Domingo Rodríguez-Ortiz; M. Ángeles Oviedo-García; Mario Castellanos-Verdugo. Enlightening Tourism. A
Pathmaking Journal, Vol 16, No 1 (2026), pp. 1-12
https://doi.org/10.33776/EUHU/et.v16i1.9245
Received 8 October 2025; Received in revised form 17 February 2026; Accepted 19 February 2026
ENLIGHTENING TOURISM: A
PATHMAKING JOURNAL
journal homepage: https://uhu.es/publicaciones/ojs/index.php/et
Knowledge and attitudes of hotel managers in Seville on
smart hospitality
Domingo Rodríguez-Ortiz. Master Degree in Tourism Management and Planning. University
of Seville, Seville, Spain.
M. Ángeles Oviedo-García*. Business Management and Marketing Department. University
of Seville, Seville, Spain.
Mario Castellanos-Verdugo. Business Management and Marketing Department. University
of Seville, Seville, Spain.
*Corresponding author
ABSTRACT
New communications technologies can enhance
both the tourist experience and the efficiency of
tourism organisations and destinations. Even
though smart hospitality can contribute to brand
differentiation, improved performance, and
increased client satisfaction, its study has been
neglected in previous, fundamentally
quantitative and consumer-centred
investigations within non-European contexts.
Despite the key role of smart hospitality in the
tourism ecosystem, the supplier perspective has
mainly been ignored. In order shed light on such
supplier perspective, hotel managers were
interviewed in depth, at a mature tourism
destination. Their different views on smart
hospitality and the implications for practitioners,
governmental agencies, and academia are all
brought to light. The conclusions are that
greater effort at all levels is needed to
incentivise smart hospitality.
KEYWORDS
Smart hospitality; Hotel managers; Qualitative
research; In-depth interviews; Mature
destination.
RESUMEN
Las nuevas tecnologías de la comunicación pueden
mejorar tanto la experiencia turística como la
eficiencia de las organizaciones y destinos turísticos.
Si bien la hospitalidad inteligente puede contribuir a
la diferenciación de marca, a un mejor rendimiento y
a una mayor satisfacción del cliente, su estudio se ha
desatendido en investigaciones previas,
fundamentalmente cuantitativas y centradas en el
consumidor, en contextos no europeos. A pesar del
papel clave de la hospitalidad inteligente en el
ecosistema turístico, la perspectiva del proveedor se
ha ignorado en gran medida. Para arrojar luz sobre
dicha perspectiva, se entrevistó en profundidad a
gerentes de hotel en un destino turístico maduro. Se
pusieron de manifiesto sus diferentes perspectivas
sobre la hospitalidad inteligente y sus implicaciones
para los profesionales, las agencias gubernamentales y
el mundo académico. Las conclusiones son que se
necesita un mayor esfuerzo a todos los niveles para
incentivar la hospitalidad inteligente.
PALABRAS CLAVE
Hospitalidad inteligente; Gerentes de hotel;
Investigación cualitativa; Entrevistas en profundidad;
Destino maduro.
Domingo Rodríguez-Ortiz; M. Ángeles Oviedo-García; Mario Castellanos-Verdugo. Enlightening Tourism. A
Pathmaking Journal, Vol 16, No 1 (2026), pp. 1-12
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1. INTRODUCTION
Over recent decades, both advances within
the field of information technologies and continuous
Internet penetration have been observed. Users of
Internet services are now close to 5.56 billion people
throughout the world (67.9% of the global
population) (We are social, 2025). Thus, the
development of virtual/augmented reality, the
Internet of Things, cloud computing and blockchain,
data mining, and artificial intelligence have opened
up a new universe of possibilities with repercussions
both at an individual level and within society as a
whole in the area of security, urban management,
and governance (Knieps, 2024; Kobusińska, Leung,
Hsu & Chang, 2018; Nag, Hassan, Das, Sinha et al.,
2024; Sabri & Witte, 2023).
More recently, the term “smart” has been
popularised (e.g., smart watch and smart television)
to refer to technologies that in intuitive and
automatic ways facilitate interaction between
humans and devices (Buhalis, O’Connor & Leung,
2022). Briefly, as Alter (2019, p. 384) affirmed, a
“purposefully designed entity X is smart to the
extent to which it performs and controls functions
that attempt to produce useful results through
activities that apply automated capabilities and other
physical, informational, technical, and intellectual
resources for processing information, interpreting
information, and/or learning from information that
may or may not be specified by its designers” (Alter,
2019, p. 384).
