Touristic Consumption as “Sitesharing”: Unpacking the Smart Tourism Paradigm from an Internet Studies Perspective

Abstract

AbstractThis paper presents a conceptual framework “sitesharing” for understanding touristic consumption within the smart tourism paradigm. Smart tourism considers the use of ICTs as beneficial and essential to the future of tourism. However, the integration of technological intermediaries with the sphere of tourism bears investigation in terms of the wider effects on tourism processes. Taking an interdisciplinary stance, the paper utilizes an internet studies perspective in order to examine the political, social, and cultural implications of the integration of ICTs within tourism. Through the exploration of three key metaphors drawn from across the fields of study: performance, place, and sharing; the paper considers how ICTs influence tourists’ consumption, telling, and experiencing of tourism. The framework of sitesharing argues that sharing, rather than seeing, becomes the requisite practice of tourists with concomitant changes in the form of tourist practice and the shape of tourist places. From the discussion, four emergent dimensions of sitesharing are presented with the intention of informing future tourism research.