Dear Colleagues,

Destination marketing and management is a research topic that has been given more importance for more than 20 years. However, more research is needed to address the relationship between tourism, sustainability, and competitiveness. In this context, a recent bibliometric study by Seguí-Amortegui, Clemente-Almendros, Medina, and Grueso Gala (2019) highlights the increasing importance of sustainability in tourism and the need for new insights into how to improve competitiveness in the tourism sector as a whole, and specifically in the field of destination marketing and management.

In this sense, in-depth studies of sustainability from a multidimensional point of view and its effects on tourism competitiveness are essential. In particular, sustainability refers to the need to preserve limited resources for the future (Garrigos-Simon, Narangajavana-Kaosiri, and Narangajavana, 2019), while tourist destinations should be considered a mixture or combination of products, services, and experiences offered by a specific area or region (Buhalis, 2000).

The adoption of information communication technologies (ICT) by destinations can lead to more sustainable tourism. The implementation of these technologies by tourist destinations—i.e., a smart tourism approach—offers many opportunities in terms of accessibility, sustainability, and competitiveness (Falconer and Mitchell, 2012; Bakici, Almirall, and Wareham, 2013; Buhalis and Amaranggana, 2014). Furthermore, this approach leads to better interactions between destination stakeholders, such as public agents, citizens, and tourism firms (Vicini, Bellini, and Sanna, 2012).

We kindly invite you to submit your papers to this Special Issue before 30 July 2021.

References

Bakici, T., Almirall, E., Wareham, J. (2013): “A smart city initiative: The case of Barcelona”. Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 4 (2), 135-148.

Buhalis, D. (2000): “Marketing the competitive destination of the future. Tourism Management, 21, 97–116.

Buhalis, D., Amaranggana, A. (2014): “Smart Tourism Destinations”, In Xiang, Z., & Tussyadiah, I., (eds), Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism, 553-564.

Falconer, G., Mitchell, S. (2012): Smart city framework. Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG).

Garrigos-Simon, F.J.; Narangajavana-Kaosiri, Y.; Narangajavana, Y. (2019): “Quality in tourism literature: A bibliometric review”. Sustainability 2019, 11, 3859.

Seguí-Amortegui, L., Clemente-Almendros, J.A., Medina, R. Grueso Gala, M. (2019) ” Sustainability and Competitiveness in the Tourism Industry and Tourist Destinations: A Bibliometric Study”. Sustainability 2019, 11(22), 6351.

Vicini, S., Bellini, S., Sanna, A. (2012): How to co-create Internet of things-enabled services for smarter cities. Stuttgart: IARIA.

Prof. Dr. Jesús Collado Agudo
Prof. Dr. Héctor San Martín Gutiérrez
Guest Editors

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• Tourist destination
• Sustainability
• Sustainable tourism
• Competitiveness
• Corporate social responsibility
• Strategic Management
• Competitive destination
• Digital marketing and social media strategies
• Information communication technologies
• Data-driven decision making