Likewise, the concepts of smart tourism,
smart destinations, and smart hospitality all emerge
when the accent is placed on enhancing both the
tourist experience in the field of tourism and the
efficiency of tourism organisations and destinations
thanks to technology-based management devices
and practices (Buhalis et al., 2023). Smart
hospitality, in particular, is fertile ground for the use
of a wide range of high-technology tools that permit
improvement through cost reductions (Stylos,
Fotiadis, Shin & Huan, 2021). Higher levels of client
satisfaction (whose preferences and expectations are
far from static) are therefore achieved, through the
provision of more personalised and contextualised
services, which at the same time mark out
differences between competitors (Law, Ye & Chan,
2022).
However, despite the potential of smart
technologies, few hospitality organisations have
been capable of taking full advantage of the use of
ICT. In the academic field, that observation is
supported by the scant investigation published on
smart hospitality (in comparison with smart
tourism), which hinders a deeper understanding of
the key concepts (Buhalis et al., 2023).
In geographic terms, most studies on smart
hospitality and tourism research have been centred
on the United States, China, and South Korea,
employing quantitative (mainly survey-based)
methodologies. Those studies have been approached
through the perspective of the consumer,
overlooking the supplier perspective (Law et al.,
2022).
This scarcity of previous studies on the
supplier perspective, despite the key role that
supplier plays, is surprising, given that technology
alone is not enough to promote the introduction of
smart hospitality. Thus, Buhalis, O’Connor and
Leung (2023) highlighted the importance of agility:
“agility is required not only for the management of
innovation, operations, back-office functions,
corporate headquarters and top management of one
organisation, but across the entire network” (p. 371)
in such a way that the management mindset and
organisational business models are converted into
the two pillars of agility. The aim is to reach
cooperation and communal value creation, moving
beyond the perspective of isolationistic competition.
It might be thought that the need for an agile mindset
is the most relevant aspect at a mature rather than at
an emergent destination, as the sector can be subject
to inertias that constrain smart developmen, although
there is a lack of empirical data to confirm such
premises. In fact, Chen, Tian, Law and Zhang (2022)
highlighted the scant investigation developed to date
on the application of smart tourism at mature
destinations.
Finally, although of no less importance,
some of the constraints on the development of smart
hospitality are behavioural and attitudinal
reservations towards the adoption of smart
technologies (Stylos et al., 2021) among the
hospitality stakeholders (top and mid-level hotel
managers, owners and employees), a topic on which
investigation is also scant (Leung, 2019).
In view of the above, it is therefore
necessary to investigate knowledge of smart
hospitality at mature European destinations, which
have been neglected in the previous literature in such
a way that the findings of Kruja, Hysa, Duman &
Tafaj (2019) on younger and educated small-
medium size hotel owners in Tirana (Albania)
revealing lower levels of reluctancy to adopt SaaS
and, likewise, the analysis of Yağmur, Demirel &
Kiliç (2024) of 5-star hotel managers’ perspectives
on smart tourism and smart technologies performed
in Antalya (Turkey) are notable exceptions.
Therefore, our main aim is to investigate
knowledge of smart hospitality at mature
destinations in Europe. To do so, in-depth qualitative
investigation, called for by Buhalis et al. (2023), is
particularly appropriate for the analysis of the
Domingo Rodríguez-Ortiz; M. Ángeles Oviedo-García; Mario Castellanos-Verdugo. Enlightening Tourism. A
Pathmaking Journal, Vol 16, No 1 (2026), pp. 1-12
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knowledge and the attitudes of hotel managers
towatds smart hospitality. Thus, the present
investigation in the context of a mature destination
and adopting a micro-perspective (hotel managers),
sets out to provide responses to the following
research questions:
RQ1. What is smart hospitality?
RQ2. What benefits are attached to becoming a
smart hotel?
RQ3. What is the importance of digitalisation, data
management, and sustainability?
RQ4. What information would a hotel manager be
willing to share?
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Smart cities and smart tourism
The ‘smart city’ concept, understood as “a
harmonized city where ICT-driven technology
enhances city services such as business,
transportations, health care, communication and
energy supplies” (Chang, 2021, p. 2), has gained
greater popularity since its appearance, especially in
the communications media, and it has generated
immense expectations both in the business world, in
politics, and even in the academic arena.
The potential benefits of smart cities are
relevant and numerous: improvements to services
and sustainable living models, resource utilisation
that contributes to reduced wastage (of time and
resources) and increased transparency and openness,
which imply information sharing, interoperability,
open-plan cities, pedestrianised zones with less
traffic, improvements to waste management,
transport services, crime-fighting, etc. (Al Nuaimi,
Al Neyadi, Mohamed & Al-Jaroodi, 2015; Lata,
Jasrotia & Sharma, 2022). Along these lines, the
2024 call for collaborative projects of the European
Union Mission on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities
(Cities Mission) funded projects for a total amount
of EUR 98 million under four headings: a)
Rethinking urban spaces towards climate neutrality;
b) Zero-pollution cities; c) Mobility management
plans and behavioural change; d) Integrated peri-
urban areas in the transition towards climate
neutrality.
