Smart Cities and Sustainable Tourism Destination Management

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050, IF 2.576) is pleased to announce the launch of a new Special Issue entitled "Smart Cities and Sustainable Tourist Destination Management”, which we are delighted to lead as guest editors.

This is our second Special Issue on smart tourism destinations, following from the success of one we delivered for the International Journal of Tourism Cities in 2019 on the marketing and branding aspects of smart tourism cities. This Special Issue for Sustainability aims to explore the contribution of smart cities in the context of tourism, especially from the perspective of sustainable development.  

The call seeks papers from a wide range of disciplines and regions that explore the questions, techniques and dilemmas involved in the sustainable development and management smart cities in the context of tourism—often referred to as smart tourism cities or smart urban tourism destinations—associated with a variety of issues, including the following:

• tourism markets for smart cities—their changing expectations and motivations, experiences sought, lived and co-created, sustainable tourist behaviors;
• smart city tourism resources—technological and other resources used by smart cities to promote their tourism products, including culture, heritage, local food, transport, festivals, conferences/exhibitions, digital tourism trails, the use of augmented and virtual reality to enhance the visitor experience in heritage sites;
• smart cites and the sharing economy—smart city links to the sharing economy in the context of tourism, ethical issues (e.g., Airbnb versus Fairbnb in smart tourism cities);
• smart city innovations to reduce overtourism in tourism cities—smart tourism city technologies related to capacity management, crowd management, interactions with local residents, local businesses, event organisers, tour operators;
• local residents’ perspectives smart cities in a tourism context—resident perceptions and reactions to the digital “Disneyfication” of their cities, co-creation of digital tourism products/services and smart brands with local residents, development of smart governance tools to encourage interaction between visitors and residents;
• smart city tourism governance issues—leadership, co-opetition, and examples of successful and failed governance systems, involvement of local residents and other key stakeholders in co-creation processes;
• sustainable development issues specific to smart tourism city destinations—climate change, zero waste, low-emissions transport in a tourism context, inclusiveness and gentrification, ecolabels and certification, promotion of sustainable tourist behaviour, nature-based tourism in smart tourism destinations;
• smart cities and new tourism trends— slow tourism, wellness tourism, medical tourism, food tourism, business tourism, major sports events tourism, digitalisation, new mobilities, the relationship between the smart city and nearby smaller towns and villages in a tourism context, age-related product mixes, mobile technologies, co-creation of smart tourism destination brands in tourism cities. 

The list above is for illustrative purposes only; we will also consider research proposals in related domains within the overarching theme of this Special Issue, all of which can be emailed to J. Andres Coca-Stefaniak (a.coca-stefaniak@gre.ac.uk).

Prof. Dr. J. Andres Coca-Stefaniak
Prof. Dr. Alastair M. Morrison
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• smart tourism cities
• smart tourism
• urban tourism
• overtourism
• sharing economy
• sustainable urban tourism
• sustainable cities