Using IoT for Accessible Tourism in Smart Cities

Abstract

In the past few years, the Smart City concept became one of the main driving forces for the transition towards sustainable economy and improved mobility. Tourism, as one of the fastest growing economies worldwide, is an integrated part of the Smart City paradigm. Taking into consideration recent studies performed by the United Nations, stating that almost one third of the population is directly affected by disability, the concept of Accessible Tourism needs also to be integrated in the future vision for tourism, especially in the context of Smart Cities, environments fully benefiting from the recent technological advances. Within the combined framework of Smart Cities and Accessible Tourism, the Internet-of-Things (IoT) concept is the key technological point for the development of smart urban environments. IoT and big data are both technology-driven developments, leading to scenarios such as the Smart Cities one that has the potential to make citizen live smarter, more sustainable and more accessible. This chapter analyses the key requirements for IoT applications in a Smart City context, the state-of-the-art for the use of IoT for Accessible Tourism applications and proposes an architecture together with its practical implementation, tailored for the use-case of accessible tourism for physically impaired persons.

Digital accessibility of smart cities - tourism for all and reducing inequalities: Tourism Agenda 2030

“…The main findings of this research confirmed the existence of barriers to communication and interaction that impede the rights of those with disabilities to travel with independence, equity and dignity. These findings are consistent with Darcy and Dickson (2009), Nitti (2018) and Buhalis et al (2019). Digital accessibility appears to present a challenge within smart cities based on an assessment of their website support.…”

“…It suggests that while Agenda 2030, SDG 11 and SDG 10 have generated hope for inclusion and sustainability within cities, there is still room for improvement in terms of digital accessibility. Similar reflections were found by Rubio-Escuderos et al (2021), Nitti (2018), Rucci et al (2022) and Turel et al (2019). The results of the study cannot show what to extent smart accessible cities reached the SDGs, but the results allow the highlighting of the importance of convergence and working along these lines; as such, a study could provide some evidence through its practical implications for achieving them in the future.…”

“…The literature has also seen a shift in focus to digital accessibility in the past few years (Casais and Castro, 2021; Domínguez Vila et al , 2019; Eusébio et al , 2020; Fontanet Nadal and Jaume Mayol, 2011; Lestari et al , 2019; Shi, 2006; Silveiro et al , 2019; Singh et al , 2021; Teixeira et al , 2021; Williams and Rattray, 2005). In addition, accessibility is a complex concept that is still open to debate (Fernández-Díaz et al , 2021; Lestari et al , 2019; Madeira et al , 2021; Nitti, 2018; Ribeiro et al , 2018). Accessibility should integrate tourism, the environment, heritage, infrastructure, tourism agents and resources, information and digital ecosystems (Buhalis and Darcy, 2010; Buhalis and Michopoulou, 2011).…”

Tourism and Internet of Things: A Bibliometric Analysis of Scientific Production from the Scopus Database

“…In the context of smart cities and accessible tourism, [28] state that IoT proves to be a key technological point for the development of smart urban environments. In their work, an architecture and practical implementation is proposed, adapted to the use case of accessible tourism, applied to people with physical disabilities.…”