Enhancing responsible tourism by establishing ‘smartness’ at destinations

Tourism growth drives considerable shifts in environmental quality levels and natural resource exploitation patterns. This study aims to develop a theoretical perspective for the context and ‘functionality’ of ‘smart’ technologies that will remove the existing barriers of traditional tourism practices with new and modern alternatives to search, educate, and learn at destinations. At a time of an increasing interest in developing destinations, this proposal stresses the importance and contribution of integrating smart technology when planning and implementing tourism programs to conceptualize and contextualize sustainability in the real world and make tourism more responsible and sustainable. This perspective might cause positive practical implicationsto the broader community of the relevant tourism beneficiaries, namely visitors and satisfaction through tourism experience, private sector and economic benefits (gains) through entrepreneurship (investments), society and well-being through the provision of environmental benefits, public policy through legislation and regulations, and mainly host communities that accommodate all tourism ventures in their territory.