Jennie Gelter

Current research

My PhD project focus on the phenomena of emerging smart destinations. The evolution of disruptive information technology has resulted in the development of smart destinations, as information technology is a major driving force of change in the tourism industry. Hence, adapting to the emerging technologies, will lead to new challenges within tourism in general and destination development specifically. The accelerated digitalisation within tourism has caused changes in tourist behaviour as well as business practice, especially for tourism intermediaries and suppliers. Digitalisation has opened new channels for smart communication and information transfer that will affect the way that businesses and destinations are organised and managed, as well as how travellers interact with destinations and tourism suppliers.

Contributing factors for such smart development are both the emergence of new digital opportunities such as Artificial Intelligence and Internet-of Things, as well as new global intermediate players within tourism such as Facebook, Google, Uber and Trip Advisor, that actively embrace such smart technologies. These smart booking and information systems strongly affect local providers and destination stakeholders and their urgent need to adapt to this disruptive digital transformation. Therefore, more knowledge is needed about the new roles, activities and processes of tourists, providers, and stakeholders at a destination in the light of digital changes and smart development. One way to study the emergence of this ‘smart’ digital development in tourism, is to study emerging smart destinations as complex adaptive systems. By using the methodology of complex system analysis, I intend to study how some case destinations react and adapt to internal and external digital forces (i.e. system disturbances) in their process of becoming smart destinations. The aim of the research is to generate new knowledge about the dynamic interactions between destination stakeholders, and with global intermediates in the process of digital transformation.