Designing of smart tourism organization (STO) for tourism management: A case study of tourism organizations of South Khorasan province, Iran

Amir Ghorbani; Abolfazl Danaei; Seyed Mohammad Zargar; Hadi Hematian

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e01850

Designing of smart tourism organization (STO) for tourism management: A case study of tourism organizations of South Khorasan province, Iran

Heliyon. 2019 Jun 15;5(6):e01850. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e01850. eCollection 2019 Jun.

Authors

Amir Ghorbani¹, Abolfazl Danaei¹, Seyed Mohammad Zargar¹, Hadi Hematian¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Management, Semnan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Semnan, Iran.

Abstract

The present study uses a review of the literature and the views of tourism and management professors and experts in order to the identification of organizational intelligence elements in tourism management (STO) for the first time. The census method was used to determine the research sample and the Delphi technique was used to design the questionnaire. Construct divergence was then used to determine the validity and reliability of the questionnaire. The final results indicated that providing e-services for tourists had the greatest impact on the development of STO (loading factor: 0.677). Moreover, New Tourism Marketing Methods (NTMM) had the least effect on the development of STO (loading factor: 0.431). Overall, the most important achievement of the present research is introducing the concept of STO in tourism management.

Keywords: Delphi method; Smart tourism organization (STO); South Khorasan province; Tourism; Tourism management.