The Influence of Smart Technologies on Customer Journey in Tourist Attractions within the Smart Tourism Management Framework

Abstract

Nowadays, smartness and smart management of tourism destinations and suppliers are becoming a top priority and big challenge. This article focuses on tourist attractions and aims at exploring how smart technologies influence the customer journey. The main research question is how smart technologies are influencing the tourists’ visit experience. The study takes a consumer behavior perspective with a specific focus on the visit cycle (prospective, active, and reflective phases), based on the theoretical foundations of customer journey process model. First, a research framework was elaborated, encompassing three hypotheses. Then, this model was empirically tested and validated by means of a quantitative research using as a study site the Ningbo Museum, Ningbo, China. This investigation allows us to get insights into consumer behavior, which is useful for tourist attraction to become ‘smarter’. The study’s findings indicate that smart technologies have an influence on the customer journey at all three phases, the most significant being at the prospective and active phases, without neglecting the reflective one. This article extends our knowledge by providing new insights into the influence of smart technologies that have theoretical and marketing implications for tourist attraction.