The smart city is a new urban development
paradigm that unites service efficiency and quality-
of-life improvements with a reduction in the
environmental impacts generated by the city
(Duygan, Fischer, Pärli & Ingold, 2022), although
there are significant challenges to their development.
Perhaps one of the most relevant is data security and
privacy, as it relies on ICT technologies such as
sensors, cloud computing, electronic objects,
machine learning, etc. (Ismagilova, Hughes, Rana &
Dwivedi, 2022)- which must be resolved, so that a
better standard of living is achieved for coming
generations (Razmjoo, Østergaard, Deanï, Nezhad &
Mirjalili, 2021). Being aware of that type of risk, in
the area of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the European
Union AI Act (Regulation EU 2024/1689) “sets out
risk-based rules for AI developers and deployers
regarding specific uses of AI” in order to have a
trustworthy AI in Europe.
Smart cities are understood as “an
integrated living solution that links many life aspects
such as power, transportation, and buildings in a
smart and efficient manner to improve the quality of
life for the citizens” (Al Nuaimi et al., p. 2), which
thereby lays the foundations for smart tourism. In the
same way as technology in smart cities can improve
infrastructural and resource management that will
impact on quality-of-life improvements, these same
technologies applied to the field of tourism offer
tourists enhanced experiences at all stages of their
relation with the destination (gathering information
before the journey, personalised services during their
stay at the destination, and sharing post-travel
experiences). Decision-making can also be
improved, having collected information on tourist
behaviour, which may ultimately improve
destination competitiveness (Sun, Ye, Law & Hsu,
2022).
Liu, Hall, Zhu and Ting Pong Cheng (2025)
defined smart tourism as “a tourism that involves
technology, innovation, sustainability, accessibility,
and is tourist-centred” (p. 566) and the European
Commission as “a destination facilitating access to
tourism and hospitality products, services, spaces
and experiences through ICT-based innovative
solutions, making tourism sustainable and
accessible, and fully leveraging their cultural
heritage and creativity” (European Commission,
2022b, p. 13).
Thus, smart tourism is a catalyst for change
(Buhalis et al., 2023; Neuhofer, Buhalis & Ladkin,
2015) that facilitates “dynamic service encounters,
agile consumer profiling”, and “co-creation
practices” (Buhalis et al., 2023, p. 372). Without a
doubt, technology is key to smart tourism, but its
mere existence (e.g., Internet of Things (IOT), smart
phones, and cloud computing) and its application
with no interconnection (spaces where tourism
stakeholders can process and share the information
that is collected) will not lead to smart practices
(Arenas, Goh & Urueña, 2019; Buhalis et al., 2023;
Xiang, Stienmetz & Fesenmaier, 2021) that can
“integrate, analyze, and ultimately support
optimized decisions based on collective knowledge.
which in turn, enhances the tourist experience, offers
new business opportunities, and improves
Domingo Rodríguez-Ortiz; M. Ángeles Oviedo-García; Mario Castellanos-Verdugo. Enlightening Tourism. A
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destination governance in an intelligent way” (Xiang
et al., 2021, p. 4).
At an international level, Spain is a pioneer
of smart tourism thanks to the National and
Comprehensive Tourism Plan (Plan Nacional e
Integral de Turismo) 2012-2015 which sets smart
destinations as one of the priority actions to be
coordinated by Segittur – the state company for the
management of tourism of the Spanish Ministry of
Tourism) (European Commission, 2022b).
Smart destinations are those in which better
environments are generated for all destination
stakeholders (tourists, residents, and businesses)
(Xiang et al., 2021). Nevertheless, technology must
be used in such a way to create the right context: in
which, a) the level of satisfaction and loyalty of the
tourist towards the destination increases, thanks to
the organisation of memorable tourist experiences;
and b) operational efficiency, cooperation,
competitiveness, and resource management all
increase, as well as sustainability, thanks to real-time
information exchange between the various
stakeholders (tourists, suppliers, DMOs, and
governments) (Buhalis et al., 2023).
Thus, converting an intelligent city into an
intelligent tourism destination, briefly put, implies
transposing and integrating the components of
tourism activity and stakeholder perspectives and
needs into the design of an intelligent city. As noted
by Cerdá-Mansilla, Tussyadiah, Campo & Rubio
(2024, p. n.a), “smart destination is a space in which
all agents involved with the destination collaborate
in efficient management of infrastructure and use
technology to increase the quality of life of both
locals and tourists”.
2.2. Smart hospitality and smart hotel
Smart hospitality refers to the
interconnectivity and the interoperability of
integrated technologies within the hospitality
ecosystem (Buhalis & Leung, 2018). In other words,
smart hospitality is “the integration of data and
information from a hospitality corporation’s
stakeholders and ecosystem with the utilization of
technologies and then the analysis and
transformation of these data automatically and
intelligently into better physical and virtual
experiences for customers, fluent personalized
service and efficient business operations” (Hsu &
Tseng, 2022, p. 505).
