Theorizing New Technologies as Potential Incremental Management Tools to Tackle Overtourism

As a global issue, Overtourism has highlighted three main things: (1) Tourism is not the cure for all socio-economic issues faced by destinations; (2) sustainability is still an issue to be overcome by the tourism industry; and (3) incremental strategies (as opposed to radical strategies) are not the way forward for the sustainability of the industry. As a result, this chapter is suggesting that new technologies (incremental strategies) could contribute to tackling overtourism, but only if substantiated with a driver of deep and meaningful changes (radical changes) such as an external shock (COVID-19, for instance). In that case, new technologies could be assimilated to an amplifier and the external shock as a driver. This conceptual chapter, based on secondary data (literature review), provides an overview of research on overtourism, and new technologies in tourism. The chapter then provides evidence that new technologies only work as enablers but not as drivers of changes. Finally, taking wedding tourism as an example, this chapter shows that as opposed to incremental strategies (new technologies), COVID-19, as an external shock, is pushing the industry towards radical changes in which technology could potentially play a significant role. This study is offering a strategy (theory) to tackle overtourism, which has not been suggested before, namely combining incremental (enablers) and radical (drivers) strategies. This approach falls under the ambidextrous management approach.