Page 15 - Smart tourism: A path to more secure and resilient destinations

To further facilitate international dialogue on smart and sustainable cities, the “United for Smart
Sustainable Cities” (U4SSC) initiative was launched by ITU, UNECE and UN-Habitat, and supported
by CBD, ECLAC, FAO, UNDP, UNECA, UNESCO, UNEP, UNEP-FI, UNFCCC, UNIDO, UNOP, UNU-
EGOV, UN-Women and WMO. This UN initiative conducts its operations in line with the Sustainable
Development Goal (SDG) 11: “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and
sustainable”. The smart city is an interconnected system with various sectors including E-health,
Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), Smart Tourism, Smart Education, and Intelligent Sustainable
Buildings etc. This report will further delve into the Smart Tourism sphere within the smart and
sustainable city ecosystem.

The concept of Smart Tourist Destinations evolves from the definition of smart cities. According
to the Mapping Smart Cities in the EU Report by the European Parliament’s Directorate-General
for Internal Policies, of January 2014, the concept of smart cities is founded on the creation and
connection of human capital, social capital, and ICTs in order to generate greater and more
sustainable economic development and better quality of life. Hence, a smart city is enabled by
excellence in the use of technologies, especially ICTs, aimed at improving competitiveness and
ensuring a more sustainable future through a symbiotic union of networks of individuals, companies,
technologies, infrastructures, consumption, energy and spaces.

In Spain, the National Plan for Smart Cities (March 2015), offers a smart city definition as proposed
by the Technical Group of Normalization 178 of AENOR (AEN/CTN 178/SC2/GT1 N 003):

“Smart city is the holistic view of a city that applies ICTs to improve its inhabitants’ quality of life
and accessibility and ensures economic, social, and environmentally sustainable development in
continuous improvement. A smart city enables citizens to interact with it in a multidisciplinary way
and adapts in real time to their needs, efficiently in quality and cost, providing open data, solutions,
and services oriented to citizens as individuals, to resolve the effects of the growth of cities, in public
and private spheres, through the innovative integration of infrastructures with smart management
systems”.

With this definition, different experts from the AEN/CTN 178 started working on the pillars of Smart
Tourist Destinations creating the Smart Tourism Destination subcommittee (AEN/CTN 178/SC5). A
Tourist Destination is Smart when it makes intensive use of the technological infrastructure provided
by the smart city in order to improve the tourism experience of the visitors, personalize it and make
them aware of the tourism products and services available in the destination. It also offers data
produced, directed and processed through the technological infrastructure of the destination so
that DMOs, local institutions, and local tourism business can make decisions and take action based
on such data (Lamsfus et al, 2015).

A Smart Tourist Destination is considered an innovative space based on the territory and a cutting-
edge technological infrastructure, committed to sustainability, with an information system capable
of analysing and understanding events in real-time, thus facilitating the interaction between the
visitor and the environment, and improving the travel experience significantly (López-Ávila et al,
2013).

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