Special issue call for papers from Tourism Review
Special Issue Editors
Prof. Dr. Chulmo Koo, Kyung Hee University, South Korea, Email: helmetgu@khu.ac.kr
Prof. Dr. Luiz Medes-Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, Email: luiz.mendesfilho@gmail.com
Prof. Dr. Dimitrios Buhalis, Bournemouth University, UK, Email: dbuhalis@bournemouth.ac.kr
Prof. Dr. Oriol Miralbell Izard, University of Barcelona, Spain, Email: jmiralbell@uoc.edu
Special Issue Information
With growing attention paid to ‘smart tourism’ as a concept brought smartphones and applications of tourism fields. The smart tourism is originated from a technology-related term and intelligence. The keyword can be defined originally as resource optimization based on the utilization of information and communication technologies (ICT), governance, management and policy at the levels of individual and organization. As the concept from both of individual and organization expands in application areas, organization, process, governance and management, it has made a pave way into conventional tourism, resulting in smart tourism signifying phenomena related to the use of smart technologies across a plethora of travel-related activities and experiences. Specifically, smart tourism has been most extensively explored and investigated in the context of smart tourism destination and competitive advantage due to the close relationship to smart tourist, organization, and city concepts.
The concept of competitive advantage in a destination is a destination’s ability to provide higher quality travel experiences to the travellers than other destinations as well as traveller’s making decisions for their smart travelling than previous. As the importance of destination competitiveness and smart traveller was recognized academically and practically, some researchers elaborated on the original conceptual model of destination competitiveness and competitive advantage for stakeholders. These academic approaches make practical contributions especially to stakeholders (e.g., travel agency, tourism company, institution, tourism consumers, destination management organization, government etc.,) by facilitating them to find their own destinations’ competitive resources and management to understand the current situation, and to improve the competitive advantage of their destinations and individual travellers. Furthermore, other stakeholders, such as tourism companies, ICT companies, and government, and individual travellers are closely involved because this research can be meaningful practically for these stakeholders. With the understanding of smart tourism and competitive advantage, in the case of travel agencies, they can develop the new competitive advantage and strengthen their existing competitiveness, in the case of firms and individual travellers in a tourism industry, they can enlarge their business area, and in the case of government, it can make its attractive destination with alternative scheme.
The previous existing studies on smart tourism and competitive advantage resulted in tourism are lacks of transferrable across levels and types of smart technology adoption nor across destinations. Yet, there is a great academic as well as practical need to be able to conceptualize smart tourism and competitive advantage at an overall level and to evaluate and benchmark smart destination and smart traveller initiatives from a holistic point of view. The focus on the technological side of smart tourism development by countries, cities, organizations, and individuals currently implementing smart tourism is problematic because the convergence of smart technologies and competitive advantage is much more important than the technical improvement. Therefore, this special issue attempts to discuss and identify new trends and developments in smart tourism and competitive advantage in hospitality and tourism industry, with an emphasis on their implications for sustainable destinations, businesses, and individauls.
Submission
Prospective authors are encouraged to contact the primary guest editor, Prof. Koo, regarding potential topics of interest or any questions/ suggestions related to this issue. Manuscripts should be submitted online by March 30, 2017. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously or be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process.
Keywords
We invite researchers to submit original papers that include conceptual, empirical, analytical, or design-oriented approaches: topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- The impact of mobile technology on smart tourism development
- Mobile technologies and applications in the tourism industry
- The role of mobile technology in smart tourism business models
- Users of smart applications in hospitality and tourism
- Mobile technologies for destination marketing
- Mobile technologies for tour operator, travel agencies
- Mobile technologies for hotels, restaurants, theme parks and cruises
- Mobile solutions for the tourism industry
- Barriers and catalysts for the development of smart tourism
- Policy, strategy, management of smart tourism
- Acceptance, adoption and diffusion of mobile technology in the tourism industry
- Business intelligence applicable to smart tourism
- Case studies of smart tourism
- Big data analytics in the smart tourism industry
- Theoretical and methodological developments to understand smart tourism related mobile technology
- Sustainability opportunities and challenges in the context of smart tourism development
Important Dates
Full Paper Submission Deadline: March 30, 2017
Initial Review Report: May 31, 2017
Revisions and Decision: June 1, 2017
Second Review Decision: Aug 31, 2017
Publication: Aug 31, 2017