The benefits associated with the
transformation of hospitality into smart hospitality,
thanks to advanced decision-support systems,
mining web sources, robotic technologies, and
virtual reality among others, are multiple. Both in
terms of a) the offer (process automatisation,
demand forecasting, crisis management, and value
co-creation, for example, that improve management
effectiveness); and b) demand for the guest/tourist,
who will enjoy an enhanced experience through
which it will be possible to anticipate their needs and
make context-specific customised recommendations
(Osei, Ragavan & Mensah, 2020; Yağmur et al.,
2024).
Financial benefits for businesses are
perhaps the most evident positive type of effect for
smart hospitality (Osei et al., 2020) derived from,
among other things, “greater control on purchasing,
procurement needs”, and improvements to “decision
making” (Buhalis & Leung, 2018, p. 46), labour
turnover, and seasonal employment improvements,
operational and employee efficiency, customer
service quality, supply chain efficiency,
digitalisation of operations, and the creation of new
jobs. Nevertheless, obstacles such as financial costs,
employee resistance related to loss of job positions
and customer resistance to the adoption of advanced
systems will all logically have to be negotiated (Osei
et al., 2020).
Among the three foundations of the
hospitality industry, i.e., a) accommodation, b) food
and drinks, and c) travel and tourism (Gupta,
Modgil, Lee, Cho & Park, 2022), all of them can
potentially benefit from the application of
technology within smart frameworks (see, for
example, Wong, Huang, Lin and Jiao (2022) for
smart dining, and Buhalis, Papathanassis and
Vafeidou (2022) for cruise tourism). Smart hotels,
the epicentre of the tourism industry (Stylos et al.,
2021), can apply technology to provide wide arrays
of high value services (room services, housekeeping,
etc.), as well as improved understanding of client
satisfaction (Gupta et al., 2022). For example, the
integration of sustainable buildings with smart
management will consistently provide sustainability
benefits (Wong & Loo, 2026).
So far, the developmemt of smart
technologies has prompted a) new paths for
interaction with customers to provide them with
more personalized services thanks to a more holistic
and precise customer profile due to a deep real-time
deep understanding of habits, tastes and desires; and
b) their development has become relevant in order to
effectively manage resources allocation reducing
wasted efforts and increasing operational efficiency
(O’Connor, Hsu & Leung, 2025; Yağmur et al.,
2024).
Unfortunately, the hospitality ecosystem is
slow (Osei et al., 2020) and unwilling (O’Connor et
al., 2024) to adopt smart technologies. The adoption
of smart technologies, particularly in the
accommodation sector, depends not only upon “their
relative benefits, but also the perception of involving
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a low-risk and low-cost implementation” (Stylos et
al., 2021, p. 3). In a more concrete way, Stylos et al.
(2021) identified four obstacles to the adoption and
assimilation of smart hotel technologies: a)
technological barriers due to technology immaturity
(that might cause instability in the system) or the vast
infrastructural modifications that are required to
further connectivity and interoperability; b) financial
barriers commonly due to scarce resource allocation;
c) different hospitality stakeholder reluctancy to
adopt smart technologies; and d) external factors
such as the lack of governmental norms and/or
regulations (particularly, on data privacy and
security area). In the case of smart hotels, Leung
(2019) showed that Taiwanese hotel stakeholders
identified financial constraints, technological
barriers, and employee and manager reluctancy to
adopt modern technologies as obstacles to adopting
smart practices.
Law et al. (2022), after an analysis of the
content of the previous literature on smart hospitality
and tourism research, found that suppliers were lent
scant little attention from a general viewpoint
(despite their key role in the development and
implementation of smart services) and called for
studies from a micro-perspective. In that context,
smart hospitality is worth studying as a different
field to smart tourism (Law et al., 2022), to
understand how the aforementioned barriers work in
the hospitality ecosystem (Stylos et al., 2021).
If attention is focused on both behavioural
and attitudinal barriers, it may be said that the new
technologies are not always warmly received,
neither by the employees nor by the
owners/managers (Leung, 2019; Stylos et al., 2021),
which raises the need to study the supplier
perspective, as it is key for the implantation and the
development of smart hospitality and to convert it, in
the words of Buhalis et al. (2023, p. 379) into a
“functioning concept”. However, despite the
relevant role of suppliers, the supplier perspective
has been neglected in previous investigations and, if
not neglected, it has been approached from a general
point of view. It must therefore be studied from a
micro-perspective too, as Law, Ye and Chan (2022)
maintained, in their literature review on smart
hospitality and tourism research. In this context, the
study of hotel managers and smart hospitality is
approached with the aim of knowing: a) what idea
they have of it; b) what they see as the benefits that
it could provide; c) what role they think that
digitalisation, data management, and sustainability
could play; and, finally, d) what information within
the framework of the necessary interconnectivity
would be available to share.
