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Abstract

This paper presents a conceptual approach to Smart Tourism Design based on semiotic affordances theory. This conceptual approach repositions smart tourism from a techno-centric perspective that frames a seamless connection between the device and its software, to a more human-centric perspective that favors the user's needs, desires as perceived through the senses. An updated Smart Tourism Design emphasizes the aesthetic dimension of smart tourism that presents the objects of the travel experience as destination specific rather than universal, through representations as digital artifacts. This theory is based on an empirical and objective understanding of representations and how they can be identified as useful in the digital augmentation of travel experiences. Using Peirce's sign systems and Gibson's theory of affordances, smart tourism can transcend a prefabricated device-oriented experience to a closer dynamic and direct interaction between the user and the travel destination. Researchers and developers can use semiotics as a structural approach to recognizing objects as sign-types, and they can use affordances to better identify the immediacy of digital artifacts and purpose-driven by users’ spontaneous and immediate motives.

Keywords

Affordances destination image destination management imaging processing Smart Tourism Design semiotics

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Smart Tourism Design: A Semiotic Affordances Approach

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