ABSTRACT
Tourism destination resilience relates to a destination’s ability to adapt, transform, and self-organise in order to ensure enhanced system performances and quality tourism experiences. Smart tourism emerging transformations bring ‘smartness’ into tourism destinations allowing the interconnection of multiple stakeholders through dynamic platforms mediated by Information and Communication Technology (ICT). This supports the prompt information exchange through machine-to-machine learning algorithms which enhance the decision-making process while encompassing attributes of innovation, inclusivity, connectivity, accessibility, and poly-centricity. Smart tourism destinations thus offer an optimal ground for the exploration of emerging transformations that dictate tourism destination system foundations, as well as the level of elasticity in system element interactions and interlinkages which define a destination’s resilience. This book chapter aims to explore the structural and operational advantages of smart tourism emerging transformations in the pursuit of destination resilience. Building on the case study of Glasgow, the first smart city in the UK, this chapter delineates smart tourism interventions and transformations that contribute directly and indirectly to the continuous improvement of tourism performance and experience, as well the optimisation of a destination’s resources in the benefit of its competitiveness and resilience.
