‘Smart tourism’ and ‘smart destinations’ have been gaining attention as new frameworks within which to understand the impact the latest information and communication technologies (ICTs) have on the relationship between businesses, destinations and tourists. However, there is a crucial element of the smart tourism ecosystem that has been rather neglected in research hitherto: the tourists themselves. By acknowledging a shift in tourists’ behaviour due to the advent of disruptive factors, this paper conceptualises the recently emerged notion of ‘the smart tourist’. This new type of tourist is profiled through a description of their attitudes and behaviours, and their role within the smart destination scenario is depicted. By taking a consumer-centric perspective and framing the conceptualisation within the relevant theories, this paper contributes to the current body of knowledge on tourism in a highly technological context and facilitates bridging smart tourism theoretical foundations with empirical research. The observed transformation in tourists’ behaviour and its encapsulation in the smart tourist conceptualisation reveal critical managerial implications for both destination management organisations and businesses in the rapidly changing smart tourism ecosystem.

Indicators are a fundamental tool for destinations in their progress towards a more sustainable tourism development. However, the lack of real progress and the accelerated technological change are obliging policy makers to rethink the existing indicator systems. This paper examines the relationship between smart cities and destinations and sustainable tourism indicators by analyzing proposals at different scales. It provides a critical review of international smart city standards and the role that sustainability indicators play within them. Then, it conducts a content analysis of planning instruments applied in smart strategies in Spain, focusing on how sustainability indicators are considered under the smart paradigm. At the regional-local scale, this research compares two sets of indicators and tests the scientific validity of one of them for addressing the imbalance suffered by many indicators between their usefulness for policy makers and their academic rigor. The results show that little progress has been achieved despite the appropriation of the sustainability discourse by smart city and smart destination promoters. These findings reveal the (limited) real contribution made by smart cities/destinations to sustainable tourism development and contribute to identifying weaknesses and opportunities so as to redirect smart policies and projects. A final discussion contextualizes the findings within the novel framework of smart sustainability and highlights the need to reinforce public governance of urban and tourist spaces.

Purpose: This paper aims to contrast the expectations placed on the smart destination as a theoretical management approach with the reality of emergent tech-savvy tourism demand by examining the response of this segment to three critical dimensions of technology use in the context of smart destinations. Tech-savvy tourists are here represented by highly educated Spanish millennial tourists.Design/methodology/approach: Data were obtained through an online survey and analysed through descriptive techniques and exploratory factor analysis using SPSS. Literature review was critical for setting the foundations of the research in this novel context.Findings: Results suggest the existence of a gap between the smart destination theoretical expectations and created hype and the real response of the examined demand in the three main scopes for this tourist-smart destination technology-based relationship, namely, mobile technology use, data sharing for personalised experiences and smart technologies for enhanced experiences.Research limitations/implications: Convenience sampling was used, and the results of the study cannot be generalised to all millennial tourists. The research is a first approximation to the interrelationship between tourists and smart destinations.Practical/implications: Tourists’ role and experiences mediated by information and communication technologies (ICTs) are decisive in smart destinations. Destination Management Organisations (DMOs), through their policies and actions, ought to take into account the limited predisposition of tourists in using mobile devices, sharing data and using smart technologies for their experiences. Privacy concerns appear to have special relevance for tourists and, therefore, for the future of smart destinations.Originality/value: The findings offer relevant insights for smart destinations from a neglected angle hitherto, as they introduce several interesting nuances which do not match entirely the fast track taken by institutions, media and academia. This is critical for better understanding tourists in the current panorama, for DMOs and for the theoretical foundations of smart tourism. Besides, the exploratory data analysis reveals potential dimensions of millennials’ behaviour, which can be useful for further investigations.

Smart Destinations (SDs) have gained momentum in tourism research, but despite the growing body of literature devoted to the topic, some critical dimensions continue to be under-researched. Real fulfilment of two of the main objectives of SDs, namely enhancing tourists’ experiences and improving destinations management, remains largely unknown. By taking as a relevant case the destination of Benidorm, its smart destination strategy and solutions, this paper investigates whether and how these smart destination efforts are actually transforming destination management, marketing processes and tourists’ experiences. Through a sequence of qualitative methods including (i) documentary and other secondary data analysis, (ii) in-depth interviews with DMO representatives and key informants and (iii) in-depth interviews with tourists visiting the destination, rich data was obtained, systematically analysed and triangulated. The findings pose critical lessons for destinations in their transition towards smartness, especially for policy-makers, and shed light on the effects of smart solutions on tourist experiences.