Tourists’ Experiences with Smart Tourism Technology at Smart Destinations and Their Behavior Intentions

883034
JTR
XXX10.1177/0047287519883034Journal of Travel Research
Jeong and Shin
research-article
2019
1
School of Hotel, Restaurant & Tourism Management, University of South 
Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA
2
Universidad de La Sabana, Chia, Cundinamarca, Colombia
Corresponding Author:
Miyoung Jeong, School of Hotel, Restaurant & Tourism Management, 
University of South Carolina, 701 Assembly St, Columbia, SC 29208, USA. 
Email: [e-mail]
Tourists’ Experiences with Smart Tourism 
Technology at Smart Destinations and 
Their Behavior Intentions
Miyoung Jeong
1,2
 and Hyejo Hailey Shin
1
Abstract
This study attempts to assess how tourists use smart tourism technologies at destinations and measure the effects of STT 
usage on overall travel experience and future revisit intention. Although STTs have received growing attention, little research 
has evaluated tourists’ experience with STTs available at various smart tourism destinations and potential consequences. 
Building on studies on online tourism information sources, this study develops a conceptual framework to test hypotheses 
related to STT experiences and consequences. Based on an online survey with travelers to top five US smart cities, this 
study classifies the most frequently used STTs and examines tourists’ overall experience and satisfaction with STTs as well 
as their revisit intention. Findings suggest that three attributes of STTs—informativeness, interactivity, and personalization—
are the key factors affecting tourists’ experience, satisfaction, and revisit intentions. The level of perceived security/privacy 
moderates the relationships between three STT attributes and tourists’ memorable experience.
Keywords
Memorable experience, Smart tourism, Smart tourism destination, Smart tourism technology, Revisit intention

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Journal of Travel Research 00(0)
researchers attempted to tap into the psychological mecha-
nism that explains the relationship between tourists’ use and 
experience of STTs and meaningful outcomes for destination 
marketing. Learning from how cities adopted smart technol-
ogies, smart tourism destinations have accommodated vari-
ous technologies in an effort to offer tourists convenient, 
comfortable, and enjoyable travel experiences. Thus, tour-
ists’ experiences with STTs at tourism destinations can be an 
integral part of their overall satisfaction with the destination 
and their revisit intention. This study attempted to investi-
gate the type of STTs used by travelers and the benefit of 
using STTs. One of the key research questions lies in whether 
technology-embedded tourism experiences can add to tourist 
satisfaction and revisit intention. Understanding the relation-
ship of tourists’ use of STTs at smart tourism destinations 
with their overall travel experience is critical because travel 
experience is a key antecedent of satisfaction and behavior 
intention (J.-H. Kim 2018; Carbonell and Escudero 2015).
To address these gaps in the literature, this study examines 
STTs available at tourism destinations and their impacts on 
tourists’ experience, satisfaction, and revisit intentions. More 
specifically, the goals of this study are to (1) explore the type 
of STTs available for and used by tourists at smart tourism 
destinations, (2) examine how tourists’ use of STTs enhance 
their overall destination experience and satisfaction, which 
lead to their revisit intention, and (3) identify whether the tour-
ist’s sociodemographic characteristics (i.e., gender, purpose of 
trip, status of residence, and STT familiarity) affect their STT 
preferences or perceptions. By answering these questions, this 
study intends to provide destination marketers with useful 
suggestions for future degitization of destinations.