1. Smart Tourism
Ecosystems
Dr. Ulrike Gretzel

2. Ecosystem Perspective
• Community of interacting organisms and their
environment
• Death, birth, evolution
• A digital ecosystem is a distributed, adaptive,
open socio-technical system with properties of:
– self-organisation,
– scalability and
– sustainability

3. Systems Theory
• Self-regulation
• Adaptive: stimuli/feedback
• System boundaries
• Size
• Equilibrium

4. Actor Network Theory
• Maps relations that are simultaneously material
(between things) and semiotic (between
concepts)
• Assumes actors can be non-human
• Agency located in heterogeneous associations
between human and non-human actors
• Intermediary – input passes through; Mediator –
input is substantially transformed

5. Value Networks
• Value co-creation and co-consumption
• What value for whom?
• With whom?

6. Smart
• Quick thought, able, apt
• Programmed to be capable of independent
action (smart weapon)

7. Smart Cities
• Investments in human and social capital and traditional
(transport) and modern (ICT) communication
infrastructure fuel sustainable economic development and
a high quality of life, with a wise management of natural
resources, through participatory action and engagement
(Caragliu et al. 2009).
• Smart cities can be identified along six main dimensions:
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a smart economy
smart mobility
a smart environment
smart people
smart living
smart governance