Smart Tourism Ecosystem: A New Dimension toward Sustainable Value Co-Creation

Abstract

Changes in information technology have a great influence on people’s preferences and lifestyles. Smart devices and technologies have taken the conventional way of traveling into a smart tourism system. The aim of this paper is to examine smart tourism, the integration of different activities of different tourism service providers, and their interactions with tourists. It also finds out the smart tourism tools, how they are being used by different actors, how the tourist and the network perceived and interact with them for making up a smart tourism ecosystem, and finally how they create the sustainable value co-created services. This paper is qualitative in nature and used a holistic approach. The data were collected through interviews of 24 service providers and 50 service receivers, mainly tourists from the study area, Bangladesh. Study shows that there are three phases by which actors are communicating with each other comprising pre-service delivery, during-service delivery, and post-service delivery. Smart tourism tools are being used throughout the phases which eventually create value in co-created services with three pillars of sustainability (economic, socio-cultural and environmental). This study will contribute to the existing body of knowledge in the field of smart tourism, value co-creation, and sustainability.