Knowledge Management for Smart Tourism: an exploratory survey in Abruzzo region

Research on Knowledge Management has seen a growing interest in Smart Tourism in recent years due to the need of effectively managing knowledge for sustainable and digital tourism competitiveness. In this sense, literature simultaneously suggests open data as the black gold of the new millennium, and the missed link for the smartness of tourism destinations. Nonetheless, in contrast to the global trend of leading countries to Tourism 4.0, Italy has been experiencing a weak tourist dynamism, witnessed by the eighth place in the report on the "Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index" (WEF, 2020) achieved in the face of a predominant share of the worldwide cultural heritage located in its territory. Therefore, based on these premises we intend to provide an academic contribution to fill the literature gap on Knowledge Management in the context of Smart Tourism, highlighting how much the sharing information systems among stakeholders can promote the emergence of a virtuous collaborative intertwining between public and private tourist actors. The present case study concerns the planning and implementation of a tourist digital platform by the Abruzzo Region (Italy), according to the principles of Smart Governance, as one of the first practical reactions to the Italian lack of a widespread digital transition. Thus, this work aims to exploit the information previously collected through surveys administered by the managers of the Abruzzo Offices for “Information and Tourist Reception”. This is regarding Knowledge Management structural limits and added value, in order to analyze Smart Tourism benefits and to provide future research agenda about regional tourism competitiveness.