Towards a conceptualisation of smart tourists and their role within the smart destination scenario

‘Smart tourism’ and ‘smart destinations’ have been gaining attention as new frameworks within which to understand the impact the latest information and communication technologies (ICTs) have on the relationship between businesses, destinations and tourists. However, there is a crucial element of the smart tourism ecosystem that has been rather neglected in research hitherto: the tourists themselves. By acknowledging a shift in tourists’ behaviour due to the advent of disruptive factors, this paper conceptualises the recently emerged notion of ‘the smart tourist’. This new type of tourist is profiled through a description of their attitudes and behaviours, and their role within the smart destination scenario is depicted. By taking a consumer-centric perspective and framing the conceptualisation within the relevant theories, this paper contributes to the current body of knowledge on tourism in a highly technological context and facilitates bridging smart tourism theoretical foundations with empirical research. The observed transformation in tourists’ behaviour and its encapsulation in the smart tourist conceptualisation reveal critical managerial implications for both destination management organisations and businesses in the rapidly changing smart tourism ecosystem.Research carried out within the project ‘Analysis of planning processes applied to smart cities and smart tourism destinations. Balance and methodological proposal for tourist spaces: Smart Tourism Planning’ (CSO2017-82592-R) under the Spanish National R&D&I Plan and Grant no. BES-2015-073909, funded by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness

An Exploration of the technology enhanced tourist experience.

The notion of creating unique and memorable experiences for consumers has become of primary importance for tourism research and practice. The way contemporary tourist experiences are created has however undergone a fundamental change. Experiences are transforming as consumers are increasingly empowered to co-create their own experiences. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have represented a catalyst of change that has opened unprecedented possibilities for tourist experience creation and enhancement. While the literature has recognised these paradigm shifts within the service-dominant logic and the services marketing and management discipline, a holistic understanding of this phenomenon is still missing to date. This doctoral study therefore aims to explore how the tourist experience can be enhanced by ICTs through company-consumer experience co-creation, throughout all stages of the travel process, i.e. pre/during/post travel. This thesis integrates the three theoretical streams of tourist experience, co-creation and ICTs to explore, conceptualise and develop the Technology Enhanced Tourist Experience concept. A comprehensive qualitative mixed methods strategy comprising three main research phases was adopted, consisting of a) a qualitative content analysis, b) a multiple case study and c) semi-structured consumer in-depth interviews to triangulate the findings and allow for a holistic knowledge development. The most significant findings contribute to knowledge by offering a) a comprehensive understanding of the granular elements of the tourist experience, b) both a company and consumer actor perspective on experience co-creation, c) a detailed enhancement process of the tourist experience through ICTs and d) a holistic model depicting the twelve distinct factors of the Technology Enhanced Tourist Experience. This study makes an original contribution to the services marketing and management discipline on a wider level and the three theoretical streams in specific. This thesis is significant and original in that it is the first study to explore the Technology Enhanced Tourist Experience and to create a theoretical foundation of this concept. The strength of this work thus lies in developing several conceptualisations and models that advance the service-dominant logic and provide critical strategic implications for services marketing and management practice. This knowledge has also wider implications and makes an impact on a global business, societal, technological and policy level beyond

Smart tourism experiences: conceptualización, aspectos clave y agenda de investigación

