The tourism management literature has recently shown increasing interest in exploring the potential offered by the smart tourism destination initiative, conceived as the integrated use of ICT solutions for achieving greater efficiency and sustainability, enriching the tourist experience and boosting destination competitiveness. However, innovative technologies risk to be ineffective without adequate governance structures that are required to ensure the effective coordination and integration of tourism firms, government and communities in implementing a holistic smart-oriented development plan for destinations. This paper aims to integrate the recent smart approach with the destination governance theory to develop a governance process framework for smart tourism destinations. The framework explains how the smart approach can inform the planning and implementation of smart development goals, and specifically how smartness principles, tools and methods can be applied to increase the sustainable competitiveness of destinations beyond the mere technology dimension, making explicit the role of collaborative structures, user-driven services, social innovation and local community involvement. At the theoretical level, the paper offers an integrative perspective for designing and implementing effective smart tourism destination governance structures and processes. In practical terms, the framework can be viewed as a flexible tool in the hands of destination managers and policy makers: it shows how to match the design of governance structures and processes with the specific destination context and how to exploit “smart dimensions” for its development by relying on an incremental logic based on subsequent, interdependent stages.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential and challenges of knowledge management, in particular the use of information and communication technologies, in supporting stakeholders' collaboration processes in the tourism destination by focusing on e-democracy. The term e-democracy was coined to define the electronic representation of a democratic process which aims at obtaining stakeholders active participation in the decision-making process about territorial policies and tourism planning. Despite the growing interest that this concept is gaining both in the academia and in the tourism sector, the related research is still at its early stage. This study was carried out to contribute to fill this gap analysing the case study of an Italian region where an e-democracy project on destination governance is currently going on. The main contribution to the body of knowledge, managerial implications and limitations of the study are discussed and future avenues of research are suggested.

Underground sites have become an attractive tourist destination for an increasing number of visitors. This flow of visitors has made sustainability a major issue, that is, the way in which tourism development ensures economic benefits for host communities and respects local identity without compromising the environmental resources. Many studies have explored sustainable tourism in the Underground Built Heritage (UBH), but privilege the analysis of a single perspective, that is, economic sustainability, e.g., potentialities of cultural routes, or environmental sustainability, such as the impact of visitors on the cave climate. However, some attention has been paid to the social implications of tourism in the UBH, that is, the impacts of tourism development on improving the quality of life of the local community and the enhancement of their sense of community while respecting cultural authenticity. Our aim is to reconcile these perspectives and obtain, through a semi-systematic review, a clear picture of the sustainability of tourism in UBH sites. The aggregation of existing knowledge around the three pillars of sustainability has highlighted the importance of community involvement and collaboration among UBH stakeholders to ensure a balance between the protection and valorisation of UBH, which can also be achieved through networking strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model of innovation and internationalization for small- and medium enterprises (SMEs) and at testing it on tradition-based firms. These are SMEs whose productions reflect their territory's cultural identity. They are often micro-firms and weak in global markets. Since these firms characterize the European and Italian offer, the scientific challenge is to verify whether there are possible strategic paths, mainly based on interfirm collaboration and dynamic knowledge, that can help them getting higher levels of competitiveness. More specifically, the proposed model aims at understanding if it is possible to overcome these firms’ weaknesses through collaboration in networking perspective