Rethinking tourism destinations: collaborative network models for the tourist 2.0

Abstract

In the increasingly saturated tourism market, an effective tourism destination management is essential to support competitive and sustainable growth. The topic becomes interesting in light of the spread of the collaborative network (CN) organisational models and the massive diffusion of web 2.0 and mobile technology. The formers have proven to give concrete opportunities of development in many industrial sectors, the latter has been changing the way tourists experience a destination. Even if several case studies of CNs in tourism are known, a comprehensive study of how tourism destinations can benefit of CN models and enabling technologies is not present; especially in the effort to help tourism destinations in setting up services able to actively support each phase of the tourist 2.0 lifecycle. In this paper we highlight how CN models are able to support the tourism destination management in order to gain competitiveness for local areas, to improve flexibility in services provision and to give tourists the possibility to live an augmented tourism experience. Furthermore, a review of the most suitable forms of collaborative network for tourism destination and their ways to actively support the augmented experience of the tourist 2.0 are proposed.

Smart Tourism Destinations: Can the Destination Management Organizations Exploit Benefits of the ICTs? Evidences from a Multiple Case Study

“…A DMO able to reach this aim, lead its destination to become a Smart Tourism Destination. To support this transformation, a DMO has to provide services based on a variety of ICTs to both sides of its boundaries: the front end, meaning the ICTs useful to support the tourist 2.0, and the back end, meaning the set of technologies aimed at supporting the decisional and operational processes within the tourism destination [7] [14]. to technologies including context-aware systems, augmented realities, autonomous agents searching and mining, ambient intelligence and recommender systems.…”

“…The above-mentioned technologies can enrich each of the four phases of the so-called tourist 2.0 lifecycle, i.e. the sequence of activities that a tourist usually perform when lives a tourism experience [7]. The phase identified in [7] are dreaming (the emergence of a need, a desire to travel), planning (defining the details of the trip), experiencing (carry-out in-place tourism activities) and recollecting (remembering, memories of the in-place tourism experience).…”

“…All the descripted technologies might improve the success of a tourism destination only in association with the appropriate social structure, and relationships among human actors and organisation in a tourist destination [7]. In particular, as regard tourism operators, as highlighted in [7], they may interact at four level of integration: networking, coordination, cooperation, collaboration;…”

Sustainable Development for Rural Areas: A Survey on the Agritourism Rural Networks

“…On the basis of a recent literature and empirical exploration we can suggest how ICTs can provide noteworthy opportunities for organizations belonging to an ARN in term of reduction of operational and management costs [24] [25]. ICTs have in fact a conSustainable Development for Rural Areas: A Survey 555 siderable impact in improving internal business processes (e.g.…”

“…The use of mobile devices, during the journey experience, generate another class of data very useful to depict and track tourist behaviors in different contextualized scenarios. Smartphones can interact with other smart "objects" to generate an "augmented tourism experience" within the local territory [24]. Internetof-Things technologies let farmers create and manage cyber-physical systems, CPS, in tourism activities in order to perform virtual interactions with visitors using sensors already present in their devices [27].…”