Smart or partly smart? Accessibility and innovation policies to assess smartness and competitiveness of destinations

ABSTRACT

In recent decades, policymakers worked to counteract the adverse effects of tourism on destinations, such as the problems of sustainability, wealth distribution or overtourism, among many other external issues. The answer seems to come from the so-called ‘intelligence’ in the destinations, that is, a necessary renewal to avoid losing competitiveness. In this research, we work on the hypothesis that smart or intelligent solutions applied in Spanish tourist destinations are having positive effects on their competitiveness. Hence, we apply a partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) model to address tourism smartness by taking two concrete strategies that are continuously repeated in the literature, that is the promotion of accessibility and innovation.

KEYWORDS:

• Accessibility
• innovation
• tourism destinations
• smart tourism destinations
• tourism competitiveness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Preparatory Action generally aims to: (i) promote the rich tourism offer of European countries and increase citizens’ sentiment of sharing local tourism-related values; (ii) strengthen tourism-generated innovative development in cities, their surroundings and their regions; (iii) increase the attractiveness of European cities that are awarded the title and strengthen economic growth and job creation; and, (iv) establish a framework for the exchange of best practices between cities participating in the contest and create opportunities for cooperation and new partnerships.