SMART cities and communities are one of the priorities of the European Regional Development Fund. Transformation into SMART requires collaboration amongst key stakeholders, including academia, research institutions and companies, fully supported by the government. Slovene municipalities are just getting financial support by the Slovenian Ministry of Public Administration to path their ways toward smart development based on efficient use of data.
The backbone of the SMART cities and communities' transformation is digitalisation, which enables better management, communication and coordination with the proactive approach. Within SMART cities tourism is a layer which connects to all sectors (energy, transport, circular economy, food, etc.) and it has a multiplicative effect on them. According to research conducted by the World Tourism Organization and Ministry of Economic Development and Technology of the Republic of Slovenia, tourism has multiplier effect on other activities of 1.8, which means that on the earned 100 euros in tourism additional 80 EUR are earned in tourism connected sectors.
Tourism 4.0 enables highly productive sustainable economy, strengthens innovation capacity and encourages digital transformation. Also in the mentioned call, Tourism 4.0 products can serve as the means by which municipalities will achieve desired improvements. Some of them (e.g. Tourism Impact Model) already received national and international awards. They can upgrade the existing service (e.g. SMART parking for campers) or serve as the main focus around which a consortium builds its project. Concluding, when talking about SMART cities, tourism plays a very important role. More about the Slovene call (only in Slovene)
