Understanding Privacy Aspects Related to Location Based Services (LBS) in the Småland Tourism Industry

Digital technologies have a substantial impact on the tourism industry by affecting thetraveller's behaviour before, during and at the end of the trip and by transforming thetraditional travellers to the digital travellers and smart tourism. Data lies at the core ofall smart tourism activities and received considerable attention in the context of tourists'privacy concerns, precisely, location-based service (LBS). LBS is an example of smarttechnology to enhance travellers' experience and to provide significant benefits to users.Although, LBS become popular among tourists due to high information availability, easeof use, and cheapness, lack of location information protection make the users vulnerable.The latter is a great concern for users when they unintentionally allow the LBS providersto collect all information related to their location. Therefore, this study was conductedby focusing on the general concept of privacy to determine the issues related to the LBSusing in Småland tourism industry. The tourists' perceptions and understanding ofprivacy while using LBC were considered as a general concept of privacy.The study was performed through qualitative research by collecting data from thestructured-interview based on open-ended questions. The qualitative research presentedin this study was based on different viewpoints of interviewees. Thematic analysis wasused to obtain a comprehensive understanding of interviewees' privacy concerns to useLBS. The result indicated four major themes, such as personal information, privacybreach, hesitancy/conditionally and hedonic, that impact differently on tourists' intentionto use LBS. Furthermore, the personality of people, their perceptions and demands couldenhance their privacy concerns for using LBS. These concerns, however, might besuspended when the benefits of gaining information from LBS is considerable. Someother factors, such as the ease of use, user-friendly design, pleasant impression, alongwith providing useful information in the tourism destination, were also considered asessential for LBS adoption among tourists