European Smart Tourism Tools Observatory

There is no uptake of digitalization, innovation, and new technologies in tourism if there is no supply of Smart Tourism Tools (STTs). Therefore, it is of utmost importance to have an observatory to monitor the current status, both on the supply and demand side, and to check how things are (hopefully) improving throughout the duration of this project. We will use web mining techniques to characterize supply and survey techniques during the various rounds of SME selection for funding to characterize demand.

STTs have the power to optimize the efficiency and sustainability of tourism operations, but the wide variety of technological solutions, past experiences and lessons learned require a thoughtful and systematic approach to identifying the appropriate technological solutions and the principles they must follow to achieve the desired outcomes.

We believe that there is a mismatch between the supply and demand of STTs for SMEs, probably due to their financial and technical limitations. It is important to characterize this supply, as some STTs may be appropriate for SMEs and others may not. A validated taxonomy will be used to classify all European STTs found. A set of published catalogs is being used as bootstrap content for this observatory.