phases reflected in three published research papers, each of which employs a different method and seeks specific objectives. Results from the first phase illuminate our understanding of tourists in the novel context of smart destination by developing an interpretative and analytical theoretical framework, namely ‘the smart tourist’, who is characterised conceptually based on a description of smart tourists’ characteristics and role, built upon exchange of data, utilisation of smart technologies and co-creation of experiences. Second phase findings have contributed to profile a demand segment (highly qualified Spanish millennials) in relation with the expectations held by smart destinations theoretical proposals, partly reflected in the previous phase of the dissertation. The results from the survey enlighten current knowledge on this tourism demand segment engagement with technologies, with particular attention to mobile technologies, and take a step further by analysing to what extent millennials wish to interact and co-create their experience with tourism organisations in the SD. Third phase results shed light into the effects of smart destinations on two scopes: tourists’ experiences and destination management and marketing processes. Taking the case of Benidorm as a renowned SD, the findings analyse for the first time the impact of SD actions on tourists and their experiences by adopting a complementary perspective to the one obtained in the second phase of the dissertation. This confirms how different smart solutions available to the DMO are capable of improving the destination public management processes anticipated by research (Wang et al., 2013), while the tourists' narratives show a complex situation in which smart solutions can create or destruct value in their experiences. All in all, these results contribute to the still scarce body of knowledge on smart tourism and smart destinations and distil key recommendations for destination managers and other decision-makers. In conclusion, and returning to the overall objective and premise of this research project, the contributions made by the dissertation have helped to construct a deeper and different understanding of smart destinations as a management approach and have focused on introducing tourists as a central element, while analysing the real effects of SDs. Smart discourse and actions are indeed serving as a catalyst of change, but a re-orientation of them is necessary, to which the findings and derived recommendations of this thesis are highly helpful.