Page 22 - Smart tourism: A path to more secure and resilient destinations

3 Smart tourism destination platform

A tourist destination can be defined as a physical space with or without administrative and/or
analytical boundaries in which a visitor can spend the night. It is the cluster (co-location) of products
and services, and of activities and experiences along the tourism value chain and a basic unit
of analysis of tourism. A destination incorporates various stakeholders and can network to form
larger destinations. It is also intangible with its image and identity which may influence its market
competitiveness (UNWTO, 2019). 4

These can be of many types. When referring to tourism, it would be relevant to highlight sun and
beach destinations, business destinations, language destinations, sports and leisure destinations,
rural destinations, culinary destinations, and so on. These features relate to key tourism products
in the destination which in many cases can be combined. For example, a city can be a cultural and
business destination. Despite these distinct features of certain destinations, all of them will share
the common feature that their day-to-day activities and performance are altered by a tourist influx
that requires them to:

• Adapt their services (e.g., water) to the influx of tourists.

• Manage the destination with a comprehensive approach based on the governance of all services
and stakeholders that are part of the destination.
• Manage the impact on social fabrics of the destination.

With a view to ensuring a fair digital transformation for the tourism sector and its destinations,
accelerating and facilitating the entry of SMEs to the data economy by adding operational
capabilities among all agents.

4 - This Section explores the ideation related to the smart destination platform. It does not seek to provide an alternate
methodology to the one proposed in Section 2.

12 Smart tourism: A path to more secure and resilient destinations