Digital Solutions in Tourism as a Way to Boost Sustainable Development: Evidence from a Transition Economy

This paper examines the role of digital economy tools, including big data, mobile applications, e-commerce, and sharing economy platforms, in the sustainable development of the tourism sector. The focus is on studying how the digital economy tools can contribute to more efficient and sustainable tourism services, to service quality improvement, to reducing the negative environmental impact, and thus increase the availability of tourism resources in local destinations. Using the example of the successful use of digital technologies in Russian regions, this paper discusses the introduction of online platforms for booking services, the use of mobile applications for navigation and obtaining information about tourist sites, as well as the use of digital tools for predicting consumer preferences. A systematic approach to the analysis of tourism services digitalization, based on a set of technical and functional–digital indicators, allowed us to evaluate the impact of the digitalization level on the local destination’s sustainable development in transition economy conditions. The proposed methodology for assessing and applying tourism services digitalization tools in Russian regions takes into account the transition economy specifics and aims to promote more sustainable practices. This study will add to the existing literature by defining both technical and functional criteria for the implementation of digital technologies as tools for the creation of new business models in tourism, and the development of a tourism services digitalization model, based on the assessment of the regional digitalization level, to ensure the movement towards achieving sustainable development goals in local destinations.