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Cities are becoming smarter and more optimized because of digital transformation, reducing costs, increasing safety, attracting investment, ensuring sustainability, and increasing viability. As a result of this optimization, they are becoming smart cities. Smart cities use the Internet of Things’ devices, such as connected sensors, lights, and smart meters, to improve infrastructure and design by gathering and analyzing real-time citizen data. In this research, different conceptions of smart cities and their interconnections with digital transformation are presented. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to analyze how digital transformation may help manage smart cities. As a result, a thorough and integrated evaluation of the SCOPUS database will be conducted in order to address the following questions: (1) What are smart cities? (2) What is digital transformation? (3) How does digital transformation help to manage smart cities? The results point out that technologies and digital abundance, which include artificial intelligence, blockchain, and Internet of Things, play a crucial role in managing a controlled and automated infrastructure in smart cities. These favor the development of suitable places to live, work, and have fun, with a better quality of life for everyone.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a critical framework to analyse how “smart” plays out in tourism places. Moving from a recognition of the strategies, expected impacts and imageries of Smart City, the authors engage with the mobilities literature to identify pitfalls in the quest of “smartening up” cities for hypermobile populations.

The study adopted a set of geoanalytical techniques to establish the potential relationship between the territorial upgrade of mobility and the socio-economic change processes the city of Barcelona is experiencing.

The paper suggests the effect of “smart” in cities could indeed be one of economic recovery; however, one triggering fundamental transformation of the social fabric of the city, whose most evident facet is the creation of globalised functional enclaves that may be forcefields of exclusion for the most vulnerable populations.

This paper contributes to a new stream of critical research on “smart” with a strong focus on the power of mobilities and mobility systems, whose digital enhancement plays out as a leveraging agent of new place connections and negotiations for short-term populations, but at the same time, may exclude disadvantaged subjects in their capacity to access and afford the system network.

Achieving better performance and a sustainable competitive advantage is essential for survival in the hotel industry. However, literature is scarce on which factors local hotel businesses in developing countries should rely on to compete successfully. With an emerging economy and significant potential for growth in the travel and hospitality sectors, Colombia is seeking to improve the performance of its hotel industry. To achieve this goal, exploring and analyzing the effects of the strategies and practices implemented is essential. Accordingly, this study investigates the dynamics of the interactions between strategies, process innovations, outsourcing practices and operational quality in the hotel industry in Colombia.

The methodology used in this research is quantitative, using structural equation modeling based on data collected from 150 valid questionnaires.

The strategies of the hotel sector have an impact on hotel performance. Although process innovation demonstrably affects quality and outsourcing, there is a low impact on the performance of the studied hotels. The hotel sector lacks strategy autonomy as strategies are not directed to the organization's overall improvement but only to satisfy stakeholders' requirements.

This paper offers valuable insights for organizations when implementing strategic innovation initiatives. It provides information relevant to Colombian government entities on the creation of processes, economic policy plans and business assistance programs for boosting the financial and commercial sustainability of Colombian service sector businesses. The studied organizations need to redefine the role of their strategies, process innovation, outsourcing projects and quality standards to achieve adequate performance, as all four dimensions together are required to foster competitiveness.

This paper offers valuable insights for organizations when implementing strategic innovation initiatives. Additionally, it provides information relevant to Colombian government entities on the creation of processes, economic policy plans and business assistance programs for boosting the financial and commercial sustainability of Colombian service sector businesses. The studied organizations need to redefine the role of their strategies, process innovation, outsourcing projects and quality standards to achieve adequate performance, as all four dimensions together are required to foster competitiveness.

Developing successful strategies is vital to generating performance. Quality and safety are critical strategies to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. But literature is scarce on which factors local hotel businesses should rely on to compete successfully in developing countries. In particular, the concept of outsourcing in a highly distrusting developing country has not been addressed adequately. This research contributes to literature by evaluating quality as a competitive strategy in the hotel sector in a developing country to achieve a superior performance.