SMART TOURISM

Articolo di Laura Federico   The term Smart Tourism comes from Smart City, which developed from the idea of smartness.The concept “smartness” was mainly connected to technology, but by time, it broadened to “smart people”, by meaning those who live in the city, the tourists and the local stakeholders. After “technological city” (or digital city), new concepts are addressing to social dimension, participation, empowerment and quality of life. The concept of smart tourism in Western countries can be found back to 2000 when Gordon Philips gave his first definition: «simply taking a holistic, longer term and sustainable approach to planning, developing, operating and marketing tourism products and businesses» .  According to him, smart tourism is shaped by smart demand (management techniques to manage demand and access) and smart marketing techniques that can be used to «target the proper consumer segments and deliver the appropriate messages. In 2009, during the first meeting in Madrid of the United Nation World Tourism Organization’s (UNWTO) Tourism Resilience Committee, the first concept of “smart tourism” has been shaped as a «clean, green, ethical and quality at all levels of the service chain», able to satisfy the needs, on short term, of the economic crisis and-…