What is it about?

This research creates a system that automatically measures how well tourist destinations are performing using technology and data. The researchers developed a method to identify the most important characteristics that make a destination attractive to tourists and visitors, then built a computer system that collects and analyzes data in real-time to give these destinations a quality score. The study focuses on two main areas: tourist behavior (how visitors act and what they do) and destination image (how appealing the place looks to potential tourists). They tested their system in Puerto de la Cruz, a tourist city in the Canary Islands, Spain, working closely with local tourism industry experts to make sure the system would actually be useful. The system automatically gathers information from various sources - from government databases to social media platforms like Facebook and TripAdvisor - and processes this data using artificial intelligence techniques. It then creates easy-to-understand dashboards and reports that help tourism managers and city officials make better decisions about how to improve their destination.

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Why is it important?

This work addresses a critical need in the tourism industry, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of data-driven decision making in tourism management. While many cities want to become "smart tourist destinations," most lack the scientific tools to actually measure their progress or identify areas for improvement. What makes this research unique is that it goes beyond just theory - the authors actually built and implemented their system in a real city with over 70 years of tourism history. Unlike other existing systems that are created by private companies without involving local stakeholders, this methodology was developed in collaboration with actual tourism industry professionals, making it more practical and relevant. The system could help tourist destinations around the world better understand their strengths and weaknesses, leading to more sustainable tourism development and better experiences for both visitors and local communities. It also provides a way for cities to automatically track their performance over time and respond quickly to changing conditions in the tourism market.

Perspectives

When we started this project, I was struck by how many tourist destinations were struggling to make sense of all the data available to them, making decisions based on intuition rather than solid analysis. What excited me most was the collaborative aspect - instead of developing another theoretical framework, we spent months working directly with hotel managers, travel agents, and city officials in Puerto de la Cruz, learning which metrics actually matter in day-to-day operations. The implementation was particularly rewarding because we could see immediate practical benefits as tourism managers finally tracked their destination's performance in real-time. Beyond the technical achievement, what motivates me is the potential for this methodology to help destinations become more sustainable and responsive to both visitor needs and community concerns, inspiring other researchers to focus on practical implementations that actually work in the real world.

Dr. Jesús Torres
Universidad de La Laguna

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Strategic technological determinant in smart destinations: obtaining an automatic classification of the quality of the destination, Industrial Management, September 2022, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/imds-10-2021-0640.
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