Keywords

1 Introduction

In 2013 the Spanish Industry, Commerce and Tourism Ministry together with the Spanish Tourism Secretary of State used the state company SEGITTUR to launch a program to try and adapt the Spanish touristic destinations to the new needs of tourists, since many Spanish tourism destinations were reaching the stage of maturity or even deterioration (Rodríguez-Sánchez & Conejero-Quiles, 2011). This program, the Smart Touristic Destinations’ Network attempts to be a continuous synergetic process between the public sector, the private sector, and the local citizens, that uses technology and innovation to make the touristic experiences custom-made and accessible to everyone. These changes require the destination to be sustainable economically, socially, and environmentally to keep functioning in the future. This is done by collecting and processing data to anticipate possible outcomes and therefore increasing the efficiency of the destination. All of that should result in an increase in the quality of the products offered as well as an increase in the quality of life of the locals.

To become an officially recognized Smart Touristic Destination (STD) by SEGITTUR, the destination must accomplish at least 80% of the requirements proposed by the network institution, at the beginning of 2023 only six touristic destinations have reached this milestone: Benidorm, Gijón, Málaga, Tenerife Island, Santander and Donosti/San Sebastián (SEGITTUR, 2023). Becoming a STD is not just a goal to be reached, but also a process to be followed, since the aim of becoming a STD is to keep improving constantly to adapt the destination to the new needs of the market.

Additionally, all indicators and objectives can be classified into 5 axes, from which the Destination Management Organization (DMO) can work to achieve their goals, these axes are (AENOR, 2018): (1) Governance: It measures the efficacy and efficiency of the proposed measures. It also measures the transparency of the processes, the level of openness and participation of public and private entities, the coherence of the project, and the responsibilities of each participant. (2) Innovation: It evaluates the improvement of benefits and the increase of competitiveness of the introduction or improvement of new services, processes, commercialization methods and organization methods. (3) Technology: It measures the level of utility of new technologies and their degree of implementation as well as their ability to meet the needs of the tourist during all stages of the journey. In addition, technology is a key tool for data collection, but despite being an important aspect linked to the other axes, technology alone does not turn a tourism destination into a STD. (4) Universal accessibility: It measures if infrastructures allow indiscriminate access to all people, guaranteeing the right to be treated equal, so that everyone can enjoy them in an autonomous and natural way. And (5) Sustainability: it measures the present and future level of protection of the economic activities linked to the tourism sector. It also measures the level of social, environmental, and economic measures that will guarantee the development of tourism activities in the future.

For this investigation, reviews have been used to evaluate the opinion of current and past visitors. While the objective of this project is to analyse the effectiveness of the measures applied by destination managers and its impact on tourists, the main results show that there is still a lot of research to be done in the field of STDs. The results also show that while destinations, and particularly Tenerife Island, are introducing changes to increase their “smartness”, tourists are aware of these changes and post smart-related reviews.

2 Literature Review

2.1 Smart Concept and Smart Tourism Destinations

The concept of “Smart” things has been around for a long time, especially since the boom of smart phones more than a decade ago, however, the concept of STDs is quite recent. Prior to STDs, there was the concept of Smart cities, which although its meaning does not have defined borders, it makes reference to many concepts linked to STDs, like the use of new technologies, the environmental concerns technologies or the need of sharing information between stakeholders (Jasrotia & Gangotia, 2018). The first attempt of turning regular tourism destinations into STDs were the eDestinations, which used the internet and communication technologies to provide information and make transactions between stakeholders, later, as tourists and destinations’ interests shifted towards a higher quality and more responsible tourism, and new technologies became available, the concept of STDs was born as a way to create a common space for all stakeholders of a destination to improve this destination in aspects like sustainability or accessibility. It can be said that during this period of transition, tourists also evolved from eTourists to Smart Tourists. According to the existing literature, tourists are now more informed, demanding, independent, active, and skilled at using technologies to navigate the internet, and they also interact more online by booking, comparing, reviewing, recommending, and complaining more than ever before (Femenia-Serra & Neuhofer, 2018). These authors indicated that there are three specific behaviors linked to those smart tourists: (1) they share data with other stakeholders because they know the benefits that this can bring them and trust that their data will be protected, secured, and carefully handled. (2) as long as smart technologies are useful and easy to use, they will use these to enhance their experiences, since they have the confidence and ability to do so. And (3) they shape the experience of other tourists by being active users of the smart technology ecosystems created for smart destinations, generating and sharing content with other stakeholders as long as they feel confident. All these behaviors put the tourists at the center of STDs, since they will generate large amounts of data that will feed the DMO so that it can make better decisions about the destination.