3. METHODOLOGY
Various countries have committed
themselves to smart tourism through a strategy at a
national level (e.g., South Korea, United Arab
Emirates, Spain) (Ye & Chan, 2022). In Europe, the
European Commission fosters smart destinations
through different initiatives: a) publishing the “EU
guide on data for tourism destinations” (European
Commission, 2022a), among others; b) sharing best
practices with “Leading examples of Smart Tourism
Practices in Europe” (https://smart-tourism-
capital.ec.europa.eu/leading-examples-smart-
tourism-practices-europe_en); and c) rewarding
innovative and smart tourism practices in European
cities and naming European Capitals of Smart
Tourism (https://smart-tourism-
capital.ec.europa.eu/index_en).
In particular, smart tourism in Spain has
been part of the National Integrated Tourism Plan
since 2012 and has a Network of Intelligent Tourism
Destinations consisting of 328 destinations, 63
institutions, 89 collaborative firms, and 3
international observers (Gobierno de España, 2022).
Besides, several Spanish cities have been named
European Capital of Smart Tourism (Malaga in
2020, Valencia in 2022 and Sevilla in 2023).
Seville, more specifically, has been
recognized as a city with Best Practices in
Accessibility (Accessible City Guide, Accessibility
through Digital Innovations), Best Practices in
Sustainability (Sustainable Action Plans, Urban
Water Management, Sustainable Urban
Transformation), Best Practices in Digitalisation
(Digital Tours and City Exploration, Augmented
Reality in Tourism, Open Data for Improving
Tourism) (European Commission, 2023).
Particularly, an assessment in the area of
Digitalisation established whether the city is
“supporting tourism businesses in the development
and use of digital skills and tools” so that it offers
“innovative tourism and hospitality information,
products, services, spaces and experiences adapted
to the needs of the consumers through ICT-based
solutions and digital tools” (European Commission,
2023, pp. 6-7).
It is important to consider the stakeholders
of tourism ecosystems when analysing smart
tourism, without whom it could not become a reality.
Considering the role of hospitality from the point of
view of the stakeholder, the lack of attention paid to
the role of hotels and, more specifically, the hotel
managers, is surprising. It has relegated the supplier
perspective to a secondary level, despite the need to
know the perceptions of practitioners from a micro-
perspective (Stylos et al., 2021; Ye & Chan, 2022).
In fact, Mehraliyeve, Choi and Köseoglu (2019)
highlighted an important methodological gap in
investigation into smart tourism: the fact that there
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are all-too-few qualitative studies with human
participants.
Qualitative investigation is appropriate to
respond to questions such as why and how with a
view to understanding and to exploring more than
explaining or manipulating the variables, so as to
respond to how much or to what extent, for which
purpose non-numerical data is used through rich
narrative material (words) (Chandra & Shang, 2019;
Nassaji, 2020; Haven & Van Grootel, 2019). In
contrast to quantitative research, qualitative research
“does not introduce treatments, manipulate or
quantify predefined variables” but, instead, it “aims
to provide in-depth insights and understanding of
real-world problems” (Moser & Korstjens, 2017, p.
1). Thus, thanks to qualitative investigation, novel
research topics can be thoroughly examined, given
that this branch of research is particularly
appropriate for describing, explaining, and
interpreting phenomena (Dunwoodie, Macaulay &
Newman, 2022).
Qualitative research is crucial for
deepening our understanding of the tourism sector
(Vaz, de Carvalho, Teixeira & Castanho, 2025) and
has been proven relevant when the hospitality
industry is researched to delve into hotel managers’
(Akel & Noyan, 2024; Yağmur et al., 2024) and
other stakeholders’ perspectives (Pergelova, Beck,
Stylos & Zwiegelaar, 2026; Putra & Law, 2024).
Hence, in-depth interviews were held with
general managers of hotels within Seville (Spain), in
order to understand the concept that the practitioners
hold of smart hospitality, its benefits, and what roles
digitalisation, data management, and sustainability
play, as well as from a more concrete point of view,
what information they would be willing to share.
Semi-structured and open-ended questions were
formulated: Q1. What is a smart hotel for you? Q2.
What benefits are attached to becoming a smart
hotel? Q3. What is the importance of digitalisation,
data management, and sustainability? Q4. What
information would a hotel manager be willing to
share with hotels at a Smart Tourism Destination and
other stakeholders within the hotel ecosystem?
Semi-structured interviews were chosen
because, at the same time as they provide flexibility,
so that the interviewees can present their views on
any topic that is covered, they also ensure that data
on the key areas of research interest are collected.
