Designing Digital Solutions in the Cultural Heritage and Tourism Industry for Advancing Visitors’ Experiences: SMEs Needs, Preferences, and Expectations

Digital transformation is reshaping business strategies and innovation, by creating new opportunities in different industries. Digital technologies, like eXtended Reality (XR) and Internet of Things (IoT), are rapidly advancing in the field of virtual heritage and tourism industry for improving visitors’ experiences, facilitating user interaction, and promoting cultural knowledge. Despite several digital solutions are proposed in the Cultural Heritage (CH) literature, there is still the need to address some limitations, including the need of differentiating commercial offers in the market. Before designing a digital solution, such as a cloud-based platform for tourists, it is fundamental to identify the key needs and expectations of companies operating in the CH and tourism industry. Through a survey-based questionnaire, this paper aims to investigate the most relevant features, services, and functionalities that CH companies expect to integrate within such solutions. Findings reveal the need to implement cloud-based platforms with XR technologies, IoT, sensors and smart devices to gather data and provide with an immersive, recommended, and customized experience to visitors.