Editorial

Abstract

It seems that everything around us becomes smart today: smart phones, smart watch, smart TV, smart cars and so on. Smart cities are cities that have digital technology embedded across all city functions. They use information and communications technology (ICT) to collect and measure conditions of everything from water to traffic, and everything is internet-connected. Smart cities are perfect smart tourism destinations. 

In this issue, our topic focuses on urban smart tourism destinations. Nakamura Kotaro and his team provided a framework for regional innovation through “smartization”, which is common to both smart city (SC) and smart tourism destination (STD). The framework is constructed from the perspective of service ecosystem and applied by analysis of four case studies including two projects of “urban policy”-directed type and two projects of “resource integration”-directed type. It’s our honor to request the authority to translate this article from Japanese to English and republish on Smart Tourism.

A lot of urban smart tourism case studies are collected here, from China to Latin America, from management to competitiveness.

Editorial board member

Dr. Chen-Kuo Pai