Smart Tourism: An Alternative Approach to Clench Overtourism

Tourism is one of the main sources of leisure, exploration, and social gathering. Many factors contribute to this industry’s development, such as the growing global economy, emergence of the middle class in developing economies, technological advancement, new business models, low traveling costs, and relaxation in visa policies. Pakistan is blessed with the unique geographical location and endless beauty of nature with natural diversity, covering the range of seashore to high Himalayan Mountains. People visited Pakistan to amaze with endless scenes of nature and celebrating traditional rituals all over the world. Considering the situation of coronavirus, this uncertainty raises multiple questions in the mind of people all around the world. In such a moment of collective confusion, all world economies’ economic structures focused on a huge radical paradigm shift. So, there is a need to think holistically about the problem of overtourism and COVID-19. We can provide solid solutions to Government, tourist agencies, tourists, local businesses, health care, infrastructure, etc. The purpose of the study is to provide a viable solution to tackle overtourism and COVID-19 in a holistic way. Smart tourism is a solution to handle multi-faceted problems of this industry. There are few reservations of tourists on their agencies while selecting the destination such as trust, services, help in case of emergency and reputation. Smart tourism is a better option to enhance all stakeholders such as government, tourists, and tourist agencies. It opens the door for the business community to think about a new paradigm in which technology-led businesses are more effective than traditional. This chapter is beneficial for scholars, marketers, tourists and society as a whole.