The importance of the regional context for the development of local smart tourism destinations

This study examines how regional characteristics influence the development of local Smart Tourism Destinations (STDs) in its territory, highlighting that, beyond city level initiatives, regional contexts play a key role by shaping the enabling conditions for smart transformation. Despite this relevance, the extent to which regional strategies affect the development of local STDs remains largely unexplored in the existing literature, resulting in a gap that this research aims to address. To capture the territorial factors that condition STD development, the study proposes a synthetic indicator: the Regional Index of Smart Destination Enablers. is index integrates information from a set of indicators aligned with the strategic pillars of SEGITTUR’s model, which defines the essential dimensions of smartness in tourism destinations. The resulting indicator is applied to Spain’s Autonomous Communities to assess the suitability of the context they provide for the development of local STDs.