Tourism and the smartphone app: capabilities, emerging practice and scope in the travel domain

TLDR

Smartphones, with their advanced computing power and ubiquity, have become a rapidly adopted tool for tourism travel, reshaping transport networks and prompting new research challenges. The study evaluates current smartphone app functionalities in domestic tourism and identifies future development opportunities while analyzing the phone’s role in facilitating collaborative, dynamic, and sustainable travel decisions. The authors conduct a review of smartphone apps and perform a conceptual analysis of how the phone mediates tourism travel.

Abstract

Based on its advanced computing capabilities and ubiquity, the smartphone has rapidly been adopted as a tourism travel tool. With a growing number of users and a wide variety of applications emerging, the smartphone is fundamentally altering our current use and understanding of the transport network and tourism travel. Based on a review of smartphone apps, this article evaluates the current functionalities used in the domestic tourism travel domain and highlights where the next major developments lie. Then, at a more conceptual level, the article analyses how the smartphone mediates tourism travel and the role it might play in more collaborative and dynamic travel decisions to facilitate sustainable travel. Some emerging research challenges are discussed.