The Perception of the Effect of Tourism on the Local Community before the Ibiza Smart Island Project
María Dolores Sánchez-Fernández (University of A Coruña, Spain) and José Ramon Cardona (University of Illes Balears, Spain)
Source Title: Handbook of Research on Entrepreneurial Development and Innovation Within Smart Cities
Copyright: © 2017 |Pages: 25
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-1978-2.ch017
Abstract
The perceptions that residents had towards aspects linked to tourism development on the island of Ibiza is measured. In 2011 fieldwork which asked the extent of agreement with several statements was carried out. A descriptive analysis was carried out on the data obtained to determine the average valuation on various items and cross tabulations to see if there are differences between the five municipalities of the island. The results show that there is a high valuation of the economic benefits and tourism is considered to be very important, but they are half-hearted or critical towards the rest of the impacts. In addition, there are no significant differences between the five municipalities. Ibiza is a single tourist destination and works as one single social unit. In 2015 the Ibiza Smart Island project was launched, with smart city and smart destination elements, to solve the problems that affect residents and tourists.
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TopIntroduction
With the development of information and communication technologies, initiatives that seek to use this technology to improve peoples’ lives have arisen.
- • The concepts of smart city (Ramaswami, Russell, Culligan, Rahul Sharma, & Kumar, 2016),
- • Smart island (Mahizhnan, 1999), and
- • Smart destination (Del Chiappa, & Baggio, 2015; Ivars, Solsona, & Sánchez, 2016) are examples of this.
When a population nucleus has great tourism development and decides to adopt the smart city approach, tourists are fundamental in the sustainability of local development. In these cases it is normal to talk about Smart destination (Del Chiappa & Baggio, 2015; Ivars et al., 2016) to highlight the importance of visitors in the design of the various actions undertaken. Smart destination projects seek to improve the tourist experience by providing them with useful information at a suitable time and place. This normally consists in projects that aim to facilitate access to tourist information on culture, entertainment, places of interest, etc. through electronic devices, mainly mobile technology.
