Digitalize Thy Place: Benefits and Challenges in the Development of Smart Destinations

Digital transformation is affecting companies worldwide, with effects on different industries. In this paper we focus on the tourism sector, and investigate how firms and related territories may leverage digital transformation and which challenges they may face in adopting digital solutions. To do so, we rely on a qualitative approach and performed ten interviews to different actors in the field to examine the adoption of an innovative online hospitality data intelligence platform, called HBenchmark, and how it can promote the development of the tourist destination of Livigno and its territory Valtellina. Our findings point to two main dimensions, related to both the benefits and challenges in the development of smart destinations, and offer contributions to literature about digital transformation and smart destinations while providing implications for public actors and managers.