Smart Cities, Smart Tourism? The Case Of The City Of Porto

The so-called Smart Cities have been playing an important role in the academic literature as well as in the agenda of public policies. With the forward thinking of “creating” new urban development models, the cities intend to strategically positioning themselves and at the same time develop cooperation networks. Frequently using the Information and Communication Technologies (while as a means to an end and not as an end itself), the cities try to assure a greater economic competitiveness, the environmental sustainability and the reinforcement of citizenship (calling out to people to participate, in the scope of an inclusive logic and in an appeal to creativity and social responsibility).Even the 2020 European strategy promotes this development.The geographic scope of the study is limited to the city of Porto. This is justified by the fact that, in 2015, Porto was one the five European cities selected to participate in the GrowSmarter (model of organization of cities of the future), an ambitious project with the objective of making Europe more sustainable and environmentally intelligent.Besides that, the Portuguese Smart Cities Index, 2016, points out the city of Oporto as the Portuguese city with better results in what concerns the main vectors of intelligence (policy, strategies and projects implemented, edification, mobility, energy and smart services).At the same time, in the international press, the city of Porto appears as a reference for its architectural wealth and as one of the more indicated European destinations for one who would like to enjoy quality holidays at a reasonable price.That is perhaps why Shermans Travel presents Porto as one of the top 10 destinations for intelligent tourists. The purpose of the present study is to understand if the emergence of smart cities can be in some way connected to the appearance of smart tourism. For such a purpose, we will study the city of Porto and a survey will be conducted among the tourists of the city.This article compiles some of the first results of the study, referring to the data collected during the months of August and September of 2017, and intends mainly to set out some hypotheses about the motivation for the choice of a tourist destination, that will be developed in future works.