Promoting sustainable development has been a significant goal of the tourist industry, given various challenges it faces today. This issue focuses on ways to increase the sustainability and competitiveness of tourist destinations using innovation and technology. These studies not only offer us a thorough grasp of the current state of the tourism business but also suggest the way forward for the future growth of the industry.

Welcome to Volume 5, Issue 1 of Smart Tourism. This issue will explore various aspects of smart tourism, covering a wide range of topics, primarily tourism marketing, challenges faced by tourism businesses, the application of technology in tourism, and tourist experience and feedback. These studies emphasize the role of technology in tourism and examine the factors influencing the growth of smart tourism through innovative topics. Furthermore, this issue delves into the development and competitiveness of the tourism business, giving significant references for the industry's future growth.

This issue emphasizes the role of technology in tourism and identifies virtual tourism as one of the industry's development trends. Technology has the potential to drive innovation in tourism development models, improve the tourist experience, and increase the tourism industry's marketing effectiveness. Furthermore, this issue includes essential research on rural tourism, which investigates the role of the government in the growth of rural tourism as well as rural tourists' environmental protection behavior. Through this issue, readers will learn about the usefulness of technology in the tourist industry, as well as the features and current state of rural tourism development.

This issue will bring you the latest exploration of smart tourism destinations. This issue analyzes the development status and governance of smart tourism destinations in detail through case analysis and provides targeted suggestions to promote the development of smart tourism destinations with the help of the four main attributes of smart tourism destinations. In addition, this issue also explores the evaluation of urban smart tourism competitiveness and the relationship between virtual cities and physical cities, which reveal the influence and value of smart tourism.

This issue will provide you with the most recent research on rural smart tourism, delving into the problems, characteristics, and influencing facets of rural smart tourism development, as well as the development of rural tourist smart platforms. These studies fully demonstrate that rural tourism must evolve towards intelligence. Furthermore, this issue offers a thorough examination of smart tourism research, which will provide valuable reference for relevant scholars' research.