Smart Destinations for Advanced Development of Tourism

Smart destinations are a modern form of existence of tourist areas. The emergence of smart devices and the development of digitalization facilitate carrying out destination management processes within the framework of sustainable development, accounting for the opinions of all interested parties. The goal of the chapter is to identify the opportunities and prospects for the development of Russian tourist destinations during application of smart technologies and to develop indicators for monitoring their transformation. The article describes the prerequisites for application of smart technologies in tourism: smart cities, now becoming increasingly technologically advanced and widespread, are the foundation for the smart destinations. Based on the analysis of various methods for assessing the effectiveness of smart territories, a rating for evaluating smart destinations was proposed, with the following indicators: smart technology, smart innovation, smart sustainability, smart accessibility, smart inclusivity, as well as a system of sub-indicators. It is proposed to use this methodology both in conjunction with the methodology for assessing smart cities, and independently. This assessment method has been tested on five Russian cities with a population of over one million: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Ufa, and Kazan, leaders among the country's smart cities. The calculated correlation between the results of the analysis of smart destinations and the tourist flow in terms of the number of tourists suggests a direct strong relationship. The application of this technique will make it possible to calculate the prospective tourist flows, depending on the investment in the development of smart technologies in tourism.