The use of interviews casts light on the way that
smart hospitality can be interpreted as a concept, as
it is a particularly suitable sort of research when
investigating individuals who may be reluctant to
respond to surveys. It may also, through wholistic
description, shed light on “how people attribute
meaning to their social experiences […] (and) allow
for depth and nuance in research findings that
quantitative approaches alone would not facilitate”
(Dunwoodie et al., 2022, pp. 2-3).
All the interviews, conducted in Spanish
(the native language of the interviewees), lasted
between 15-20 minutes, were face-to-face
interviews held in the hotel of the interviewee for
convenience, and were recorded, for calm analysis
of the responses at a later point in time. No
information on the interview content (not even a
general clue on smart tourism) had previously been
provided to the interviewees, because the aim was
firstly to know what was understood as smart
hospitality. Both the lack of previous explanation
and the recording process reinforced the construct
validity of the study; besides, the review of the
previous literature helped maintain the internal
validity of the study, as did careful sharing of the
findings without adding comments to the
interviewees’ responses (Yağmur et al., 2024).
Investigator triangulation to “eliminate the bias that
may occur when a single researcher conducts a
study” (Morgan, 2024, p. 1848) was chosen.
All participants gave their informed consent
to record the interview for analysis and their
anonymity was guaranteed. Descriptive analysis
(i.e., summarizing and interpreting the data) was
chosen in order to understand who, what, where,
when and to what extent (Akel & Noyan, 2024;
Yağmur et al., 2024).
Given the relevant role of a hotel general
manager both in the start-up and in the smooth
running of a smart hotel, non-probability purposeful
sampling was used and the researcher adopted the
role of an observer, limiting any comments to
encouraging the interviewees to speak freely. A
summary of participant features is shown in Table 1
(75% situated within the city centre and 62% with
between 51 and 100 rooms).
It is not possible to rely upon a general
formula to set the sample size in tourism qualitative
interview research (Czernek-Marszałek & McCabe,
2024) and, therefore, “rather than an increasingly
large or representative sample size as typically
favored with quantitative methods, scholars should
instead focus on data saturation” (McGinley, Wei,
Zhang & Zheng, 2021, p. 9), as the aim is not
statistical generalizability. Data saturation was
reached in this research when no new
information/insight was possible to be collected
from the participants.
Table 1. Sample features
HOTE
LS
TYPE
CATEGO
RY
ROOM
S
LOCATIO
N
Hotel 1
Boutique
Four stars
<50
City centre
Hotel 2
Leisure/
Business
Four stars
51-100
City centre
Hotel 3
Leisure/
Business
Four stars
>200
Outskirts
Hotel 4
Leisure/
Business
Three stars
51-100
City centre
Hotel 5
Leisure/
Business
Tourism
Apartments
51-100
City centre
Domingo Rodríguez-Ortiz; M. Ángeles Oviedo-García; Mario Castellanos-Verdugo. Enlightening Tourism. A
Pathmaking Journal, Vol 16, No 1 (2026), pp. 1-12
7
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Hotel 6
Independent
Leisure
Four stars
51-100
City centre
Hotel 7
Independent
Leisure/
Business
Four stars
51-100
City centre
Hotel 8
Chain
Leisure/
Business
Four stars
151-200
Business
district
4. RESULTS
4.1. What is a smart hotel?
The interviewees differed with regard to
what they understood as a smart hotel. For example,
GM1 stated that “to be a smart hotel implies the
application of technological tools and digital
applications that can be of significant help to us with
the monitoring and the control of operations,
especially with tourist apartments and catering”,
while GM2 explained that “to be a smart hotel
implies adapting product intelligence (knowledge of
what intervenes in the operations) to the needs of the
client”.
From the analysis of the set of responses, a
greater convergence of opinion was only observed in
so far as a smart hotel covered data management (big
data) (GM1, GM2, and GM5), although it was
something that only 3 out of the 8 interviewees
mentioned.
Other interviewees mentioned such aspects
as the use of technologies (GM1 and GM4),
interaction with the destination (GM1 and GM2),
monitoring of operations (GM1), application of
common sense, and use of information (GM4). Some
interviewees offered more detailed responses: GM6
mentioned improvements to client services through
technology and reduction of energy expenditure,
water consumption, and waste recycling; GM2
referred to the anticipation of demand, cost
reduction, and the availability of on-line technology
for the client, in line with GM3, so that smart
hospitality services are offered to the client through
technological applications (“not by people”), which
will lead to savings (on personnel, energy, etc.) for
the hotel.
4.2. What benefits are attached to becoming a
smart hotel?
On the question of the benefits linked to a
smart hotel, the interviewees showed a higher degree
of agreement. From the perspective of demand, four
of the general managers who were interviewed
thought that becoming a smart hotel could improve
client satisfaction (GM2, GM4, GM5, and GM6).
