The present empirical study aims to provide a new conceptual framework for the regional tourism industry of the Province of Tungurahua-Ecuador that emerged from a combined application of stakeholder engagement and research-practice approaches. These preliminary outcomes from in-depth focus group assessments and surveys applied to tourism experts, industry practitioners, government’s representatives, and tourists revealed that a synergic/collaborative work across tourism stakeholders have the potentials to create innovative touristic products and services, thus solving progressively the existing issues observed in the regional tourism, travel and hospitality sectors. Resulting tailor-made tourism products, mainly based on advanced technology, may represent the first steps of improvements to be taken into consideration prior to evolving to the development and implementation of smart cities and smart tourism concepts in this region where tourism activities are one of the most important revenue for the national and regional tourism industry.

Tourism and the advances that technology has had over the years have turned into useful instruments that are used to develop platforms and virtual touristic environments that can help in its management and positioning promotion-wise. The objective is to design a virtual touristic environment that will promote service providers, cultural activities, routes and touristic attractions that are found in the province of Tungurahua, and which include natural resources and historical sites that have not been exploited yet. The virtual environment's goal is to integrate relevant information for tourists in the area, plus destinations and locations using a map, geolocation and georeferencing functions. The goal is to increase the flow of national and foreign visitors by using audiovisual archives or files. The validation of the goals was based on studies about the characteristics and the behavior of the tourists and information obtained from national public companies that are primarily related to tourism.