Smart ‘Tourist Cities’ Revisited: Culture-Led Urban Sustainability and the Global Real Estate Market

Abstract

Smart tourism destinations have received increasing attention during the last few years. Digital technologies have reshaped the smart city paradigm in terms of both resilience and sustainability, capitalizing cities’ cultural and historical components while providing unique potential for growth in the real estate industry. Real estate, in particular, is considered a main asset to the tourist experience, whether it is in the form of hospitality accommodation facilities, urban landscapes, or cultural heritage hotspots. In addition, the effect of cultural sites and overall destination attractiveness on real estate dynamics (land/housing prices and building activity) is well established. Thus, uncovering how enhanced technological throughputs and synergies, culture-led urban sustainability initiatives and the real estate dimension are directly (or indirectly) associated could support cities to better delineate policies for their promotion as international, sustainable, and resilient tourist destinations. With this perspective, the present study focused on four particular cities’ successful smart initiatives, namely Amsterdam, Barcelona, Seoul, and Stockholm, in an attempt to identify how developers and local authorities will need to transform in order to offer better services to residents and visitors. This work reveals that smart projects alone cannot secure the transition of existing (European) cities into smart and sustainable tourism destinations. In addition, this study also contributes to public policy by demonstrating how challenging it is to be smart without the support and involvement of the local community, highlighting the significance of public awareness. The empirical findings suggest that local authorities are of critical importance when shaping a well-structured and practically effective strategy for the integration of sustainable and technologically advanced smart features. Results are promising, and final reflections provide insights for tourism destinations policymakers, city authorities, and real estate professionals.