Towards a Smart Tourism Destination Development Model: Promoting Environmental, Economic, Socio-cultural and Political Values

The rapid increase in urban population poses significant challenges to the administration of cities worldwide. Thus, a growing number of initiatives are being implemented to alleviate such strain by attempting to transform urban centers into smart cities. Alongside the concept of smart city, a specific variation of this concept is emerging in the Tourism sector, namely smart tourism destinations (STD). Despite the growing number of STD initiatives in different countries, the extant literature remains silent on this growing phenomenon. As such, the objective of this paper is to propose a model-The Smart Tourism Destination Development Model-aimed at indicating a strategic path that a tourism destination should follow to become a smart one. As such, this study discusses the STD concept, and argues that besides enhancing the destination competitiveness, an STD project should also be grounded on a stainable paradigm in order to create public value for the hosting community.