«Smart tourism» has gained momentum in research fostered by the revolution of the latest generation of information and communication technologies and has rapidly become a leading stream of literature. The concept has permeated governments and the business sphere and has been accompanied by the quest for developing smart devices, services and tourist destinations. However, experiences as the main focus of smartness development in tourism and destinations have received comparably little attention in the smart discourse. Smart destinations, as new ecosystems backed by concrete geographical contexts, facilitate the co-creation of a rich, technology-based, smart tourism experience (STE). Yet, a clear definition and examination of the dimensions of what constitutes a smart tourism experience is still to be developed. This paper aims to discuss the main core precedent constructs of STEs, namely: a) technology enhanced experiences and b) smart destinations, to underpin a holistic definition of a smart tourism experience. Based on an in-depth literature review, a novel conceptual model for this concept is developed and an agenda for further research is proposed drawing on the identified key themes and dimensions of this construct. By mapping out smart tourism experiences and providing real examples, this research contributes to the theoretical foundations of smart tourism and tourist experiences.El llamado «turismo inteligente» ha ganado relevancia impulsado por la revolución que han supuesto la última generación de tecnologías de la información y la comunicación, convirtiéndose rápidamente en una destacada corriente de investigación. El concepto ha permeado gobiernos y ámbito empresarial y su consolidación ha ido acompañada del desarrollo de dispositivos, servicios e incluso destinos turísticos inteligentes. No obstante, la experiencia turística, como mayor preocupación y motor de desarrollo del turismo inteligente, ha recibido relativamente escasa atención en el discurso smart. Dentro del mismo, los destinos turísticos inteligentes son entendidos como un nuevo ecosistema, basado en un espacio geográfico determinado, que facilita la co-creación de experiencias turísticas inteligentes. A pesar de ello, no existe hasta el momento una definición clara de lo que supone una experiencia inteligente, ni tampoco de sus dimensiones. Partiendo de esta realidad, el presente trabajo tiene como objetivo llevar a cabo una discusión sobre los constructos teóricos precedentes de la experiencia turística inteligente (smart tourism experience), a saber: a) las experiencias mejoradas tecnológicamente, y b) los destinos inteligentes, con el fin de desarrollar una conceptualización holística de la misma. Asimismo, se propone un modelo conceptual para la experiencia inteligente y una agenda de investigación futura. A través de la nueva conceptualización ofrecida y la ejemplificación de la misma a través de casos reales, el presente trabajo contribuye a los fundamentos teóricos del turismo inteligente y de las experiencias turísticas.Research carried out within the project «Analysis of planning processes applied to smart cities and smart tourism destinations. Balance and methodological proposal for tourist spaces: Smart Tourism Planning» (CSO2017-82592-R) under the Spanish National R&D&I Plan funded by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness

Trust and Reputation Modelling for Tourism Recommendations Supported by Crowdsourcing

Tourism crowdsourcing platforms have a profound influence on the tourist behaviour particularly in terms of travel planning. Not only they hold the opinions shared by other tourists concerning tourism resources, but, with the help of recommendation engines, are the pillar of personalised resource recommendation. However, since prospective tourists are unaware of the trustworthiness or reputation of crowd publishers, they are in fact taking a leap of faith when then rely on the crowd wisdom. In this paper, we argue that modelling publisher Trust & Reputation improves the quality of the tourism recommendations supported by crowdsourced information. Therefore, we present a tourism recommendation system which integrates: (i) user profiling using the multi-criteria ratings; (ii) k-Nearest Neighbours (k-NN) prediction of the user ratings; (iii) Trust & Reputation modelling; and (iv) incremental model update, i.e., providing near real-time recommendations. In terms of contributions, this paper provides two different Trust & Reputation approaches: (i) general reputation employing the pairwise trust values using all users; and (ii) neighbour-based reputation employing the pairwise trust values of the common neighbours. The proposed method was experimented using crowdsourced datasets from Expedia and TripAdvisor platforms.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Smart technologies for personalized experiences: a case study in the hospitality domain

Recent advances in the field of technology have led to the emergence of innovative technological smart solutions providing unprecedented opportunities for application in the tourism and hospitality industry.With intensified competition in the tourism market place, it has become paramount for businesses to explore the potential of technologies, not only to optimize existing processes but facilitate the creation of more meaningful and personalized services and experiences. This study aims to bridge the current knowledge gap between smart technologies and experience personalization to understand how smart mobile technologies can facilitate personalized experiences in the context of the hospitality industry. By adopting a qualitative case study approach, this paper makes a two-fold contribution; it a) identifies the requirements of smart technologies for experience creation, including information aggregation, ubiquitous mobile connectedness and real time synchronization and b) highlights how smart technology integration can lead to two distinct levels of personalized tourism experiences. The paper concludes with the development of a model depicting the dynamic process of experience personalization and a discussion of the strategic implications for tourism and hospitality management and research

"Smart tourism experiences": conceptualización, aspectos clave y agenda de investigación

