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This study aims to examine and analyse data relating to cultural heritage, smart tourism and smart tourism tools for preserving cultural heritage in the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The paper is based on a qualitative review of data from National tourism board web sites, the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, and the European Heritage Label sites. The paper analyses various sources in terms of cultural heritage and smart tourism and examines different ways of applying smart tourism tools to cultural heritage.

The findings show that smart tourism, and especially the preservation of cultural heritage in the Baltic states, is not a new thing, and it is rapidly progressing by inventing new technological tools for tourists to use and as well by digitising cultural heritage. Comprehensive examination of three countries shows that there is significant potential already and that there is a way to grow further for each of the countries by applying new technological tools for preservation of a cultural heritage.

The paper reviews data on cultural heritage and smart tourism tools in the Baltic states where it already plays a steady and significant role. Specifically, it contributes to recognition of each of the states on a global level in terms of variety of cultural heritage that is being preserved and digitalised. The originality of the paper is determined by the assessment of the smart tools used for cultural tourism.

The aim is to analyse a regional cultural tourism object in Latvia, focusing on the elements of smart tourism as an indication of opportunities provided by digital technologies and its practical application.

The research employed data from the Central Statistical Office of the Republic of Latvia (hereinafter CSB), publicly available reports by ministries of the Republic of Latvia (hereinafter RoL), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (hereinafter OECD) etc., as well as summarized scientific findings on the research problem. Data on the use of smart technology elements at the Rundale Palace Museum were obtained in two ways: from public reports on the museum in 2016–2021 and additionally an expert interview was conducted with the deputy director of the museum. The expert interview questions were semi-structured.

The characteristics of cultural tourism indicate the use of ICT in destination management, marketing, planning, process organization and changes in organizational culture. The recognizable elements of smart cultural tourism are the smart travel destination, smart experiences and smart business. 4.0 G technologies are required to ensure the functioning of the elements: artificial intelligence, big data analytics, the Internet of things, blockchain, cloud computing, virtual and augmented reality. Smart cultural tourism is a unified system involving several levels of national and municipal institutions, organizations, entrepreneurs and NGOs. The implementation of smart cultural tourism requires centralized funding to implement and manage digital connectivity between the stakeholders. In the Latvian and Baltic context, the Rundale Palace Museum has been established as a cultural tourism object – a Renaissance palace museum, which is the second most visited museum in Latvia. The Rundale Palace Museum digitizes the services it provides within its financial possibilities, e.g. cloud data for remote purchase of visitor tickets, self-registration of visitors in the single visitor system, augmented reality and mobile applications. The Internet of things is not used, while artificial intelligence is partially used by the museum. At the Rundale Palace Museum as a smart tourist destination, the research did not identify the following features: a technological platform, a smart destination strategy and use of big data. Further, public-private consumer cooperation is not in place. The Rundale Palace Museum was not identified as an element of smart business, as a single smart business ecosystem for cultural tourism has not been created in the entirety of Latvia as yet nor in the Zemgale region in particular. Communication between cooperation partners occurred via telephone.

Few research studies on digital solutions for cultural tourism in Latvia and in the region of Zemgale, where the largest Renaissance pearl in Latvia and the Baltic States – the Rundale Palace Museum – is located, have been conducted; hence, this study contributes to addressing the research gap.

This study aims to provide a summary of the key outcomes and reflections related to the theme issue question, “Smart tourism: what developments and issues are important to the Baltic states?”

This study utilizes a descriptive approach to summarize the key outcomes of the theme issue. The theme issue focuses on the problems, trends and developments of smart tourism in the Baltic states, namely, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

The papers in the theme issue explore the emerging concept of smart tourism and the challenges associated with its implementation at the destination level. They also provide updated data on the adoption of smart tourism and aim to engage academics and industry professionals to identify future developments.

This theme issue provides unique perspectives from a variety of stakeholders, including academics, practitioners, industry professionals and policymakers on the key issues, trends and developments shaping the emergence of smart tourism in the Baltic states.

This study assesses the impact of smart destination implementations in Malaga. Thus, this study aims to guide the transformation of destinations into smart destinations as well as the introduction of smart destination concept in the literature.

Malaga was selected because it was one of the two winners of 2020 European Capital of Smart Tourism competition as well as the winner in the accessibility category of the 2019. The research population lives in Malaga and has been professionally involved in smart destination implementations. Data were collected through a semi-structured interview of 14 smart-tourism experts in different career fields. Content analysis was applied to the findings.

Malaga has become a successful smart destination while it has had a great success in improving its attractiveness and competitiveness due to the developments in the past 20 years. Now, its citizens and tourists are very satisfied and have a higher and more attractive quality of life. Moreover, Malaga has become a leading destination, especially in accessibility and mobility.

Although smart destination is becoming popular topic day by day, almost all the studies are created to introduce the approach with secondary data. There are still only limited research studies conducted by primary data on a real smart destination case. Furthermore, Malaga is a quite good example to understand the importance of smart destination approach since the city has achieved to become an attractive and popular destination for both tourists and local residents.

Provides an overview of the article collection in this theme issue that explores the concept of “smart tourism” and in particular, developments and issues that are important for the Baltic States.

The article applies a thematic approach to exploring the factors affecting the development of smart tourism, as well as the challenges and opportunities facing the Baltic region. Overall, the collection reviews the literature, provides an analysis of data and a survey of experts, including tourism service providers. This combines with the practical solutions given in the articles.

The findings and conclusions of this theme issue focus on the factors affecting the development of smart tourism and smart villages, digitalization and innovation opportunities in the Baltic regions, and it provides an insight on the current situation in the smart tourism industry, the possibilities for using digital technologies, and the practical applications.

