Smart Destinations: towards a more sustainable tourism industry

Objectives. In general, the smart approach allows strengthening the ability to solve problems (e.g. those related to sustainability) through an efficacious use of knowledge. A smart management of tourism rests on an information-driven logic, becoming critical the capacity of organizations to capturing data from diverse sources and makes them available to managers. It is recognized that smart tourism destinations are built around a number of areas, within which sustainability is one of them. The paper intends: to present how the literature has addressed the intersection between the smart and sustainability concepts; and to display diverse cases in that intersection. Methodology. The study presents a review of the literature of smart tourism and sustainability, trying to unravel the link between both concepts. Then, it performs a collection of experiences on the components of smartness, implemented with satisfactory results and aligned to the management of sustainability issues. Findings. The analysis reveals several gaps that should be bridged for a full exploitation of the intersection between smartness and sustainability. Firstly, the need to move from a focus based on technology, to a more global and long-term perspective on how the data-driven logic of smartness can help to tackle sustainability issues in destinations. Secondly, the smart tourism approach has a potential for the preservation of local heritage, way of living and culture, connecting its capabilities with the social components of smart people, smart mobility and smart living. Finally, the insertion of tourism into the emergent paradigm of circular economy. Research limits. Although the completeness in the collection of experiences in a so vast and dynamic field is a utopia, it is honest to recognize that the speed of technological evolution prevents to present a set of initiatives fully updated, together with their outputs. Practical implications. The design of tourism destinations should not be based on harnessing the ICTs proliferation only, but, more importantly, on the need for balancing all the beneficiaries -from internal publics (residents, local people) and external ones (visitors in one single word, both excursionists and tourists)- through the paradigm of “smartness”, that, in the search for a more sustainable tourism industry, guides people’s living conditions. Originality of the study. The study promotes to moving forward in this area through a cross-fertilization between theory and practice, with the outline of a number of recommendations together with some suggestions for further research in a still under explored field of study.