The smart tourism destination (STD) is an adaptation of the smart-city concept into a tourism destination. Smart cities relate to the urban use of technologies and internet in order to improve economic growth, quality of life, efficient management of resources, and generation of governance processes and social participation. This paper aims to highlight the perception that different tourism experts in Puerto Vallarta have about intelligent tourism destinations. The working method of this research was through a Delphi study to analyze the responses of local experts on the status of STD´s and their future trends. The experts’ perceptions on the concept’s definition, regional capacity for innovation, technological components, linking, and sustainability was analyzed. Experts perceived an optimistic scenario for STD in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, México. The participants in this study value the factors that determine the implementation of STDs as determinants; there are at least three of them: Training, Investment, and Governance.

Whales are popular tourism attractions in many coastal areas of the world. Although not without disagreement, vessel-based whale viewing is widely considered to be a form of ecotourism, in which experiential and learning opportunities exist to engender pro-environmental awareness and behavior. Guides are considered to play an important interpretive role in this respect, although there is little research that explores what guides themselves desire to impart to their passengers. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, we compared what whale watching guides in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (n = 9) desire their passengers experience and learn to that reported by the whale watchers themselves (n = 283). Guides placed a higher importance on education, while whale watchers indicated experiential elements such as viewing whales close up and spectacular behaviors. Furthermore, the guides held a strong view that emotional feelings of respect and love for whales were important for whale watchers to experience and learn about marine conservation.

Sustainable fishing includes how fishermen live. We describe the quality of life (QOL) and lived experiences (LE) of fishermen along the coast of Jalisco, whose average daily income is slightly above the poverty level. The relationships among income, size of catch and QOL are explored using data collected in 2012 from a sample of 83 fishermen. QOL included indicators like health, income, cost of living, family, friends, holidays, education and future perspective. The QOL index combines importance and achievement ratings scores, the results are indicative of an acceptable QOL for fishermen. The concept of LE is elaborated and interviews conducted with a sample of 13 fishermen. A graphical representation of four dimensions of LE comprising aspects of life relating to Mind, Body, Work and People for each fisherman is derived, where each person was asked on the importance and gaps between aspiration and actual situation about each dimension. We found that the most important dimension in a fisherman's life is People. The gaps identified suggest that the significant gaps that should be closed, were associated to the Mind dimension, then Work and Body, and finally People. Concerning the responsibility for closing gaps, respondents identified four options ordered by frequency: self, government, self with the help of family members, and God/ faith. An inverse moderately strong relationship between catch, marginalization and QOL score was found, while income and QOL score were directly related. In general, future and past are not better than the present. All these and LE are discussed in the sustainability context