This theme issue explores the factors influencing and challenges facing smart tourism in the Baltic region, given that all the stakeholders actively want more sustainable and balanced tourism, as well as opportunities to develop innovative, technologically advanced solutions to the development of smart tourism.

The purpose of this study is to analyse Benidorm, San Sebastián, Gijón, Málaga, Tenerife Island and Santander smart tourist destinations (STDs) as a touristic model and example to follow by other destinations in Spain and all over the world.

To fulfil the stated objective, this study follows several phases that introduce and classify a set of measures implemented by the six Spanish smart destinations to be designed as a STD.

Findings suggest that being a STD requires a high cost, and this is only accessible to big destinations with enough resources. Of the 50 Spanish provinces, eight are STDs, and these are localised in coastal areas. Obviously, this challenge is not within the reach of any Spanish city. Moreover, findings of the current study prove that the six Spanish smart destinations have a good air accessibility through their six airports, but the accessibility in a STD is not just physical; this must provide digital accessibility to tourists through destination marketing organisation’s website and app that will supply them with information on a wide range of services, including accommodations, tourist attractions, restaurants, public transport, museums and monuments’ locations, amongst many others.

From a resident point of view, a STD cannot be only focused on a technological and tourism context; a STD also requires knowing and meeting the needs of local residents and having a voice in decision-making processes. Hence, this study shows a new perspective on STDs that will benefit the literature on STDs.

The aim of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of the main literature contributions that concern smart tourism development and management, highlighting gaps and logical inconsistencies. In addition, to further stress the importance of the issues at stake, a simulation is performed for showing how technology allows achieving better outcomes when a certain level of efficiency is obtained via re-engineering of main organizational and operational processes.

A content analysis of recent relevant literature is performed with the help of machine learning topic modelling algorithms. A network analytic approach to digital ecosystems, then, is used to study the relationship between technological tools and physical entities in a destination and how these and their combination affect the efficiency of the system at local and global levels.

The literature analyzed lacks a good discussion on the necessity to improve and rationalize the operational and organizational processes while emphasizing mostly the technological aspects. On the other hand, the simulation case presented shows that if information and knowledge flows are reasonably efficient and well organized in the physical world, the integration of digital components further enhances these processes, whereas inefficiencies can hinder the flow of information and reduce its efficiency.

Apart from the methods used, relatively little explored, the authors show that, as also much of the computer science literature states, a fundamental prerequisite for successful “smart” projects is a logical and effective restructuring of the main operational and organizational processes.

本论文旨在分析关于智慧旅游发展和管理话题的主要文献, 指出文献缺口和逻辑矛盾。此外, 为了进一步指出这个话题的重要性, 本论文运行了一个模拟程序, 以证明科技如何帮助冲破瓶颈达到新的高峰, 通过重组重要组织和流程管理。

本论文采用内容分析法, 并借助机器学习建模程序。本论文采用电子生态环境的网络分析方法来研究科技工具与实体设备在旅游目的地中的关联, 以及如何这些设备资源能够融合在区域和全球范围内提高系统效率。

文献分析结果表明, 大部分文章都着重强调科技方面, 而忽略了运营和组织流程的改进。此外, 本论文展示的模拟案件表明如果信息和知识流在实体世界中有效的利用和管理, 那么与电子软配件的结合就会更加相得益彰, 相反, 如果未达到有效结合, 那么将阻碍信息流和降低效率。

除去本文利用的研究方法相对很少学者涉及, 正如计算机科学文献所说, 本论文证实了成功的“智能”项目所需要的前提条件是主要运营和管理流程的逻辑有效的重组。

The purpose of this study is to present the state-of-the-art scientific research in the intersection between smart tourism and social networks to better understand the role of the latter (such as Facebook and Twitter) in the development of the smart paradigm in tourism, e.g. how the relationship between smart tourism and social networks has been observed by authors, or the techniques and analytical tools that are most broadly used to take advantage of available data in social networks to feed a smart logic in the management of tourism companies and destinations.

A systematic search in scientific databases (such as Web of Science and Scopus) was performed, with December 2018 as a closing date. Once duplications were eliminated and the adequacy the outputs obtained verified properly, a total of 61 documents were considered for this study, most of which were journal articles.

The characterization of research in this area with both a bibliometric and bibliographic analysis.

The presentation of a detailed picture on the content of the research carried out in the abovementioned intersections: evolution over time; most prolific authors, institutions and countries; journals, conferences and publishers that have paid more attention to this topic; type of research performed, objects of study, methodologies used and main contributions.

The proposal of a research agenda in the field under study. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no a similar work carried out in this field.

This paper aims to present the case for a new integrated resort business model. It does so by integrating the notion of a smart tourism ecosystem into the concept of dynamic capabilities so as to guide integrated resort theory and practice in an evolving landscape.

The theoretical model is derived from synthesising the gaps surrounding literature that contextualises business models and the relatively scarce body of knowledge related to integrated resort business models.

Integrated resorts are characterised by strategies using a follower mentality. Destinations seeking to create new integrated resorts largely emulate existing product or service points of differentiation, though such attempts are often quickly eroded by competition. By integrating the smart tourism ecosystem to the theoretical framework, this conceptual paper elucidates how an information-rich environment can help to better realise sustainable competitive advantages.

This conceptual paper will require empirical data to validate the theoretical model. Implications stemming from the research will hasten greater social networks that need to be incorporated to foster timely and necessary circulation of information to attain optimal outcomes generated by the dynamic capability effect.

This paper re-conceptualises the business model for integrated resorts. By integrating the notion of smart tourism ecosystems to business model literature, the paper illuminates how integrated resorts can be better positioned in adapting to the changing operating environments.