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Theoretical Background
The concept of smartness originates in the 1990s and has
since been drawing attention from people (Hollands 2008,
2015). The smartness of a city relates to the embedment of
ICTs. A smart city is defined as a city that integrates the city’s
sources with ICTs (i.e., artificial intelligence, cloud comput-
ing, IoTs, and mobile communications) (X. Wang et al.
2016). As cities adopt diverse technologies to enhance the
quality of residents’ life, tourism destinations also begin to
embrace technologies in order to enhance not only tourists’
travel experience but also destination competitiveness,
thereby giving rise to the concept of smart tourism destina-
tions (Buhalis and Amaranggana 2014). In essence, smart
cities or smart tourism destinations aim to elevate the com-
petitiveness of a place and improve the quality of life for all
stakeholders including residents and tourists (Boes, Buhalis,
and Inversini 2016).
Smart Tourism Technologies (STTs)
Smart destinations integrate technologies into their tourism
resources and use the technologies as a marketing platform
(Buhalis and Foerste 2015; Pan et al. 2011). In general, STTs
refer to both general and specific applications that can
enhance tourists’ experiences as well as generate added val-
ues (Neuhofer, Buhalis, and Ladkin 2015). Examples of STTs
include ubiquitous computing and Internet of Things (IoT),
cloud computing, ubiquitous connectivity through Wi-Fi,
near field communication (NFC), and radio-frequency identi-
fication (RFID), sensors, smartphones, mobile connected
devices, beacons, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality
(AR), mobile apps, integrated payment methods, smart cards,
and social networks sites, etc. (Gretzel et al. 2015; Huang
et al. 2017; D. Wang, Li, and Li 2013). In order to measure the
effectiveness of STTs in destinations, researchers (e.g., Huang
et al. 2017; Lee et al. 2018; No and Kim 2015) have catego-
rized STTs by four unique attributes such as accessibility,
informativeness, interactivity, and personalization. Building
on these studies, this study additionally examines the role of
security/privacy in technology-mediated tourism destinations
in a sense that the use of STTs in smart tourism destinations is
fully dependent on the level of protection of tourists’ privacy
and their perceptions of security for transactions that require
sharing digital information (No and Kim 2015).
Adopting these key STT attributes, this study identifies
the most influential STT attributes that affect tourists’ mem-
orable experience in smart tourism destinations, their satis-
faction, and future behavioral (i.e., revisit) intentions. The
first attribute, accessibility, refers to how easily an individual
can access and use the information offered at the destination
by using different types of STTs. High levels of accessibility
of STTs contribute to perceived ease of use, because tourists
can use more information and enhance their memorable
travel experience as well as satisfaction with the destination
(Huang et al. 2017; Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier 2007, 2009).
Accessibility can be an enabler for cocreating experiences,
becoming a significant predictor of memorable tourism
experience (Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier 2009).
Informativeness refers to a composite of the quality and
trustworthiness of information provided by STTs at tourism
destinations (Huang et al. 2017; No and Kim 2015). Because
of the intangible nature of tourism, information quality and
credibility are critical factors that can affect tourists’ overall
experience at the destination. W. G. Kim, Lee, and Hiemstra
(2004) state that there is a significant relationship between
informativeness and tourists’ perceptions of the destination. In
a study of social media by Chung and Koo (2015), information
reliability is a key predictor of the value of social media in
tourists’ information search (Chung and Koo 2015). Utilizing
STTs (e.g., augmented reality or virtual reality) at smart tour-
ism destinations, tourists can easily appreciate the depth and
scope of information for their tourism activities. Obtaining
such rich information helps them be motivated and stimulated
to enrich their travel experience at smart tourism destinations.
The interactivity of STTs is defined as reciprocal commu-
nications among stakeholders (Alba et al. 1997). Interactivity
promotes bilateral interactions between stakeholders when
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