Development of a Human-Centric Model for Assessment of Smart and Sustainable Tourism Destination

The goal of this article is to present a methodology for assessing smart and sustainable destinations’ development. There are plenty of studies on the determination of concepts and models of smart destination and smart tourism. But to implement them, there is a need for initial knowledge of the status quo and opportunities for comparing best practices and similar destinations. The management of tourist destinations needs an instrumentarium for assessing the achievements and status in regard to the model of smart destinations. The focus should be on the use of strategic-oriented development in the course of the evolution of technology infrastructure, infostructure (Buhalis, 2020, Gretzel et al., 2015) and pool of knowledge and skills, as well as their interrelations with sustainability. This paper augments theory and practice with a methodology that can be used for the elaboration of a strategy for smart destination development based on sustainability and a human-centric approach. The presented methodology in the article includes a model of a smart, sustainable destination and is applied in the case study. The strategies and development of tree cities are researched.