Mobile Technology and Smart Tourism Development

Dear Colleagues,

With the number of smartphone users in the world reaching approximately 2.7 billion people, mobile technologies have become essential tools for travelers before, during, and after their trips. Using their smartphones, travelers post their travel stories, share reviews and upload pictures and video clips to their favorite sites. Along with the advent of mobile technologies, smart tourism development has brought about changes in transforming travel behaviors, as well as business systems in the hospitality and tourism industry. Mobile apps and Social Network Services (SNSs) help travelers access and interact with travel related information, including information on destinations and details of accommodation, transportation and tourist attractions regardless of cost, time, and place. Furthermore, one of the latest technologies is the Internet of Things (IoTs), which is bringing a great deal of change to the tourism environment. IoTs (e.g., Beacon technology) are designed to attract attention at specific locations providing pertinent promotions and discounts as well as virtual maps to the traveler as it detects the traveler’s exact position and sends a message to his/her smartphone. With such enriched mobile experiences supported by inexpensive and ubiquitous connectivity, travel has become a lot smarter. At the same time, to respond to this market environment, Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs), travel agencies and other individual tourism product owners in the tourism industry seek ways to connect manufacturing and service industries and enhance marketing channels to provide better products and services to their customers. The focus of smart tourism initiatives is on resource conversation and quality of life. Therefore, mobile technologies can lead to sustainable tourism development.

Likewise, the tourism industry is rapidly evolving into a smart networked business environment and generates creative tourism business models based on online services, platforms or websites. Smart thinking has changed the entire tourism industry into ‘smart tourism ecosystems’. At this point, we need to re-define and further conceptualize how mobile technologies integrate with smart tourism ecosystems. In addition, we should consider that smart means “optimized for a specific need in a specific context either on demand or on a real-time basis.” While the concept of smart tourism development has not yet been clearly developed, it should be explained both from the supply and from the consumer point of view together with respect to providing conventional tourism through more cost efficient, convenient, effective, productive and sustainable travel services. Such services based on mobile technologies can not only provide personalized, location-based, and context-aware information to tourism consumers, but also offer new opportunities to manage tourist flows, resource conservation and positive social change through enriched interactions with local residents.

Therefore, this Special Issue provides a forum to discuss and identify new trends and developments in mobile technologies and smart tourism development in the hospitality and tourism industry, with an emphasis on sustainability.

Prof. Dr. Chulmo Koo
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Gretzel
Guest Editors

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