Moreover, according to the current literature, there is proof that there are some benefits inherent to the application of smart measures. One key element that differentiates a non-STD from a smart one is that STDs make decisions based on collected data. This type of action requires the active participation of the local government along with the DMO to use the axis of governance to get the information needed from the destination, and then, plan the route to improve the destination with internet and communication technologies. Some of the benefits that come along with these policies are an improvement of the destination’s image, a better connectivity network that can help tourists navigate complex scenarios, it allows for faster, more interactive, and personalized experiences and it can present more and clearer information at each stage of the trip.

Utilizing Information and Communication Technologies alongside innovative data sources under the umbrella of a Sustainable Development strategy enhances the quality of the tourist experience. It also enhances the sophistication of business intelligence for marketing efforts and promotes collaboration among stakeholders, thus strengthening the ability to manage innovation and knowledge-based processes (Soares et al., 2022).

However, some articles suggest that there are still some challenges to overcome, like having the infrastructure required to collect and analyze the data that will guide the policies, making sure that tourists know how to introduce these measures into their trip, reduce privacy invasion related concerns, avoid overexposing tourists to information, allowing the tourists to be more creative and adventurous while reducing technology dependence, avoiding overcrowded and overexploited tourist locations due to social media exposure and reducing the levels of stress that come with being constantly connected to technology between others (Femenia-Serra & Ivars-Baidal, 2021).

Nonetheless, cloud computing, mobile apps, big data analytics, geospatial services, and social media platforms are all cutting-edge instances of intelligent technologies that enhance tourism experiences and platforms (Yuan et al., 2019). Moreover, the incorporation of groundbreaking solutions into tourism planning enables visitors to perceive a destination from a fresh perspective (Shafiee et al., 2021).

2.2 Current Trends

Internet and Smart Tourism Technologies are also playing a crucial role in other parts of the world. It is the case of Indonesia, where since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, a boom in the usage of Smart Tourism Technologies has been seen. This sharp increase in the usage of internet technologies in tourism environments can be explained because of the increase of preparation required to travel during the pandemic, having tourists check more information before their trip, but also during their trip. To bring more value to the tourist and to be more appealing, the information provided to the tourists has to be real, accessible, and comprehensive, as easier to navigate webpages help with decision-making by reducing the sense of risk (Mohseni et al., 2018). This search of more appealing information by tourists means that they normally prefer more trusted sources of information, like friends and family or comments on review platforms, there are authors that even confirm that interpersonal influence and electronic word of mouth (eWOM) are the most significant sources for tourists when making the final decision on destination choice (Chung & Buhalis, 2008).

All of this means that tourists nowadays relay more heavily on user-generated content (UGC) than other methods for obtaining the information they need, like reviews from providers of tourism services due to the level of originality and honesty of this content. This does not mean that tourists do not check the sources provided by DMOs or tourism and hospitality services’ managers but, when they do it, the quality and personalization of these sources are extremely relevant to the tourist (Prihanto et al., 2022).

2.3 Hypotheses, Justification, and Objectives of Research

Since the end of the 2009 financial crisis there has been an increase in the number of Mediterranean competitors for the Spanish tourism sector, especially Italy and Greece, but also Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria with their recovery of political stability after the Arab Spring. This increasing number of competitors has been followed by a not so sharp increase of tourists, except for the years of the pandemic (Moreno-Luna et al., 2021), which has forced tourist destinations to increase their competitive advantages to stand out in the international marked and avoid staying at a standstill (Afonso-Rodríguez & Santana-Gallego, 2018). In the Spanish economy, tourism is one of the most important economic sectors. In 2022, the tourism sector, directly and indirectly, represents 12.2% of gross domestic product (GDP) (INE, 2022). The Spanish government did not fall behind in this subject, in 2013 the Spanish Industry, Commerce and Tourism Ministry together with the Spanish Tourism Secretary of State launched a program to increase these competitive advantages. This program, which is based on the concept of STDs, assists and evaluates the Spanish tourism destinations to help them grow in five different directions, called axes: governance, innovation, technology, sustainability and accessibility (SEGITTUR, 2022). According to some studies, becoming a STD can have several benefits for the public authorities and the local residents, including an improvement in economic competitiveness and a rise in the standards of living (Boes, 2015), but it can also bring improvements for the tourists including an increase in transparency from the local government, a better preserved natural environment and heritage, more efficient ways of transportation, better acceptance of tourists by the locals, better access to internet technologies, more accessible locations, or less overcrowded locations, which will jointly increase the demand for the destination, and in the long term, benefit the growth of the tourism sector in the area (INVATTUR, 2015).

