Smart Tourism Challenges

This paper defines smart tourism as tourism supported by integrated efforts at a destination to find innovative ways to collect and aggregate/harness data derived from physical infrastructure, social connections, government/organizational sources and human bodies/minds in combination with the use of advanced technologies to transform that data into enhanced experiences and business value-propositions with a clear focus on efficiency, sustainability and enriched experiences during the trip. It delineates smart tourism from general e-tourism and describes the experience smart tourists are expected to have at smart destinations. The paper then discusses a series of challenges currently neglected in the practical smart tourism agendas and the academic literature.