«Smart tourism» has gained momentum in research fostered by the revolution of the latest generation of information and communication technologies and has rapidly become a leading stream of literature. The concept has permeated governments and the business sphere and has been accompanied by the quest for developing smart devices, services and tourist destinations. However, experiences as the main focus of smartness development in tourism and destinations have received comparably little attention in “the smart discourse”. Smart destinations, as new ecosystems backed by concrete geographical contexts, facilitate the co-creation of a rich, technology-based, smart tourism experience (STE). Yet, a clear definition and examination of the dimensions of what constitutes a smart tourism experience is still to be developed. This paper aims to discuss the main core precedent constructs of STEs, namely: a) technology enhanced experiences and b) smart destinations, to underpin a holistic definition of a smart tourism experience. Based on an in-depth literature review, a novel conceptual model for this concept is developed and an agenda for further research is proposed drawing on the identified key themes and dimensions of this construct. By mapping out smart tourism experiences and providing real examples, this research contributes to the theoretical foundations of smart tourism and tourist experiences.El llamado «turismo inteligente» ha ganado relevancia impulsado por la revolución que han supuesto la última generación de tecnologías de la información y la comunicación, convirtiéndose rápidamente en una destacada corriente de investigación. El concepto ha permeado gobiernos y ámbito empresarial y su consolidación ha ido acompañada del desarrollo de dispositivos, servicios e incluso destinos turísticos inteligentes. No obstante, “la experiencia turística”, como mayor preocupación y motor de desarrollo del turismo inteligente, ha recibido relativamente escasa atención en el discurso “Smart”. Dentro del mismo, los destinos turísticos inteligentes son entendidos como un nuevo ecosistema, basado en un espacio geográfico determinado, que facilita la co-creación de experiencias turísticas inteligentes. A pesar de ello, no existe hasta el momento una definición clara de lo que supone una experiencia inteligente, ni tampoco de sus dimensiones. Partiendo de esta realidad, el presente trabajo tiene como objetivo llevar a cabo una discusión sobre los constructos teóricos precedentes de la experiencia turística inteligente (“smart tourism experience”), a saber: a) las experiencias mejoradas tecnológicamente, y b) los destinos inteligentes, con el fin de desarrollar una conceptualización holística de la misma. Asimismo, se propone un modelo conceptual para la experiencia inteligente y una agenda de investigación futura. A través de la nueva conceptualización ofrecida y la ejemplificación de la misma a través de casos reales, el presente trabajo contribuye a los fundamentos teóricos del turismo inteligente y de las experiencias turísticas

Smart tourism experiences: conceptualización, aspectos clave y agenda de investigación

«Smart tourism» has gained momentum in research fostered by the revolution of the latest generation of information and communication technologies and has rapidly become a leading stream of literature. The concept has permeated governments and the business sphere and has been accompanied by the quest for developing smart devices, services and tourist destinations. However, experiences as the main focus of smartness development in tourism and destinations have received comparably little attention in the smart discourse. Smart destinations, as new ecosystems backed by concrete geographical contexts, facilitate the co-creation of a rich, technology-based, smart tourism experience (STE). Yet, a clear definition and examination of the dimensions of what constitutes a smart tourism experience is still to be developed. This paper aims to discuss the main core precedent constructs of STEs, namely: a) technology enhanced experiences and b) smart destinations, to underpin a holistic definition of a smart tourism experience. Based on an in-depth literature review, a novel conceptual model for this concept is developed and an agenda for further research is proposed drawing on the identified key themes and dimensions of this construct. By mapping out smart tourism experiences and providing real examples, this research contributes to the theoretical foundations of smart tourism and tourist experiences.El llamado «turismo inteligente» ha ganado relevancia impulsado por la revolución que han supuesto la última generación de tecnologías de la información y la comunicación, convirtiéndose rápidamente en una destacada corriente de investigación. El concepto ha permeado gobiernos y ámbito empresarial y su consolidación ha ido acompañada del desarrollo de dispositivos, servicios e incluso destinos turísticos inteligentes. No obstante, la experiencia turística, como mayor preocupación y motor de desarrollo del turismo inteligente, ha recibido relativamente escasa atención en el discurso smart. Dentro del mismo, los destinos turísticos inteligentes son entendidos como un nuevo ecosistema, basado en un espacio geográfico determinado, que facilita la co-creación de experiencias turísticas inteligentes. A pesar de ello, no existe hasta el momento una definición clara de lo que supone una experiencia inteligente, ni tampoco de sus dimensiones. Partiendo de esta realidad, el presente trabajo tiene como objetivo llevar a cabo una discusión sobre los constructos teóricos precedentes de la experiencia turística inteligente (smart tourism experience), a saber: a) las experiencias mejoradas tecnológicamente, y b) los destinos inteligentes, con el fin de desarrollar una conceptualización holística de la misma. Asimismo, se propone un modelo conceptual para la experiencia inteligente y una agenda de investigación futura. A través de la nueva conceptualización ofrecida y la ejemplificación de la misma a través de casos reales, el presente trabajo contribuye a los fundamentos teóricos del turismo inteligente y de las experiencias turísticas.Research carried out within the project «Analysis of planning processes applied to smart cities and smart tourism destinations. Balance and methodological proposal for tourist spaces: Smart Tourism Planning» (CSO2017-82592-R) under the Spanish National R&D&I Plan funded by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness