ABSTRACT
Nowadays, tourists are taking advantage of smart tourism attributes in terms of obtaining maximum benefits with minimum time and effort. In order to provide a deeper theoretical understanding of this popular topic in contemporary tourism literature, this chapter is elaborating on technological drivers on which smart tourism attributes were developed such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence. Accordingly, in the first part of this study, technologies that led to the introduction of smart tourism are briefly described. Following on, the effects of these smart tourism technologies on tourism demand and supply will be provided. Examples from the related literature on how some of the tourism stakeholders are affected by smart tourism technologies and applications will be reviewed. In the last part of the study, changes that the tourism industry is going through owing to smart tourism technologies, as well as the challenges that need to be addressed in this context, are discussed.