Besides the fact that becoming a STD improves the quality of the tourist’s experience, there are studies that also show that tourists are aware of the improvements of quality of the destinations (Medina et al., 2016), but this brings a question: To what extent are tourists aware of the “smart” characteristics that define STDs at their destination?

This study pretends to shed light on the topic of STDs and its impact on the tourist’s experience, since the tourist and the information he provides will be a key instrument when shaping the destination.

3 Methodology and Data Collection

The method used in this paper to find out whether the tourist is aware of the smartness of the destination is an extraction of user generated content (UGC) from review-based platforms. Reviews are being used in this investigation because they play a crucial role to set the incoming tourists’ expectations and shape their decisions, but they also serve as a method to evaluate the satisfaction of the current and the outgoing tourists. These first expectations will also greatly affect the satisfaction of the tourists, being the expectations greater than reality will result in a much worse experience for the tourist, on the contrary, if the expectations are lower than reality, it will result in a much greater experience for the tourist (Narangajavana Kaosiri et al., 2019).

Reviews are also a good method to extract data from a sample of the tourists without having to make a survey. This inexpensive method allows a wider data collection and a bigger sample, including past years but it might bring some situations that have to be considered. First of all, the analysis of individual reviews is useless for this investigation, as some of these reviews could be fake, repeated or non-representative, and second, the sample taken from different destinations’ analysis will be different, which can be misleading when interpreting the results especially for those fewer known destinations that have much less reviews when compared to other more popular destinations. However, the results are still valid when taken these limitations into consideration, as studies show that when the sample is big enough, the number of fake reviews is no longer representative and does not alter results (Martin-Fuentes et al., 2018).

For this investigation, data was extracted from the English comments sections of TripAdvisor. From the destination chosen in this study, Tenerife Island, only the “things to do” section was analyzed, since it focuses more on tourism attraction and it excludes the hotels and the restaurants, and from this section, only the top 10 traveler’s favorite attractions from this destination were selected. The study considers reviews from the period 2016–2021.

The data extraction was made in March of 2022, using the web scraping software program Octoparse. This program allows the extraction of each review individually, together with its publication date, the date when the user visited the attraction, the review title, the review body and the score in a scale from 1 to 5 points. The number of reviews subjected to analysis for this study is as follows: Loro Parque 1,187, Siam Park 2,317, Teide Volcano 506, Monkey Park 287, Light and Music Fountain 125, Teresitas Beach 103, Palmetum Botanical Garden 39, Market Nuestra Sra. de África 44, Duque Beach 24, Rural Park Anaga 23. The total number of reviews considered was 4,655.

4 Results

Once data have been presented, next step is to depict a graphic network map of the comments posted by users on TripAdvisor about Tenerife Island before and after becoming a Smart Tourism Destination. This analysis is a comparison of the results obtained the year before Tenerife Island became a Smart Tourism Destination with the results from the year immediately after. This gives the reader an idea of which were the most commented topics from before and after Tenerife Island became a smart destination.

In 2021 Tenerife Island registered 1,044,405 inhabitants and 168,504 tourists, from which 29% came from abroad (INE, 2022). The Island of Tenerife joined the Smart Tourism Destinations’ Network (by SEGITTUR) in 2020.

4,202 reviews posted in 2019 (before Tenerife became a member of the STD Network) were downloaded and analyzed. Figure 1 shows the most commented topics that year. Green cluster refers to the public infrastructure related to the tourism sector, including transportation modes, and topics related to the volcano. Some of the most representative topics of this cluster (according to the size of the nodes) are time, hour, bus, hotel, cable car, experience, or view. Yellow cluster refers to water and theme parks. Some of the most representative topics of this cluster (according to the size of the nodes) are ride, queue, and ticket. Blue cluster refers to animal entertainment-based activities. Some of the most representative topics of this cluster (according to the size of the nodes) are park, animal, and show, most of them related to Loro Parque. Finally, red cluster refers to food, leisure, and sightseeing. Some of the most representative topics of this cluster (according to the size of the nodes) are day, slide, food, kid, siam park, and water park.

