Capabilities needed to become a Smart Tourism Destination: Use Case: Helsinki and Berne

Technology is becoming more and more important in any aspect of life. This also applies to the tourism sector. Therefore, many cities have started to implement Smart City solutions. The Smart Tourism Destination (STD) concept includes Smart City infrastructure (ICT, Leadership, Social and Human Capital as well as Entrepreneurs and Innovation) and tourism elements. This leads to the fact that an STD is built on Smart City infrastructure and includes basic elements of tourism. The framework Dimensions of the Smart Tourism Destination identifies the smartness of a Tourism Destination. This leads to the purpose of this paper which is to validate the model and to identify improvement areas in the critical success factors. The cities Helsinki and Berne were chosen as they are at a different development stage when it comes to Smart Tourism. Helsinki has already successfully implemented a Smart City solution and was awarded as the European Capital of Smart Tourism in 2019. Berne, on the other hand, is still in the development phase. By interviewing two experts from both cities eleven criteria, relevant to an STD, were evaluated. As the Smart Tourism Concept is young, only limited literature is available. The thesis used expert interview as a data collection method to gain insights into the cities’ approaches. The interviews were analyzed by coding, categorizing, and evaluating the responses. The analysis has shown that functioning headquarters have to be in place where all the processes are managed. Furthermore, stakeholder engagement in the tourism eco-system is fundamental. Coming to the dimensions of the model, it can be said that all the dimensions are necessary to build an STD. However, the focus can vary based on the culture of the city. Nonetheless, a balance between the dimensions is of utmost importance