Smart or partly smart? Accessibility and innovation policies to assess smartness and competitiveness of destinations

Abstract

In recent decades, policymakers worked to counteract the adverse effects of tourism on destinations, such as the problems of sustainability, wealth distribution or overtourism, among many other external issues. The answer seems to come from the so-called ‘intelligence’ in the destinations, that is, a necessary renewal to avoid losing competitiveness. In this research, we work on the hypothesis that smart or intelligent solutions applied in Spanish tourist destinations are having positive effects on their competitiveness. Hence, we apply a partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) model to address tourism smartness by taking two concrete strategies that are continuously repeated in the literature, that is the promotion of accessibility and innovation.