Regional Tourism Indicators and Smart Specialization Strategy

Abstract

National and local governments are harmonizing the regional policies to enable balanced development of regions. Related research is questioning whether priority should be given to information and communication technologies in the implementation of the Smart Specialization Strategy in a regional level. The objective of this article is to find out whether ICTs have any impact on key tourism statistical performance indicators. Such an impact would justify the priority of ICT in regional policies. 2.181 tourism industry entities were checked for web presence; the region of the entity’s activity was recorded. The correlation between the on-line presence and the key statistical indicators was analyzed. Only 655 (30 %) are present on the Internet by a means of a web page. There is a strong positive correlation (τb=0,656, p