Abstract
This chapter discusses geographical context of smart tourism planning through the analysis of relations between spatial planning, tourism development, and technology. The main question addressed in this enquiry is whether development of technology and tourism respects sustainable spatial planning. Thus, geographical influence of tourism and ICT on spatial planning was investigated. Research is carried out in Poland as tourist destinations in the country are substantially different regarding their tourist attractions, infrastructure, and development. Geographically weighted regression (GWR) was applied to identify regions where spatial planning is significantly influenced by tourism, and technology development as well. Both mentioned phenomena were recognized as competing in terms of spatial planning. Tourism and technology development did not support spatial planning parallely. Hence, establishing and developing smart tourism planning was confirmed as challenging from the geographical perspective.
TopBackground
The word “smart” has become a popular term for describing the development assisted by information and communication technologies (ICTs). The relation between people and multi devices has occurred also in tourism as support of travel experience (Gretzel et al. 2016). The Internet has changed the channels of dissemination of travel information and enabled tourists to freely share knowledge (Munar& Jacobsen 2014). ICTs have changed the consumer behaviour as well. Smart tourism is a progression from traditional tourism to e-tourism, where the consumers are very familiar with the new technologies, and use them permanently. It contains multiple components, like reservations systems, social media, various communication and connectionapplications etc. (Gretzel et al. 2015). In tourism industry, technological developments and applications are important not only for the competitiveness of tourism destinations and tourism enterprises but also for the experience of tourists (Huang et al. 2017). The idea of smart tourism destinations derived from the concept of smart cities, as technology has become an enabler of development of tourism destinations (Boes et al. 2015).
The main focus of this chapter is to discuss geographical context of smart tourism planning. Tourism is a spatial complex of processes that shapes the tourism landscape and affect social, economic, cultural, and political relations (Shaw & Williams 2004). Moreover, smart tourism simultaneously uses and influences technology which make tourism destinations available. Thus, the relations between spatial planning, tourism development, and technology need to be investigated.The focus of this chapter is on spatial planning as it is expected that sustainable spatial planning of tourism destinations might enable spatial justice (Jamal & Camargo 2014). However, when considering smart tourism planning, tourism development and development of ICT industry need to improve the quality and effectiveness of spatial planning. Thus, following notions need to be discussed and related to reach other: spatial planning, tourism development, sustainability, spatial justice, and smart tourism.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Geographically Weighted Regression: Geographically Weighted Regression is a geographical method of analysis which allows to identify areas where the impact of predictors on dependent variable is significant, positive or negative. The method solves reported issues of global statistics like ordinary least squares regression.GWR enables local models for every considered spatial unit of analysis, and neighbouring unitis. In other words, GWR allows to estimate local spatial patterns of any investigated dependent variable ( Gao& Li 2011 ; Huang et al. 2015 ).
Sustainable Tourism: World Tourism Organisation’s defination of sustainable tourism is; “Tourismwhichmeetstheneeds of present tourists and host regions while protecting and enhancing opportunity for the future“ (Butler, 1999, p. 10). There are of course many other definitions which put great emphasis on environmental sustainability, local’s welfare, ecological balance and being responsible to all the stakeholders of the tourism activities.
Smart Tourism Destination: The idea of smart tourism destination derived from the concept of smart city, as technology has become an enabler of development of tourism destinations ( Boes et al. 2015 ).Smart tourism destination is focused on e-tourism, where the consumers are very familiar with new technologies, and use them permanently. It contains multiple components, like reservations systems, social media, various communication and connection applications etc. ( Gretzel et al. 2015 ).
Just Destination: Just destination is a tourism destination whose tourism planning, policy making and practices of all stakeholders of tourism development enable the fair treatment of its environmental, social, economic, cultural resources, both tangible and intangible. The focus of planning and development of just destination is on well-being of place, people and pasts( Barton & Leonard, 2010 ; Jamal & Camargo, 2014 ).