Moreover, GM1 pointed out that that more time
could be dedicated to client relations and GM2
highlighted its role in differentiation. However, the
majority of the benefits that were mentioned referred
to aspects related to the offer: automatisation of
processes and the improvement of internal and
external communication (GM1), improvement of
productivity (GM1 and GM2), improvement of
occupancy (GM4) and, above all, the efficient use of
databases (GM1, GM5, and GM6).
Only one interviewee referred to the
benefits within the field of branding and positioning
through quality environmental management seals
(GM6).
4.3. What is the importance of digitalisation, data
management, and sustainability?
The diversity of responses to the above
question is striking, as only three interviewees
referred to data management as a highly important
matter (GM1, GM3, and GM6): “they are the
fundamental underpinning of hotel management”, in
the words of GM6, as well as its high cost (GM2 and
GM4). However, GM2 also pointed out that “it
keeps us abreast of market tendencies and the needs
of our clients”. Although GM5 highlighted that
sustainability had become less of a priority due to the
COVID-19 pandemic and other more peremptory
matters that needed attention, GM1 made clear the
need to integrate those concepts into the culture of
the hotel. GM3 expressed a somewhat more
pessimistic view, making it clear that “neither the
hotels in general nor the destination have been able
to become sustainable”.
In particular, with regard to data
management, GM6 indicated that it is of assistance
in decision-making to improve hotel occupancy and
the average price, although GM5 responded that
there is greater data availability than is at times
necessary.
4.4. What information would you be willing to
share?
Although GM2 qualified the sector as
“untransparent” because it is “scared of sharing tools
and data”, three interviewees were willing to share
all information except for financial data (GM1,
GM2, and GM3): “Sharing, for example, the name
and track-record of a good supplier can help to
improve its performance, impacting positively on the
group of competitor hotels”, affirmed GM2.
In a more specific way, GM4, GM5, and
GM6 would share data on occupancy, average
prices, commercial areas, and suppliers. GM6, in
fact, highlighted that the hotel establishment was
already sharing data through the Asociación de
Hoteles de Sevilla (AHS) [Seville Hotel
Association] and the Tourism Board.
5. DISCUSSION
Domingo Rodríguez-Ortiz; M. Ángeles Oviedo-García; Mario Castellanos-Verdugo. Enlightening Tourism. A
Pathmaking Journal, Vol 16, No 1 (2026), pp. 1-12
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It is surprising that, despite the effort
invested in promoting smart tourism in Europe and
Spain, it appears that a clear concept of what smart
hospitality is has yet to crystallise in the minds of
hotel managers, despite their key role in the
emergence of smart tourism and the selection of
Seville as the 2023 Capital of Smart Tourism. It is
equally surprising that at no time did any of the
interviewees make mention of UNE norm
178504:2019 “Digital smart hotel connected to
smart tourism destination or smart city platforms.
Requirements and recommendations”.
The general managers of the hotels who
were interviewed expressed some of the defining
aspects of a smart hotel (e.g., data management and
online customer service access), although the lack of
a wholistic understanding of the concept was
appreciated, as none of them connected the
integration of data with the use of technologies to
achieve both better (physical and virtual)
experiences of customers and greater efficiency in
their business operations (Hsu & Tseng, 2022).
However, although no lack of consistency in the
responses was observed, such as in the case of Leung
(2019) with regard to the definition of smart
hospitality by key Taiwanese hotel stakeholders, it
was indeed noted that their responses only partially
encompassed the concept of a smart hotel, which
therefore highlights that there is still some way to go
until a deeper understanding of the concept and all
of its implications is achieved.
In this sense, the renewed efforts to
promote smart hospitality in Spain, such as the
recent publication of UNE 178504:2022 “Digital
smart hotel connected to smart tourism destination
or smart city platforms. Requirements and
recommendations” (replacing the previously
mentioned norm UNE 178504:2019), must be
praised. The norm establishes that a smart hotel is “a
hotel that meets with the general aspects of tourism
that are service, sustainability, and accessibility, and
in addition it has the capability to interact with its
environment (city and/or tourism destination), using
digital technologies and incorporating physical and
logical infrastructure with which the integral
monitoring of the things and the tourists may be
implemented” (p.9) where the requirements are
defined with which the hotel must comply.
With regard to the implications of the smart
hotel, the responses made it quite clear that the hotel
managers were aware above all of its effect on client
satisfaction, in line with the results of Leung et al.
(2019), but are less aware of its effects on the
operations of the hotel (e.g., productivity, database
use, automation of processes, improvements to
communication). Whereas the key Taiwanese hotel
stakeholders in the study of Leung (2019) were
unanimous with regard to the benefits that the smart
hotel could bring with it, not all of the Seville hotel
general managers who were interviewed shared the
same perception. In fact, no common vision with
regard to the importance of digitalisation, data
management, and sustainability was observed
between the general managers of the hotels, perhaps
also due to the lack of deep knowledge of what a
smart hotel actually is.
