Smart Tourism Destinations: An Extended Conception of Smart Cities Focusing on Human Mobility

A new approach to the Smart Destination concept and a cloud-based infrastructure designed to reach that vision are presented and this infrastructure promotes the creation of advanced mobile tourism applications by tourism stakeholders with tools adapted to people with no programming skills.

Abstract

Smart Cities are paving the way for the development of new services in the field of tourism. The "smart" concept is based on the intensive deployment of Information and Communication Technology infrastructures, as well as on the proliferation of mobile technology and its apps. However, a destination is not smart because it makes intensive use of technology. It is smart because it also uses technology in order to seek a deeper understanding about the characteristics and meaning of human mobility. It uses latent knowledge and capacities to empower local institutions and industries to create knowledge-based policies and advanced mobile services for visitors. This paper presents a new approach to the Smart Destination concept and a cloud-based infrastructure designed to reach that vision. This infrastructure promotes the creation of advanced mobile tourism applications by tourism stakeholders with tools adapted to people with no programming skills.