Smart tourism cities and sustainability

As the tourism sector is suffering the disastrous impact of COVID19, new prospects will naturally emerge;this paper explores the potential of technology and IT platforms for the industry, specifically focus is on smart technologies that are changing consumer experiences and generating creative tourism business models. Smart tourism facilitates new ways of managing tourist flows, offering better tourist services, new advertising models and new collaborative ventures that build on cloud services and open data to innovate beyond the boundaries of traditional industry. The main aim of this review article is to examine and analyze the characteristics of smart tourism cities and the potential place of sustainability as a tool for the effective management of environmental systems and urban society. The subordinate questions are: What mutual ties may exist between the characteristics of smart cities and smart tourism? In addition, what is the place of sustainability in smart tourism cities and how can smart tourism cities use “smartness” technologies for better environmental and social management of tourism in the city? The article makes use of secondary research methodology and is based on an analysis of diverse studies on issues of smart cities, smart tourism, and sustainability in smart tourism cities. What emerges is that the concept and models of smart cities fits well with the idea and framework of smart tourism. They overlap and complement each other. The sustainability factor constitutes a central element in the essence of smart city tourism. Several important challenges can apparently be met through the use of smart technologies and applications for both better management of tourism space through smart city tourism and for monitoring and managing environmental elements. © 2020 Ben Gurion University of the Negev. All rights reserved.