Smart city concept as a driver for tourism development

The smart city concept is important for the urban tourism development, as it allows managing urban processes more effectively, optimizing resource consumption and the impact on the environment. In turn, this positively effects the image of the city destination and makes tourists’ visiting more comfortable. The smart city concept has obvious benefits, but its mechanisms today are perceived ambiguously. Therefore, the article is aimed at determining the influence of the smart city technologies on the urban tourism development, identifying the most important tools of a smart destination and studying their perception in the professional tourism community. The article examines approaches to defining the “smart city” concept, identifies its components and their impact on the tourism development. To confirm the hypothesis that tourism professional community accepts digitalization results controversially the authors interviewed industry representatives. It made possible to understand the perceptions and expectations of tourism workers from the implementation of the “smart city” concept and its impact on the development of urban tourism, as well as the reasons for the negative attitude towards it and the fears of employees.