Fig. 1
A node network of most commented topics in Trip Advisor about the Island of Tenerife’s Top 10 attractions during the year 2019. Some of the keywords are park, day, place, time, read, ticket, ride, staff, food, locker, queue, experience, place, everyone, person, kid, and great fun.

Most commented topics in TripAdvisor about the Island of Tenerife’s Top 10 attractions during the year 2019 (image generated by VOSviewer)

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A total of 453 reviews posted in 2021 (the year after Tenerife Island became a STD) were downloaded and analyzed, from which it can be seen (Fig. 2) that the most relevant topics in the reviews were the following. Green cluster contains the topics related to Covid-19. Some of the most representative topics of this cluster (according to the size of the nodes) are person, mask, covid, and social distancing. Blue cluster includes topics related to water, mainly from the Siam Park and the beach. Some of the most representative topics of this cluster (according to the size of the nodes) are slide, Siam Park, beach, and fun. Yellow cluster contains topics related to theme parks. Some of the most representative topics of this cluster (according to the size of the nodes) are ride, queue, locker, and fast pass. Red cluster refers to topics related to infrastructure, sightseeing, leisure, and topics related to animal-based entertainment parks. Some of the most representative topics of this cluster (according to the size of the nodes) are park, day, animal, and place. Finally, purple cluster includes topics related to entrance price and timetable of the activities with words such as ticket, euro, time, or timing. This cluster is mainly in the middle of the graph, between red, blue, and yellow clusters, which means that it is closely related to entertainment parks (Siam Park or animal parks).

Fig. 2
A node network of most commented topics in Trip Advisor about the Island of Tenerife's Top 10 attractions during the year 2021. Some of the keywords are park, day, ride, time, person, mask, place, hour, ride, ticket, queue, ticket, thing, world, and sun.

Most commented topics in TripAdvisor about the Island of Tenerife's Top 10 attractions during the year 2021 (image generated by VOSviewer)

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5 Discussion and Conclusions

Tourists’ experience on review-based platforms, such as TripAdvisor, has changed from before and after the destinations became smart. There have been some changes in the main topics commented by tourists in review platforms. Although some of these changes are probably motivated by other factors, like the Covid-19 pandemic, evidence shows that tourists, after a destination implemented STD policies, increased the number of comments on these policies, which shows the level of awareness of the tourists to changes in tourism policies.

As observed in the analysis of the most frequently used words by tourists in comments some new concepts about accessibility have emerged with great relevance in 2021, such as mask, social distancing, covid, security, long queue, and line, but all of them are motivated for the pandemic and not for the implementation of STD policies. Additionally, the user is placing greater importance on two intangible concepts: time and experience. Furthermore, after the implementation of STD policies, tourists did show more interest in attractions than before they were less popular or known, Tenerife Island has seen an increase in interest for the few more popular attractions like the theme parks and the water parks. Even though results obtained are not ideal, they are promising, as they show that there is an intention by the authorities to implement STD policies and it also shows the acceptance of these policies by international tourists. These results also go in the same direction of other studies, pointing out that the “smart” era of tourism is still in its early ages and needs furthermore investigation to take full advantage of these new policies.

Given the fact that Tenerife Island joined the Spanish STD Network in 2020, there are some intrinsic limitations to this research. The strike of the Covid-19 crisis meant the closing of all non-essential economic activities in the Spanish territory for most of 2020 and part of 2021, which also meant the cessation of all tourism activities and the implementation of traveling restrictions.

Besides that, it should be stated that tourists not commenting on STD policies could be caused by several factors, maybe the tourists already expect the destination to be “smart” and thus do not comment on aspects that they find irrelevant, like accessibility or destination management, or maybe there are other much more interesting topics to be commented than just the ones related to the “smart” features of the destination. Moreover, not all topics related to “smart” policies stand out in the same way to tourists, while some categories like innovation or technology might be more noticeable to tourists, others like governance might be completely imperceptible to them. Furthermore, the utilization of TripAdvisor reviews may pose a limitation, as these reviews typically lack comprehensive coverage of aspects pertaining to TDI. Another limitation of this research is that it only analyzes one destination that has been awarded the distinction of STDs by SEGITTUR. A much deeper analysis of other destinations “smart” and other destinations that are currently working on implementing “smart” policies would have brought other interesting results.