However, the fact that the interviewees
were aware of the need to share data and information
and were ready to do so must be highlighted as an
encouraging and positive result. On that point, no
reticence was perceived that could be due to inertia
inherited from (individual) management practices
(limited to each hotel) prior to the smart era at a
mature destination. Given the key role of this
interconnection, that is, the creation of spaces in
which tourism stakeholders may process and share
the information that is gathered, so that collective
knowledge may be generated, these results give
reason to continue working to turn smart hospitality
into a reality. Considering that the levels of
interoperability and interconnectivity for most of the
core systems in hospitality are to date quite low
(O’Connor et al., 2025), the willingness to share data
and information is encouraging. However, such
optimism must be moderated by the consideration
that the willingness that is expressed to share
information might be due to a poor understanding of
the amount and the type of information that must be
provided, as a consequence of the limited
understanding of the smart hotel concept.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that, unlike
the results obtained by Leung (2019) in which
Taiwanese hotel stakeholders identified financial
constraints, technological barriers, and employee
and managerial reluctancy to adopt modern
technologies as obstacles to becoming smart, the
interviewees never mentioned any type of barrier to
the adoption and the assimilation of smart hotels
identified by Stylos et al. (2021). In other words,
they made no mention of technological immaturity,
no mention of financial barriers, nor stakeholder
reluctancy, nor governmental limitations, nor norms
of any type. Although it is true that they were not
directly asked to comment on the obstacles to smart
hospitality, if they had been concerned by the matter,
the roles that digitalisation, data management, and
sustainability play might well have been mentioned
in some way or other.
6. CONCLUSIONS
In this study, the differing knowledge levels
of smart hospitality among practitioners and both
governmental entities and academia have been
brought to light.
Domingo Rodríguez-Ortiz; M. Ángeles Oviedo-García; Mario Castellanos-Verdugo. Enlightening Tourism. A
Pathmaking Journal, Vol 16, No 1 (2026), pp. 1-12
9
https://doi.org/10.33776/EUHU/et.v16i1.9245
If knowledge of the concept of smart
hospitality and its implications is insufficient among
hotel managers at a tourism destination where
national and European policies favour the
incentivisation of not only smart hospitality, but also
smart destinations, and smart tourism, then more
effort may reasonably be expected at all levels to
drive smart hospitality at all destinations. It must be
pointed out, however, that it is important not to
create false expectations with regard to the
advantages that smart hospitality may bring with it,
given that not achieving those advantages could
entail a level of frustration that might equate with the
rejection of smart hospitality.
Buhalis et al. (2023) highlighted the need
for training to change the mindset with respect to
technology and called for urgent training at all levels
with a view to helping managers to acquire the
necessary skills to draw on all the potential for
technological advances applicable to the smart
hospitality framework. Being in agreement with
them, from a practical point of view, this implies a
key preliminary step is considered necessary: the
training has, in the first place, to be centred on
managers who can learn the concept of smart
hospitality properly in all of its aspects, its scope, its
implications, and limitations. If this first step is not
guaranteed, then all the efforts from different public
and private spheres are bound to fail. Moreover,
training in the basic aspects of the smart hospitality
concept must not be exclusively circumscribed to
hotel managers, but must be extended to the whole
hospitality ecosystem without whose mutual
collaboration, smart hospitality could never be
converted into what Buhalis et al. (2023) called a
“functioning concept” (p. 379).
However important it may be for successful
smart hospitality, which fully relies on shared,
interoperable, and interconnected systems, to invest
in enabling technologies, both management
perception and awareness remain the biggest
challenge for training and education in the short
term (O’Connor, et al., 2025).
6.1. Limitations
This investigation has been centred on the
micro-perspective of a concrete type of supplier,
which implies a limitation and, in consequence, its
results need to be completed by other investigations
of the same type at other tourist destinations. On the
other hand, although the results of this investigation
cannot be generalised, they do manage to cast light
on the smart hospitality concept at a key point in the
hospitality ecosystem: hotel managers who are, in
short, those who have to implement it. Finally, a
limitation of this investigation must be underlined,
in that only 4-star hotels have fundamentally been
incorporated and information on other categories of
hotel could be gathered in future investigations.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was developed within the
framework of the project “Conecta2 in the Smart
Destination of Seville” (Conecta2 en el destino
inteligente de Sevilla) TUR-RETOS2022-23 funded
by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Trade and
Tourism – 2021 Call. The project was based at the
University of Seville which is affiliated with the
Andalusian Institute for Research and Innovation in
Tourism (IATUR).
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